A few questions on marriage, love, and feelings

  • Thread starter Thread starter cojrio
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

cojrio

Guest
My girlfriend and I were talking about love, and we’re not exactly madly in love ourselves, because we haven’t been together for too long.

Anyway, a couple things she said are giving me a big of trouble, and I was hoping to get others’ responses.

a) She said that love is a choice. This is something I have never considered nor heard, but I do kind of see how it can be partially true. But is it just a choice? She talks as if it is just a choice, that’s it. If it is just a choice, what does it mean to fall in love with someone? Is “falling in love with” just code for “making the decision to care about them more than yourself”? I would have thought that some amount of feeling and emotion would be attached.

b) We are in a kind of lovey dovey stage of the relationship, and she said that she is glad that we are what seems like “too good to be true”, but she worries what will happen when the feelings go away. Just like that. She seems to think that feelings can and will go away, and at that point the choice of love is what will hold a marriage together. She admits that it is possible that feelings could remain within a marriage forever, but she seems to think that this is extremely unlikely.

Please shed some light on this for me.
Thanks!
 
cojrio said:
My girlfriend and I were talking about love, and we’re not exactly madly in love ourselves, because we haven’t been together for too long.

Anyway, a couple things she said are giving me a big of trouble, and I was hoping to get others’ responses.

a) She said that love is a choice. This is something I have never considered nor heard, but I do kind of see how it can be partially true. But is it just a choice? She talks as if it is just a choice, that’s it. If it is just a choice, what does it mean to fall in love with someone? Is “falling in love with” just code for “making the decision to care about them more than yourself”? I would have thought that some amount of feeling and emotion would be attached.

b) We are in a kind of lovey dovey stage of the relationship, and she said that she is glad that we are what seems like “too good to be true”, but she worries what will happen when the feelings go away. Just like that. She seems to think that feelings can and will go away, and at that point the choice of love is what will hold a marriage together. She admits that it is possible that feelings could remain within a marriage forever, but she seems to think that this is extremely unlikely.

Please shed some light on this for me.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Well I think it’s a little of both. 🙂
Love and affection come in waves within marriage… the feelings and emotions and the “choice” to love all ebb and flow with the times. It’s never all-or-nothing… it’s always kinda a mixture of those things, and sometimes you have to work hard at it, making the active choice, and sometimes it comes naturally, where the “feelings/emotions” of love resurface over the years for sure!
Everyone’s marriage is unique, but I can say from my own experience (12+ years now) that as time has gone we have been blessed in that our “feelings/emotions” of “too good to be true” love CAN and DOES resurface - more so now than in the earlier years of our marriage, when the early transition to married life can sometimes take it’s toll.

Love is definitely BOTH a choice and a feeling… ebbing and flowing in their own times and seasons.
 
cojrio said:
a) She said that love is a choice. This is something I have never considered nor heard, but I do kind of see how it can be partially true. But is it just a choice? She talks as if it is just a choice, that’s it. If it is just a choice, what does it mean to fall in love with someone? Is “falling in love with” just code for “making the decision to care about them more than yourself”? I would have thought that some amount of feeling and emotion would be attached.
Click to expand...
This is true. We choose to love. Love is a verb not an emotion. Christ chose to love us. We are commanded to Love God and our neighbor. Therefore love is a choice not an emotion (though we can definitely feel things along with love). 🙂
 
Your girlfriend’s understanding of love is mature. She is right- to love is a choice. Feelings do come and go, and you do not always feel “in love”. Feelings are transient, no matter whether they are feelings of love, anger, sadness, whatever. But there is a difference between feeling “in love” and actively loving someone. The feeling of love is about you and how the other person makes you feel. The action of love is about the other person- making sacrifices and loving even when you don’t feel like it.

That being said, you should experience feelings of love for your spouse- they just don’t always last the way they did in the beginning. In a good marriage, the feelings don’t necessarily “go away”, but there is a general level of being “in love” that is perhaps not all that exciting a lot of the time but deeper than just seeing stars. So, when she says she is not sure that feelings of love remain within a marriage forever, she’s a bit mistaken if she means that they simply disappear. The feelings change form and come and go a bit, but it’s not how you feel that keeps a marriage together, it’s how you act.
 
cojrio said:
My girlfriend and I were talking about love, and we’re not exactly madly in love ourselves, because we haven’t been together for too long.

