Wuv, Twoo Wuv

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

CVS is packed today. Mostly with men. Mostly with men buying cards for their wives. It always seemed like a mismatched holiday to me; from my stereotyping (and rather cynical) viewpoint, it seemed that women pinned the apex of their romantic dreams on the day while the men seemed to be doing whatever it took not to be in the doghouse with their women.  I always feel a bit of pity for these men standing in line at the flower stand – but then again (as my husband will admit) he was one of those poor souls waiting in line at 7pm on Valentine’s Day last year in an effort to find flowers that didn’t appear overly bedraggled.

But what is this “love” that we are celebrating? The foundation of the day is an emotional one – the idea that love is light, ethereal joy. And if you find yourself less happy with someone than when you were alone, you break up (or get divorced). But the emotions of love are constantly evolving. Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet 116 makes love a fixed thing, but I disagree with most casual quotational use of the sonnet that seems to argue that love stays exactly the same forever. It shouldn’t. In fact, we should pray that it doesn’t. Love grows, matures, and strengthens, even when society would say that it appears to be weakening. It becomes less about chocolate hearts and googly eyes; more about weathering storms together, building friendship together, recognizing when the most romantic gift you can give your spouse is to help with the baby’s dirty diapers or write a post-it note that you love them. There will even be terrible, hurtful moments – but your commitment to one another teaches you the meaning of extending grace and forces us to face our own fallibilities.

Before I got married, my aunt gave me wise advice: she told me that there would be times when I would ask myself, “How did a nice girl like me end up in a place like this?” – but that those moments are ok. My uncle advised us not to be afraid to ask for help – that we should go into marriage expecting moments that are not full of daisies and Hallmark cards. After a few years of marriage, one of the things I am most thankful for is the honesty it forces upon me. The honesty to look anew at habits or sins in my life that had hidden from view until another person was so closely, constantly in my life. This is part of the maturity of love – to “speak the truth in love” to one another; that “as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” But also the honesty to be myself with my husband, knowing that for both of us, our commitment to one another is long enough and strong enough to take joy in our joys and sorrow in our sorrows as we mature with one another and with God.

I’ll end this post with the below quote from CS Lewis on the deepening nature of love. But also I need to get going. Out to dinner. With my husband. It is Valentine’s Day, after all.

"Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing.  There are many things below it, but there are also things above it.  You cannot make it the basis of a whole life.  It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling.  Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all.  Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feeling come and go.  And in fact, whatever people say, the state called "being in love' usually does not last.  If the old fairy-tale ending "They lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married', then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were.  Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years?  What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friend-ships?  But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love.  Love in this second sense - love as distinct from "being in love' - is not merely a feeling.  It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.  They can have this love for each other even at moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself.  They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else.  'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity:  this quieter love enables them to keep the promise.  It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run:  being in love was the explosion that started it." CS Lewis, Mere Christianity