Random Thoughts on Love and Marriage

Today I went for a run outside. I was in a good deal of physical and psychic pain. I am definitely hurt! I feel like I’ve been in an accident, and I suppose I have. Anyway, I was thinking about love and then marriage and some thoughts came to me.

I am friends with a married couple that I believe to be very much in love. This wasn’t always the case—they almost let their love die at one time, but they worked very hard and got it back. I am friends with another couple that isn’t married and never will be that I know to be very much in love. They have a commitment to one another that if the love dies, they will set one another free.

I am friends with several married couples that I know to be not in love. They are staying together for one or more of the following: convenience (economic or otherwise), kids, laziness. Personally, I couldn’t stay with someone I wasn’t in love with no matter what, but I have my own perspective and I suppose the means to do pretty much whatever I want, and for that I’m truly grateful.

My own parents spent many of their years definitely not in love. It caused me a lot of pain and I wonder who I would be now if they had instead gone after their own happiness. In their later years when Mom was very ill and fragile, Dad stepped up and it seemed to me he recognized the value of pure love and went after it, but it was never a complete love. I wonder who my parents would have been if they had set one another free and gone after their own happiness. You know we didn’t have much economic means as a family, but I still would have lived with less to see them happy and know that I wasn’t being used as some sort of excuse for them to not do what they needed to do.

My own marriage ended because we weren’t in love. I thought I might have been in love, and some of the statements below about love rang true with me, but they weren’t mutual, and it has to be mutual.

I have not had much romantic love in my life. I’ve become a doer, because doing gets you through life. Being and love give happiness. I’ve tried to learn to do more being, I suppose, as a substitute for the romantic love. We all have to do something if we don’t have it, right?

Anyway, here are the thoughts that occurred to me today:

• Love cannot be left alone or it dies. I’ve seen many marriages left alone, and they continue. Especially since the institution was basically created as a means to ensure that children have an economic chance at growing up.
• Love is a commitment. Marriage is an obligation.
• Love is the desire to be with the other person as much as possible. Marriage is well, just knowing that person is there with or without desire.
• Love is always wanting to be in the other person’s heart and thoughts. Marriage is expecting it, whether or not it’s true.
• Love is never feeling alone when you’re with its object. Marriage doesn’t care one way or the other.
• Love is like a risky investment that demands you watch it carefully—by what you say, what you do, how you renew one another. Marriage is safe—like investing in bonds.
• Love is wanting the fireworks to be there as much as possible, requiring you to look for or manufacture the sparks. Marriage is being satisfied with a slow burn…
• Love is the joy the other person infuses in you. Marriage is being happy for the other person but it has nothing to do with you.
• Love demands physical and spiritual intimacy. Marriage demands only cooperation.

I was not very joyful running today. I was in pain.