Anyway, a couple things she said are giving me a big of trouble, and I was hoping to get others’ responses.

a) She said that love is a choice. This is something I have never considered nor heard, but I do kind of see how it can be partially true. But is it just a choice? She talks as if it is just a choice, that’s it. If it is just a choice, what does it mean to fall in love with someone? Is “falling in love with” just code for “making the decision to care about them more than yourself”? I would have thought that some amount of feeling and emotion would be attached.

b) We are in a kind of lovey dovey stage of the relationship, and she said that she is glad that we are what seems like “too good to be true”, but she worries what will happen when the feelings go away. Just like that. She seems to think that feelings can and will go away, and at that point the choice of love is what will hold a marriage together. She admits that it is possible that feelings could remain within a marriage forever, but she seems to think that this is extremely unlikely.

Please shed some light on this for me.
Thanks!
Click to expand...
While my hubby and I have only been married for a little over a year. We have been a couple for almost 5 years. I am still madly in love with him. I still get butterflies, I still like playing around with him. I still get excited when we go one dates.
I don’t think that it is choosing to love that will hold the marriage together. I love a lot of people that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with. lol. I think it is friendship. My husband is my bff. Depending on the day we are one extreme or the other. Some days I’m sure no one wants to be around us, we will use pet names and be all lovey dovey. The next day he is my bff and we are watching football and bumping chests when our team scores. lol.That friendship is what is going to keep us going when we are in a dry spot in our love life. I would never want to lose that friendship. Ever.
 
I think you’ve found a wise woman there.

Love is a choice of the will. Of course, there are feelings that often go with it. There’s no denying that. But love is not fundamentally a feeling.

Truly, the cause of much of our society’s ills is the notion that love is not a choice but something that just happens to you. Because if love is just some feeling you have no control over, then once the feeling is gone, you can “follow your heart” to the next girl. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or have kids or anything because “love” can never be wrong. :rolleyes: Sorry, that’s not real love.

And though you might find it odd to be thinking of a time beyond the “lovey-dovey” phase when you are in the midst of that phase, it is true that it is not a perpetual state. Expecting it to be so is – again – a source of much ill. Because if we expect that we have some sort of right to feel such feelings for the rest of our life, then we will rationalize casting people aside once they no longer provide us with such an emotional high.

Not to be a downer or anything. :o There is a far greater and deeper joy to be gained in true, committed, authentic love that is chosen rather than the fleeting happiness of infatuation that just sort of happens.

And this is not to say that loving feelings will only be with you for a time before they disappear forever. But there will be ebbs and flows. And the lovey-dovey feelings are generally most intense in the beginning. But I would say that true joy of real love is much more fulfilling than lovey-dovey feelings.
 
Love is a choice. You choose to love your spouse when you are 25 and hot and heavy and beautiful, and when you are 65, no longer physically beautiful or capable, maybe crankier and more set in your habits. You choose to love when your spouse breaks your heart or drives you insane. When your spouse is ill and burdens you. When the butterflies are gone, the babies are crying, the house is a mess, the bills unpaid and your hair unwashed. You choose to stay fully invested in the marriage as a loving, supportive spouse in spite of these things.

I think sometimes when regularity sets in, and the butterflies have long gone, people often believe that something is wrong. And that’s when the “problems” start and people claim to have fallen out of love. Nope - it’s just reality. It’s not as exciting and the “high” isn’t there, but it’s better. More reliable and even-keeled. More mature. More steady.
 
What i personally think about ‘feelings just going away’. I would say this can happen in every marriage, for a period of time. But, when you really love someone, I would say you would fight for the love, even when the feelings have temporary disappeared. If you remember of the times how much you loved the other, one would certainly do everything to get it back. At least, that is my philosophy. A lot of couples break up (or even get a divorce) just because they feel like ‘all cake is eaten’ (something like that, we could say in the Netherlands).
 
