Love is a choice

Today is Valentine’s Day. It’s a day that we celebrate love by taking some time to tell the people we love that we love them!

Love is a funny thing. We have all been wired to love — to love someone and to be loved by someone. And the feeling you get when you love someone is amazing. But that feeling is actually misguiding us: It makes us believe that love happens to us. The feeling of love makes us think that we are somehow incapable of love without Cupid’s arrow. It tricks us into believing that we are passive bystanders in love.

In reality, it’s quite the opposite. Love is a verb. It’s an action. It’s something WE do. It’s something we choose. Yes, there are automatic physical responses we experience when we’re with someone we love, but for the most part, love is a choice. It’s a decision on our part to love the other person.

It’s easy to feel that you’re being helplessly swept away in a tidal wave of love when you’re with someone early in your relationship — you both take the time to look and smell good for the other person and you’re discovering new things about them. That initial discovery phase is so much fun. It’s easy to love someone during that phase of the relationship. It’s MUCH harder to choose to love someone as the relationship deepens…

It’s a decision to love someone when you’re holding their hair while they puke their guts out.

It’s a decision to love someone when you’re on a long trip and they have to go to the bathroom and you don’t want to pull over.

It’s a decision to love someone when they have bed-head and morning breath.

It’s a decision to love someone when they say something hurtful to you.

It’s a decision to love someone when you choose to spend time with them instead of doing something else you find enjoyable.

It’s a decision to love someone when their life is shattered and they are desperately needy and can’t return the attention.

It’s a decision to love someone when you learn things about them that you wish you didn’t know.

I could go on and on and on but you get the idea.

The initial giddy feelings of love at the beginning a relationship are wonderful and seem wildly out of control. We love that feeling. But love grows from there when we choose to love someone.

The more you spend time with someone, the more you’ll see them at their best and at their worst. It’s easy to love someone at their best. But true love is measured by how much you choose to love someone when they are at their worst.

Posted on February 14, 2012