Same ol', same ol'

[toughlover]

Well, I think mature love is a verb. Real love is a verb because that's what reality demands because nobody's perfect, as they say. Boy is that true.

At its extreme, passion and desire look more like addiction, bondage, and misery than peace or joy.

There's a reason that passion also implies suffering.

I'm not just going through the motions. I think my life demonstrates that I take responsibility for my commitment, my marriage, and my wife's well-being even when I don't "feel" like it.

I have done some destructive things over the course of our marriage because I stopped living my life by acting out of my own commitments, and started simply reacting to what she did or didn't do. That was wrong of me.

But I've always come home at night. I've always worked through problems, and I've always worked doubly hard to solve them. When we (together) mismanaged our finances early on in our marriage, I taught myself a brand new career that was more lucrative simply to fix everything myself.

I never left her high and dry with money problems, to fend for herself with the kids or the house, anything. That's not saying I'm perfect, cause I'm surely not.

There was a lot of time I felt lousy, didn't have any support from her...and now I see that she was actually working against us all, deceptively.

And yet, somehow, because I never quit, we got through everything with minimal harm to our family and children considering everything she's brought down on us.

Suffering is something we feel and I think that we're obligated to be obedient to God and do what is right even though it hurts, even though we don't get what we want in return.

I've always thought that, but I didn't always live it. I may not be much, I may not be doing much, I don't know, but I know I'm doing that now by the grace of God.

The truth is, right now, at best I feel nothing at all when it comes to her. She's been out of town for a few days and I don't even really miss her. I hope she's well, hope she makes it back safe. That's about it.

Love is a long, long road, as Tom Petty sings. I think the reason we tend to know so little about it is because more than half of all married people quit because it gets hard, and because they're not sufficiently prepared in terms of their character going into it.

But LIFE is a character issue.

I'm no longer seething with anger. Just get more and more numb where she's concerned. I can't make myself feel anything, I don't think...I can simply choose to act in a loving manner toward my wife whether I feel like it or not, and hope that someday my feelings catch up to my actions.

As I've told her before, in counseling, I AM repulsed by her and her actions. I think there would be something wrong with me if I weren't.

As a Christian, I am instructed by Paul to love my wife as Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for her, to make her holy. God loves us even in our rebellion against Him. He doesn't reject us but is hurt by our rejection. Nevertheless, real love is only possible because of free will. It IS a choice. And just as I must choose, so must my wife. It takes two, in the end, to really make things great. I am willing, and she is willing, but by her own admission she's not able to make herself feel things for me any more than I can make myself feel things for her.

Feelings change. They can be destroyed. They can also be resurrected. But maturity demands that we do what's best for us in spite of our feelings...not rewrite reality to correspond to how we want to feel at any give stage of our lives.

It ain't always fun, it doesn't make me "happy" (at least in the way we usually define it), it doesn't feel good all the time, but the peace of mind and security I have knowing I'm home, I'm with my sons and am able to help them get across the "rolling river" of adolescence without the weight of a failed marriage and family weighing them down, and, hopefully, release them on the far shore where adulthood begins with the knowledge that marriage and commitment mean something, that I've at least helped them understand what they need for that journey, and that they KNOW it can be done no matter what, has to be enough for me right now. And it's worth it.