She’s right and wrong.
You can’t chose who you love in a romantic sense. Some people will make you crazy with love whether they returnit or not. Some wont move you at all, no matter how wonderful they treat you. But this is only at the beginning. So you could easily make a distinction between loving and being in love.
Being in love is that incredible, butterfly feeling. That teeny bopper crush feeling like you will just DIE if she doesn’t talk to you. And then she does, and you think you will DIE of love and excitement. Will she call? Does she like you? What did she mean by that? is she looking at me? On and on and on.

Loving though, is a different matter. If you get together shared experiences will (might) let Love grow between you. This is the love that makes you quit your job and move across country because she misses her family. It’s the love that makes you feed her ice chips in the hospital, the love that makes you go all gushy when she is fat, sweaty and cranky in her ninth month of pregnancy. It’s not because she is having your baby, it’s because you now see her as being womanly and creative. It’s because she is a mother goddess figure and her maturity and creativity has you in awe. It’s respect and admiration.

This Love is the choice. It grows on it’s own naturally, but without you choosing everyday to nurture it, it will die. If you are married you need to think of yourself as a gardener nurturing the Love that has grown. It means you are responsible for her happiness and benefit more than your own. She has to do the same for you.

I had one marriage where my husband was anything but a gardener. I finally walked out after 17 years of abuse that left me with emotional scars that still sometimes haunt me.

I am now married to a gardener. I am happy and whole. He is happy and whole. It is like night and day and I will NEVER go anywhere else. Ever. He chooses to Love me. I chose to Love him.

Love like this is a choice. and its the sort of love theChurch teaches. You girlfriend is VERY wise. If you swing it, marry her. There aren’t many out there that understand gardening.
Good luck.
 
RichardG said:
What i personally think about ‘feelings just going away’. I would say this can happen in every marriage, for a period of time. But, when you really love someone, I would say you would fight for the love, even when the feelings have temporary disappeared. If you remember of the times how much you loved the other, one would certainly do everything to get it back. At least, that is my philosophy. A lot of couples break up (or even get a divorce) just because they feel like ‘all cake is eaten’ (something like that, we could say in the Netherlands).
Click to expand...
Besides, feelings do not only “go away”. Feelings can turn on you. There is no one who can make you more angry or resentful than someone you have really been smitten with or on whom you have projected high expectations. There is no one whose bad judgment seems like more of a personal insult than someone whose good judgment you took as a sign of their suitability as a partner. They say “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” because nobody can make you mad like someone you used to have a great desire for can make you mad. There is a reason that if you are murdered, the first suspect the police will look at is going to be your spouse or your lover!!

You have to have a deep respect and commitment to stick with someone in order to ride out a lifetime of the emotions you are probably going to feel about them. This is particularly true for women, because of the physical toll that pregnancy can take on some women’s emotions. Some women are as steady as a rock their whole lives, and then they get pregnant and BAM!! you’d better hope the integrity of their convictions is there to keep them civilized. Or wait until one or both of you go through depression or just a big discouragement. Everything can look not only so different from the “rosy glow” period of courtship, but also different from the plain light of reality. Integrity and commitment are what get you through those times when your emotions are your enemy instead of your friend.
 
Everyone here is correct. I wish they taught this stuff in school, or the parents would. ( it rightly belongs in the home)

A lot of anguish could be stopped if more people knew what Love is.
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
While my hubby and I have only been married for a little over a year. We have been a couple for almost 5 years. I am still madly in love with him. I still get butterflies, I still like playing around with him. I still get excited when we go one dates.
I don’t think that it is choosing to love that will hold the marriage together. I love a lot of people that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with. lol. I think it is friendship. My husband is my bff. Depending on the day we are one extreme or the other. Some days I’m sure no one wants to be around us, we will use pet names and be all lovey dovey. The next day he is my bff and we are watching football and bumping chests when our team scores. lol.That friendship is what is going to keep us going when we are in a dry spot in our love life. I would never want to lose that friendship. Ever.
Click to expand...
How wonderful to hear of a love like my husband’s and mine! We’ve been together for almost 5 years and almost married for three, and I can honestly say, that we feel the same love we felt as we did when we first started dating. There was no “honeymoon” period that many people liked to warn us about.

