What is love anyway?
Years ago, in the early days of my relationship with my husband, I had a twisted view of the nature of love. It was one that had been formed after spending my teenage years glued to General Hospital and my early 20s watching one romantic comedy after another. As a result, I thought my husband loved me if he:
Knew exactly what I wanted for my birthday without me telling him.
Loved every gift I ever gave him, just because I was the one who gifted it.
Remembered every significant date in the history of our couple hood, and did something romantic on these dates, without my prompting.
Wanted to spend all of his free time with me. Who needs bicycles (his passion), beer (he’s a connoisseur) and friends when you have me?
Did fifty percent of the housework without being asked.
Validated me by telling me that I was beautiful, smart and funny.
Did whatever I asked of him.
It took many years and the near end of my marriage for me to see that this wasn’t love. Rather it was torture, both for him and for me. It took years for me to realize that he’s not clairvoyant, and neither am I. More important, our inner worlds are fundamentally different. For example, he has a need to have the house only so clean. I have a need to have it a lot cleaner. How could he know that I thought he was doing less than fifty percent if he thought he was doing 100 percent of what was needed?
I could go on, but you get the idea.
Now that we’ve worked on our marriage and have grown closer, I’ve completely changed my view of what love is and isn’t.
Love is…
1. Telling your partner what you want for your birthday, because you want to see the look of satisfaction on his face when you open your gift and see that he got you exactly what you wanted.
2. Getting your partner exactly what he asks for on his birthday, even though you just can’t imagine why he would ever want such a thing to begin with.
3. Accepting a gift you really don’t want with grace, because you know the love was in the effort of picking it out and not in the accuracy of getting the right thing.
4. Understanding that you and your partner are different in many ways, and being okay with that. Just because he doesn’t love your decorating taste or your hobbies doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you.
5. Understanding that you and your partner do not share the same brain. You are two distinct and very different people. As a result, he will never completely know you, understand you, get you or be able to read your mind. The love is in watching him try, even if he’s not very good at it, and in helping him to get to know you better.
6. Continually trying to get to know your spouse better, even though you know you will never truly know him completely.
7. Understanding that you will both be attracted to many different people during the course of your marriage and not feeling threatened by that. Love is not blind to the big boobies, nice rears, and other attractive features of the opposite sex. Love is continually making the choice to exert self-control when you are tempted not to, and in trusting your spouse to do the same.
8. Trusting your spouse even though you don’t know where he is or what he is doing every minute of every day.
9. Giving your spouse space when he needs it, even though you really want to envelop him.
10. Teaching your spouse how to please you in bed.
11. Teaching your spouse how to romance you.
12. Teaching your spouse how to support you.
13. Stretching yourself to do what is needed to make your relationship work, even though this sometimes makes you uncomfortable.
14. Letting go of your need to be right and, instead, agreeing to either disagree or compromise somewhere in the middle.
15. Taking turns supporting one another as you go after various life dreams.
16. Occasionally carrying your spouse, in a figurative sense, when your spouse is too weak to walk on his own two feet.
17. Allowing your spouse to struggle through life most of the time, because most of the time he’s not too weak to walk on his own two feet. This allows him to grow into better, stronger, happier person.
18. Knowing that your spouse is constantly growing and changing. You embrace this, even if you find it threatening.
19. Refusing to enable your spouse by continually “being there” when your services are not truly needed.
20. Asking your spouse to support you as you grow, but not expecting your spouse to do everything for you so you don’t have to grow.
21. Planning how you will celebrate important relationship milestones together, because neither one of you wants the other to be disappointed on your anniversary.
What is your definition of love? Leave a comment.
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Tags: Marriage Advice
May 27th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
What an awesome post!
“…he’s not clairvoyant, and neither am I. More important, our inner worlds are fundamentally different.” Great lines. And so true. My wife and I are completely different in our needs, and wants, and how we desire to have them filled.
This list is terrific because it is full of so many truths about marriage…like growing, changing, getting to know your spouse better all the time…
TMB
May 27th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Fantastic list! #5 is my personal favorite. I tell my husband this so often. He gets so frustrated when we have a disagreement and I have to remind him that we are not the same person. You’re right; the love is in the trying to understand.
