I don’t love him – feelings of a married woman and her understanding of true love
I haven’t been writing much, concerning this section of marriage … simply because I feel like Benny is the one making our marriage as easy and beautiful as it is.
He’s a man of quality, and everything he does; he does with excellence – including being a husband.
Therefore, up to now, I didn’t want to come up with “suggestions” of how to successfully live a marriage… knowing all too well that I don’t struggle with many of the things other wives do.
From the very beginning, this relationship was, a chaos. Simply, because I had no power over my feelings. They were simply there, and my whole emotional world was “dancing to the melody he was playing”… no matter if this was a sad or happy melody.
It scared me – but I didn’t want to escape “real love”… as I thought it was.
Except one thing:
I told God:
“God, if I messed up with my life, if I lost everything I ever wanted, one thing I still can become: A godly woman!”
That was the turning point.
When I met Benny – you can read here how I met him – I soon knew that this guy was amazing. However I knew as well that I didn’t “love” him. At least not the way I thought I should feel for a man if I consider marring him. After a 3-year process of getting to know each other, which was accompanied with quite some challenges, we got married.
But these deep, crazy, incontrollable emotions I had for this other guy, these feelings I considered as “true love”? I never had them for him.
And I still don’t.
But you know what? I have come to realize something.
I don’t need those feelings in order to love him.
That’s not the attribute of “true love”.
How did you experience this? Have you experienced these kind of feelings in your relationship? And have they lasted all the way into your marriage? Make sure to sound off in the comments section.
Well, in my case this mix of feelings was “toxic love”.
I’ve come to the conviction that true love is work. True love is communication. True love is forgiving. True love means being real, being vulnerable, being transparent, being “unveiled”. True love knows that the other person is not “perfect”, and that I don’t need to be like this other person. But together, in our individual personality we can grow together, work on this love, deepen it, and become one flesh….In a powerful, healthy, free and loving way.
True love is a commitment and…. True love is a verb!
I will end this article with a passage I read in the book “The 7 Habits of highly effective Families”, page 35.
It displays a talk the author (S.Covey) had with a participant from one of his seminars:
“My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other that we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore, and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?
“The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I inquired.
“That’s right”, he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”“Love her”, I replied
“I told you, the feeling isn’t there anymore.”
“Love her”.
“You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”
“Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”
“But how do you love when you don’t love?”
“My friend, love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is a fruit of love the verb. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?
I’ve come to understand, that love is much more than crazy feelings, deep emotions and butterflies in the stomach. I’ve come to understand, that I do love Benny with all my heart. And that our love is something beautiful and unique we will cherish and work on for the rest of our lives.