I can say, however, that before I met my husband, I felt a lot like the OP’s girlfriend because I had not experienced love like the one I have with my husband. It is only until you experience a mature, lasting, committed, and indescribable love that you truly understand that no, love does not fade away. It only gets stronger and more passionate with time 😃
 
SubjectVerb said:
How wonderful to hear of a love like my husband’s and mine! We’ve been together for almost 5 years and almost married for three, and I can honestly say, that we feel the same love we felt as we did when we first started dating. There was no “honeymoon” period that many people liked to warn us about.

I can say, however, that before I met my husband, I felt a lot like the OP’s girlfriend because I had not experienced love like the one I have with my husband. It is only until you experience a mature, lasting, committed, and indescribable love that you truly understand that no, love does not fade away. It only gets stronger and more passionate with time 😃
Click to expand...
I was probably more cruel than the OP’s girlfriend. lol. I was always friends with guys, I never really “fell in love.” I thought that if I did marry I would have to, I don’t know, settle. That was until I met my hubby. Then it was that can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over- the-fence, World Series kind of stuff. haha.
We do have our fair share of arguments and there are days when I want him to stay in his mancave, but by the end of the day I am knocking on the door asking if I can come in. lol. It isn’t because we are still in the phase of not being able to keep our hands off each other, either. It is just this freakishly close bond we have.
I know a few people who have been married much longer than I have who are still in love and have a great friendship. My great-aunt and uncle just celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary and you would think they were teenagers. haha. I want that. I want to be able to still joke and play and hold hands when we are married that long, I don’t want it to be a choice just becuase we have been together so long or becuase I don’t want to be alone. Ya know?
 
A. Yes, love is a choice. (1 Cor 13)

B. Love creates two chemicals in brain: dopamine & serotonin. The dopamine (lovey dovey) is similar to adrenaline, alcohol, gambling, video gaming and other addictive life experiences. These addictive experiences are not “bad” until you become enslaved by the dopamine high causing neglect in other areas of your life. When love is new, brain scans reveal dopamine levels are high. Physical contact will significantly increase the dopamine levels. This is why most cultures have the saying, “Love is blind”

Now serotonin is a chemical produced by more long term bonding. High levels of serotonin are present when petting a beloved pet, spouce, or in caregiving. Levels of serotonin increase and decrease perpetually.

This is why we need the “God” glue to help us when dopamine and serotonin levels dip low or fly too high.
 
KendraDZ1902 said:
I was probably more cruel than the OP’s girlfriend. lol. I was always friends with guys, I never really “fell in love.” I thought that if I did marry I would have to, I don’t know, settle. That was until I met my hubby. Then it was that can’t-eat, can’t-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over- the-fence, World Series kind of stuff. haha.
We do have our fair share of arguments and there are days when I want him to stay in his mancave, but by the end of the day I am knocking on the door asking if I can come in. lol. It isn’t because we are still in the phase of not being able to keep our hands off each other, either. It is just this freakishly close bond we have.
I know a few people who have been married much longer than I have who are still in love and have a great friendship. My great-aunt and uncle just celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary and you would think they were teenagers. haha. I want that. I want to be able to still joke and play and hold hands when we are married that long, I don’t want it to be a choice just becuase we have been together so long or becuase I don’t want to be alone. Ya know?
Click to expand...
During our first few years, I kind of kept waiting for the incredible feelings to “fade” like it had in my past relationships. I always thought I was a loner, and I assumed that once the initial falling in love was over, I’d return to my loner ways like I had before. Not so. I always want to be with my husband; at work, I think about how much I miss him, and on weeknights, I don’t want the day to end because the next day we have to be apart. I kept waiting for these feelings to fade, and after 5 years, I’ve stopped, and I am confident we will still hold hands and crave each other’s presence when we are in our old age.

Yes, we have arguments, but as our relationship has matured, we are getting better at resolving them. We are both stubborn and sensitive, so there can be some hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and disagreements, but overall we hate fighting and often we end our arguments because we don’t want to be mad at each other anymore (i.e. me going into his man cave or him coming into the bedroom and saying "I don’t want to fight anymore 🙂 )

To the OP: our love is not different then when we first started dating; it’s only stronger, deeper, and more amazing everyday. For your girlfriend, the most important thing for her is to love without fear. I have invested my whole heart in my husband, and that was one of the scariest things I have ever done. I love my husband more than I ever thought was possible, and that at first although scary, is exhilarating and continues to be everyday. Being so independent emotionally, it was hard to give myself to someone fully, but once I did, my life has become more incredible, joyous, and purely content than I ever thought was possible.