My original ideas about love were also from soap operas and romantic comedy. Then, after a couple of years of marriage I would have said that love is mutual respect. Now I understand that there are some things that you don’t necessarily even respect, but you still see the inherent good qualities in your partner and make the decision that that outweighs the negative.
May 28th, 2009 at 7:57 am
Alisa, you always write the advice I need to hear right when I need to hear it!
I was just mentioning on twitter (why aren’t you THERE by the way?) that I realized my ideas on love were definitely molded by the old 80′s love songs I listened to as a kid… and boy, it’s been hard figuring out that real love isn’t much like a song AT ALL. I’m still trying to figure it out… LOL
Keep up the great posts!
May 28th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Hey I’m on Twitter! @alisabow. I tweet in spurts. What’s your Twitter handle? I’ll follow you.
May 28th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
Great advice, as always, Alisa! Here’s what I don’t get, though: Assuming people grow up seeing their parents in a stable marriage (which is a big assumption, I realize), how do they end up falling for idealized images of love and relationships? I, too, was a big General Hospital fan in my teen years (it must be a generational thing—Duke and Anna forever! LOL), but I was far more heavily influenced by the real-life, warts-and-all example that my mom and dad set in our own home. I saw my parents argue, I saw them work through stuff, I saw them make up—and make out. By the time I was a teenager, a one-on-one conversation with dad or mom would often start off with, “Lord knows I love your mother/father, but s/he drives me crazy sometimes….” So I feel like I really understood what I was getting into when I got married myself, and that has stood me in good stead for almost 10 years of wedded contentment (certainly not bliss!). This is why I think it’s a huge mistake when couples try never to fight in front of the kids. You’re not doing your children any favors if you’re giving them unrealistic expectations. Let ‘em see the good, the bad, and the ugly, as long as there’s more of the first than the second and third. (Of course, I’m talking about the average marriage here, not one in which there is any level of verbal/emotional/physical abuse.)
May 28th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
That’s a REALLY great point, one that makes me feel a lot less guilty for all of the times I’ve started a sentence with, “That Daddy of yours…”
May 28th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
There’s so much wisdom in this post. It makes me think of one of my favorite on-line columns — by Naughty Mommy — who recommends that all men buy the book SHE COMES FIRST, which is (apparently) very helpful in the learning-to-please-her category. Another great read about sex and marriage is Kimberly Ford’s Hump: True Tales of Sex After Kids (and I’m biased because she is a friend and client of mine). I do think what you said is so true about attraction, self-control, and fidelity (though I’m not really attracted to big boobs and butts, are you???!!!).
May 29th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Very good post. Too many couples, married or not do not have some of the very cornerstones of a successful marriage. Trust and Respect being as important as love. If you don’t trust or respect your spouse, you don’t respect yourself. Why would anyone share their lives with someone they can not trust?
May 29th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
NIce to have this advice before I take the plunge!
-Sarah
May 29th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Conrgats Sarah!!
May 29th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Or congrats!
May 29th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Whether it’s General Hospital or the latest Romantic Comedy, fiction doesn’t prepare you for the reality. Big Surprise. Then, again, I don’t know what would prepare you for the long-term work of a marriage. Our priest told us it was going to be a roller coaster ride, but we didn’t really listen. What did he know anyway? Well, marriage provides on the job training!
Thanks for an excellent list, and advice.
May 30th, 2009 at 12:16 am
A very beautiful and inspirational article. It’s like the Sheryl Crow song, Soak up the sun says, “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you got.” =]
May 30th, 2009 at 2:11 am
I love this post because it took me quite a while to figure all of this out. I knew love wasn’t about him knowing everything or you knowing everything but I had an even more messed up idea of love. My parents split when I was young and my mom got remarried. He died when I was 16 and in between that time and the time she remarried again there were so many times that I heard conversations between my mother and my aunt about how if a guy isn’t what you want both inside and out then get rid of him and if he is one of those lazy guys who only works and expects the woman to do everything else then get rid of him. So getting with my husband was hard because I found out really fast that he was exactly what they despised. We have been married for 5 years in July and we had a lot of really bumpy roads and a few waterfalls but managed to get through it and the more we work things out the stronger our relationship gets. We don’t always agree when it comes to the kids but we will usually meet in the middle. Like Marebear said, “It’s not having what you want, it’s wanting what you got.” and that one I realized about a year ago lol. We have had a lot less fights and I’ll admit that I used to start most of them. Now they are few and far between. Thank you for the post. There are some things on it that I need to sit down and think about and talk to my hubby about.
