I’m Not In Love With My Husband

I’m in love with cookie dough.

And cherry chapstick.

Letterpress stationary.

A roaring fire.

Even a good book.

How can I be in love with them and not with him?

When we first began dating at age 15, I thought I was in love. Indeed I was—head over heels in love with the idea of having a boyfriend. We had the time of our lives on our first few double dates. When we got our driver’s licenses and could go out alone, we thought we were in heaven. Before I knew it, I had myself a steady boyfriend. We didn’t want to spend a minute apart. Then we surprised everyone and decided to go to college in separate states. I confess it’s true—absence does make the heart grow fonder. We wrote to each other every single day. And we stuck it out—tying the knot three weeks after graduation, more in love than ever and ready to begin our new life together.

Our pastor assured us that the day would come when we wouldn’t feel about each other the way we did at that moment.

I didn’t believe him, but he was right.

I’m not in love with my husband.

Instead, I love him. Yes, there is a difference between love and being in love. I love him with a love so fierce, so strong, so significant that it has ceased to be a feeling I can manage with the emotions available to me in this life.

In sickness and in health, and in good times and bad are easy to understand within the context of simply being in love.

But to love—the verb—is so much bigger. It’s sobbing in the middle of the night over broken dreams. It’s a desperate hug over disappointment and loss because your loss is his loss and his loss is your loss. It’s celebrating the joy of new life, of creating something together, and sharing the secret of an intimacy so pure, the snow would be jealous.

I hate to admit it, but the pastor was right. Just as he predicted, my feelings come and go. I am annoyed. I am frustrated. I am ecstatic. I am confused. The circumstances of my day control me. That’s what it’s like to be in love—to be at the mercy of the “feel-good” life. And life, as it happens to us, doesn’t always feel good.

But when I love, and I mean really love, I am changed. I’ve never read any passage in the Bible that describes Jesus as being in love. He is love, but he’s not in love. He didn’t really operate that way. He lived with arms open wide, inviting people wholly unlike him to share his life. That’s how I want to be–this person who walks around and loves–with that honest, healing, open-handed kind of love. Like Jesus. Yes, I want to love my husband like Jesus loved people. He loved people who didn’t deserve it. And he loved the ones who mocked him. He loved the guys who just didn’t get it. And he especially loved the ones who messed everything up–over and over again. He just loved them. And a lot of people loved him back because of it. What I love most about Jesus is that he didn’t just talk about love; he showed me how to do it, too.

The lesson didn’t come easy. But once I learned the difference between being in love and actual love, my marriage got better. The romance didn’t go away as I had feared. Instead, it deepened. Adventure gave way to a quiet companionship I found I actually enjoyed. I don’t dread hard conversations the way I used to. And I rest easy at night, secure, because I no longer operate under the assumption that I have to be in love to give love.

Until death do us part, I love him. Even when I’m not in love with him.

 

Being in love isn't the same thing as loving. @chanlynnadams @Grit_Grace
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