What is Love? Is it what we experience in marriage/partnerships? Part 1

When I met the man who became my husband, almost immediately, we noticed moments when we experienced a comfortableness with ourselves while we were with each other. Those little moments of comfort brought us feelings of peace and joy that we had not before experienced. It wasn’t until we got engaged that we found that there was a greater physical attraction between us than we had felt before with other people. The motivator for us getting engaged, then married was the comfortableness we felt with each other.

For my husband, I was the first person he had been able to talk freely. He dated often enough to know that even though he had felt physical attraction before, he did not before felt comfortable about himself around anyone else. I was the first date who actually made him feel comfort in his own skin. Sexual attraction was something that was available just about anywhere. However, that comfortableness had not been available anywhere else for him.

For me, he made me laugh. When I met this wonderful man, I realized how serious my family always. Dead serious! I, especially, was very, very serious. It took a while for me to formulate the question, but I finally asked my mother, “Why don’t I know how to be teased and why don’t I know how to tease.” She told me, “Well, because my 4 younger brothers were so merciless teasing me, I told your father he was not allowed to tease our children.”

“That lasted till about the 4th child because the 3rd child was finally a boy. I was so stern and strict with you girls. Then along came a boy. Your brother just needed to tease and be teased. And then your sister (the fourth child) came along. She was just so calm and happy that the teasing could go on and it wasn’t distressing to her.”

The realization that my father had never teased me before I was a preteen was a real wake-up call.

Then, here was a man who knew how to make me laugh. He knew how to crack jokes that I could laugh at; that I thought were delightful/safe. It was an amazing experience.

The sense of comfortableness (I loved his jokes) I found with this man, and his similar feelings of comfort (he could talk about anything with me), were more powerful than any kind of physical attraction.

I have felt the force of physical attraction with many different people, both men and women.  However, that feeling of being comfortable in my own skin had not happened before. Then, as I got to know this man during our engagement, I got to know about opposition. It is important thing during engagement to spend the time that you do have, however short or long it is, getting to know the opposition.

Not because you’re deciding if they fulfill you. That’s already been decided. What you get to know is the challenges and the opposition that they’re going to bring into your marriage. You begin to adjust your mind to the challenges of living with this person.

Psychology told me that I would look for and marry someone like my mother. I thought carefully about who I was looking for. I knew which of my mother’s habits and personality I most wanted to avoid. It took a while to realize I was also looking for someone like my father.

Eventually my mind noticed that the men I dated were very much like my father. My father and I were enough alike to worry me. I needed someone who was different than me. I needed someone who was strong where I was weak. And weak where I was strong.

During engagement, I pondering upon how the relationship of marriage would work for me.  My fiance was very different than my father. I was not going to marry someone completely like my father. My fiance’s ways differed from my father’s in so many good ways.

I knew I was in love.. Was our comfortableness what constituted love? Or was it our opposition? Was it the emotions welling up in me a gratitude? Or was it the peace and joy of knowing I was in the right place at the right time with the right person. What made it right?

I had a hunch that right meant that we were in a good place with all the pieces in their proper places. Pieces like comfortableness, opposition and struggle to become greater than we were. Was that what constituted love?

Is love what we experience in marriage/partnerships?