May 30th, 2009 at 9:24 am
>>6. Continually trying to get to know your spouse better, even though you know you will never truly know him completely.<<
struck me that this as well as several other points you make, Alisa, is true of friendships you choose to sustain for the long haul, as well as for the work of marriage.
May 30th, 2009 at 11:24 am
love is over rated! an emotional nightmare most of the time… forget about it!
May 30th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Wow. I stopped reading at #2. Very materialistic.
By the way for most of my birthdays I get books and/or just a nice dinner with friends. Not all men are morons.
May 30th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
You fabuluos, fabuluos, person.
You got it down so wonderfully, I’m touched. If all women take this advice, us men will surely laud their praises to the skies. My beautiful partner is somewhat like what you described, and I love her so for it.
Bless you.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:56 am
This posting requires multiple readings to even begin to understand its full potential of wisdom. It should also be saved and re-read later in case you forget something important.
If you decide later to expand the list, consider suggesting how to cope with significant differences in such things as age, economic status, and religious beliefs.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:29 pm
All the words that i coudn’t find the way to tell
Awesome!
June 1st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
What a great list. You have captured it all I think.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:11 pm
Baby don’t hurt me
June 1st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
some1else–good counterpoint–”love is over rated! an emotional nightmare most of the time… forget about it!”
pets are a good alternative
June 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Your honesty in tip number seven is golden!
June 1st, 2009 at 11:06 pm
If only we knew then what we know now, eh? Hand this to your daughters and sons when they finally leave home. Maybe they won’t need to learn the hard way, like so many of us.
June 2nd, 2009 at 5:20 am
Love is a form of insanity and I no longer believe in it.There is love and there is lust many mistake the lust for love and when that happens one or the other always gets hurt.
June 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
@ Faelan: Yes, the first few sound materialistic, but they tie into the misconceptions the author mentioned she previously held. I’m sorry you missed out on this wealth of wisdom because you couldn’t look past first impressions. I guess that’s another lesson for the rest of us readers, eh?
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Great article but no need for # 10. LOL
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:40 pm
I liked this.
Can’t entierly relate with it as I’m still only 18 and my longest relationship was almost three years. Not much like.
But I can a bit.
Hope to find a decent guy in the future without horrible emotional problems stemming from an abusive childhood.
Wish me luck!
June 3rd, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Rachel: I do wish you luck. There are plenty of good men out there. And as you age, you’ll meet more of them because it takes longer for them to reach maturity.
June 5th, 2009 at 10:42 am
45+ years of marriage has taught me two important things: 1. you faal in love (chem 101), 2. you must work hard at it to stay in love. Love is first and foremost giving up of your self. In 1Jn we are told that we know what love is because God is love and He loved us first (see Jn 3:16).
October 29th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I hope it isn’t too late to comment to your article, Alisa. I only recently found your site and I think I’m going to get a lot out of it. I like your list; well thought out after much experience I’d guess. I need some help understanding what you meant by numbers !6 and 19, if you would please. Just a quick ‘for an example’ would suffice I think. Thank you!
May 16th, 2010 at 9:55 pm
I am single, so do you have a special series for single people? It is just an idea.
Andrea Parker´s last blog ..Best Therapies for Children With Autism
August 2nd, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I have been married for over 40 years and I really believe that developing a real friendship is the most important thing. Sometimes we are kinder to strangers than each other, so respect for each other goes hand in hand with true friendship.
Wedding-Manchester´s last blog ..Tips For a Successful Marriage!
August 12th, 2010 at 5:03 am
“Love is painful that is true not to love is painful too; but there is a greater pain: To love and not be loved again”