More than a Feeling

It’s easy to get swept up in moments particularly heavy with emotion and believe that it is love—to confuse attraction with love. Most people have ideas like, “love at first sight,” and “happily ever after.” The sad thing is, that those are all just fictitious fairy tales. There is no such thing as love at first sight or any of that other hoopla that is so famously fantasized about.

Those feelings are important and should probably be found in any healthy relationship—if it were missing I would be concerned. But that is not to say that every single moment should be filled with those feelings. Love is much more a commitment to do what is right for someone regardless of whether you feel loved by them. Love is really  setting one’s own feelings aside and seeking to make the other person feel loved. It’s true that love is confrontational at times too, but that is not its general purpose.

In any relationship, someone has to do the dishes and clean the toilet. You will probably not feel that love at first sight feeling in the pit of your stomach when you are scrubbing a toilet, but the fact of the matter is that those type of things are just as important in a relationship as anything else is. Sometimes you say you love someone to let them know that you do. Often , though, the way you tell someone that you love them is the small and consistent things that you do for them on a daily basses.Things that don't seem like much, but leave the dirty dishes in the sink for a week and see how that goes over.

In a way, it is exciting news to know that love is more than just a  spontaneous feeling. Love is much more than that. It’s much stronger than some random feeling you get for someone and don’t understand why. It is a commitment that transcends the feelings and is fixed in the mind as well as the heart.