I once thought that love was defined by romance, and no romance in marriage meant something innately bad.
After all, how many weddings have you been to that had readings like this:
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you directly, without problems or pride: I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love, except in this form in which I am not nor are you, so close that your hand upon my chest is mine, so close that your eyes close with my dreams.” — Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
or this:
“I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart). I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling).” — E. E. Cummings, I Carry Your Heart With Me
or this:
“What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life–to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?” — George Eliot, Adam Bede
I thought husbands were supposed to read their wives sonnets, such as these…otherwise there was no romance in marriage. I thought that the bigger the diamond, the more I was loved. Or the more flowers sent to the office, the more I was loved. Or the more exotic the surprise getaway, the more I was loved. Without these things, there was no romance in marriage.
Well, I don’t have a big diamond. Does that mean there’s no romance in marriage? I think I received flowers at the office exactly one time. How about that—no romance in marriage? And there has never been an exotic or surprise getaway. Maybe now you really think I have no romance in marriage to my husband.
Are we doomed when there’s no romance in marriage?
For a long time, I thought that because these things were lacking, my husband didn’t care about me, that there was no romance in marriage for me.
But 13 years of marriage, four pregnancies, and two kids later, I’ve finally realized that my husband’s love for me cannot be measured in impractical gifts or momentary fantasies. In fact, my definition of romance has been wrong all along.
It’s not the expressions of love based in fantasy that matter. It’s the expressions of love shaped by reality.
Think about what 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 has to say about love:
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
12For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
