Love assumes a positive intention. It is inevitable that your spouse will slight, offend, neglect, or otherwise step on your toes at some point. When this happens, you will be tempted to go into “fight mode”. When an exceptional spouse encounters a slight, she gives her mate the benefit of the doubt. She assumes that her partner didn’t mean to hurt her. After all, they didn’t get married to hurt each other. Something must be amiss. Love gives the benefit of the doubt.
Love is always present. Couples in the best marriages know that love is always present, even though it feels dormant at times. Healthy couples know that getting those special feelings back is simply a matter of time and effort. They do not respond to emotional downtimes with accusations of neglect.
Love catches its lover being good. Outstanding couples know that they have a daily obligation to express their love for each other. They make a point to not just criticize and complain, but to catch each other being good. Exceptional couples are liberal with compliments and generous with affection. Be generous with your praise, affection and gratitude.
Love is a full-time job. Some people mistakenly believe that marriage is a part-time job. Such spouses may be more committed to making their moms and dads happy or playing savior to friends and employers than they are to having a successful home life. In an exceptional marriage you have to require your family of origin – as well as your friends, work and various activities – to play a supportive (and secondary) role to your relationship. Not the other way around.
Love is willing to make itself uncomfortable. Love stretches you. It requires you to do things you never imagined yourself doing, to grow in ways that can be scary at times. When you married, you promised to allow yourself to be pulled, stretched, and opened up. Challenge yourself a little. The result is a richer life and more satisfying marriage.
Love takes care of itself. Love knows how to meet its own needs. It does not expect you to clean up its emotional and literal messes (though help is always appreciated). It does not expect you to be its parent or mind reader.
Love is tactfully honest. Love doesn’t stuff feelings. It says what it needs to say. And yet, if love doesn’t hide the truth, it doesn’t beat you about the head with it either. Love says what it needs to say, lovingly.
Love is safe. Love behaves itself. It does not demean, humiliate or intentionally embarrass. Love criticizes gently and responds well to gently offered criticism. Love encourages the beloved to do more, to say more, to be more.
Love is willing to fake it till it makes it. You won’t always feel loving or feel inspired to do loving things. But the best couples know that it is important to do loving things, especially when they don’t feel like it. Love is not a feeling. It is a commitment to work for the good of you mate whether you feel like it or not. Sometimes, to get a desired feeling back, you’ve got to start by acting as if you already are feeling that state. That’s not being dishonest. That’s being hopeful.
Love is generous. You cannot simply give as much as you are comfortable giving and then call yourself a “loving person”. This is self-serving at best. If you are in a healthy relationship and want to be loved more, you’ve got to love your mate more, and you’ve got to love in a way that is meaningful to your beloved spouse.
Love laughs. Love is playful. Love enjoys itself. Love isn’t afraid of being silly. It never intentionally makes fun of the beloved, but it can help the beloved find the fun. Love has a funny bone.
Love is not a feeling. Love is action. Love is a choice. Love is hard work. Love is daily making personal choices with the good of your partner in mind. There are many other good things that are feelings – affection, romance, attraction, passions. But “love for love’s sake”, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it, is not a feeling.
Used with permission fromMarriage Magazine Fall 2008. Article excerpted from A CATHOLIC GUIDE TO LIFELONG MARRIAGE by Gregory K. Popcak, MSW, LICSM, Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