I suppose this part is what you could call “a choice.” I chose to give myself fully to my husband. Love itself, however, is not as simple as a “choice;” to call it one is to take away the emotional and spiritual aspect of it. Marriage is a joining of two souls in a holy sacrament, not two people rationally entering into a mutually beneficial contract as many people in our secular society like to think (like pre-nups, ugh).

Of course, our common love of God and our commitment to the sacrament of marriage helps guide us every day and protects our love in such an anti-marriage society. Pre-cana was incredible, too. If you two decide to get married, I highly recommend taking the course in-person and as seriously as you can. Talk with your priest about what you learned about each other afterward (we learned a lot about our views on finances, in-laws, and raising children). Pre-cana and our wonderful priest enabled us to enter our marriage with understanding each other more fully.

:blessyou:
 
Thinking about this, what occurred to me was this: Authentic love, being borne of God, has this in common with God: it has no equal and opposite counterpart. Merely natural affection or infatuation, if offended, can turn into contempt. Merely natural filial love has its equal and opposite counterpoint in xenophobia and exclusion of the foreigner and the outsider, and it turns its back on the disloyal “brother”. Eros, if rejected, can become the fury of a lover scorned, with an equal and opposite depth of passion.

The love that comes from God, however, does not have a dark opposite. Hatred is not the opposite of love, after all, but the absence of it. Authentic love does not meet offense with offense. It is the love that St. Paul spoke of: “Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” Love never fails because, like God whom it comes from, love has no opposite that can defeat it. The natural kinds of love are halves of a duality that has a dark side, where summer goes to winter and one thing lives by the death of another. The love that comes from God, however, is not like that. It shares not the nature of a fallen creation, but the nature of God Himself.

“So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love”, or, as the Catechism explains it:

***II. THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES **

**1812 **The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature:76 for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.

**1813 *The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.77

If your marriage has charity, but little or no eros, you can have a faithful sacramental marriage. But if your marriage has eros (passion), phileo (friendship), and storge (affection) but does not have agape, the love that is literally animated with the Spirit of God, then your marriage cannot be what God intended for the union of two human souls.
 
SubjectVerb said:
I suppose this part is what you could call “a choice.” I chose to give myself fully to my husband.** Love itself, however, is not as simple as a “choice;” to call it one is to take away the emotional and spiritual aspect of it.** Marriage is a joining of two souls in a holy sacrament, not two people rationally entering into a mutually beneficial contract as many people in our secular society like to think (like pre-nups, ugh).
Click to expand...
This. While it really is true that love is not just an emotion, and it involves a choice to stick around no matter what, to try and forgive and be kind and in all ways put the other first, love is not simply a choice. Choosing and willing the good of the other is the most important part of love, but not the only part, or even the only important part. After all, two siblings can choose the good of the other their entire lives, and they still will not love each other in the way that married couples are called to love each other. Love between spouses is absolutely more than just a choice.
 
Great question and yes your gf is correct. Love is a decision not a feeling nor emotion. My parish priest discussed this several times in different homilies.

Love is a decision because you are choosing to love that person for better or worse, for sickness and in health, etc…

A majority of people nowadays get married for ALL the wrong reasons, one being that they were PHYSICALLY attracted to each other or they had great sex (which I advise you and your gf NOT do and have a CHASTE relationship instead). You want someone who will be there for you even WITHOUT all of those feelings and that is what your gf means. When you decide to love someone, you choose to be with them for deeper reasons, not just the attraction but because you’ve developed a certain level of care, a deep understanding of their personality, qualities, etc.

I say pray about your relationship with your gf, grow in faith together (VERY IMPORTANT) and thank God for having a gf who believes this.

A lot of people don’t agree that love is decision but if you and your gf put God FIRST, you will have a lasting and God-pleasing relationship.

God bless.
 
I guess to be technical, love is not a choice or a feeling. Love is a virtue. And God is Love.

Love does require an exercise of the will. But it is not reducible only to that.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top