Valentine’s Day: A Dangerous Idea?
https://savethemarriage.com/stmblog/wp-content/themes/corpus/images/empty/thumbnail.jpg 150 150 Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. Lee H. Baucom, Ph.D. https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/669b7e375d93f77521ddaba08adb8063?s=96&d=blank&r=pg
Today is February 14th, Valentine’s Day for many (but not all) countries. The date originally commemorated a Catholic priest who was imprisoned for continuing to marry people, in spite of the emperor’s demands that there be no marriages (which limited those willing to be in the military).
Father Valentine continued to marry couples, quite a social disobedience, and one that was all about peace and love.
Fast forward a millennium, and we find ourselves today, worshiping romance and passion. Now, understand I have nothing against romance and passion. But I do have a problem in how we have elevated these feelings as the PRIMARY feelings of love.
Love is not romance and passion. Love is a verb, an action. It is committing to acting and being loving toward someone, regardless of how we feel. Jesus is reported to say “Love your enemies.” Most other religions have some similar commandment. And the definition of love is the issue. It is not a commandment to feeling warm and loving, but to act in loving ways.
Marriage is an agreement to make it through life, even when life gets tough and the relationship gets tougher, and to act lovingly. It is not an agreement to feel an endless amount of passion and romance. As one person told me recently, “life is not just one long, candlelit dinner.”
It isn’t possible. Those feelings are not sustainable. They ebb and flow. But when we judge the relationship based on whether the feelings are present or not, we are in for a letdown when the feelings are missing.
No, marriage is NOT about feeling passion and romance throughout life. It is deciding to act in loving ways. . .
But here is the thing: when we act in loving ways toward someone, the nice side-effect is we feel the passion and romance.
And I guess that really gets down to my issue. If we pursue passion and romance, we have nowhere to go when we don’t feel it. If we pursue acting lovingly, we have control of it, and the passion follows.
This Valentine’s Day, let’s celebrate the ideal of acting lovingly. Let us challenge the culture and make a decision to act in loving ways, not judging a relationship based on the absence or presence of a fickle emotion.
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