In Defense of Lasting Love

How do you make romantic love last? That is a question people have been asking for centuries. There are many different kinds of romantic love. There’s the fast burning comet that blazes across the night sky for only an instant; the tiny spark that ignites the kindling of a long friendship; the ice of antagonism that thaws and comes to a sustained boil; the eternal flame, sometimes flickering in the wind, but growing stronger through the years, and there are many, many others. Every love story is unique.

My husband and I met when we were in college while working toward our undergraduate degrees. He saw me in the library one evening looking through the card catalog. It was back in the olden days before anything was digitalized. There weren’t any computers in the library, not even the ones people bring in with them these days. I know it dates me, doesn’t it?

Anyway, he had seen me in the library a few times before, but on this particular evening, he decided to make his move. He walked up to me and asked me if he could borrow my pencil for a moment, then he struck up a conversation with me. It wasn’t difficult for him, because, although we were both attending a university in Utah, we were both from Washington State, and I just happened to be wearing my University of Washington sweatshirt that night. He didn’t ask me out during our first meeting, but waited strategically until he saw me again in the library a week or two afterward.

Our first date was electric and he told me after we were engaged that by the end of it, he was sure he was going to marry me. We fell in love fast and six weeks later, we were engaged. We got married about four months after that the following summer.

You’re probably hyperventilating while you’re reading this, thinking we must be a couple of really impulsive, crazy people, but the miracle of this story is that we’re not. I always over think everything ad nauseum and my husband is never impulsive. Ask anyone who knows him. He’s a corporate lawyer and his job requires him to analyze every possible outcome of an action before it’s taken. He’s very, very good at his Job and I don’t know anyone who has better judgement than he does. If you knew both of us, you would understand how remarkable it was for us to become engaged six weeks after our first date and get married just a few months later, right in the middle of our undergraduate studies. My husband told me he had drawn up a very smart plan for himself before he met me and it didn’t include marriage until several years later when he was well out of law school. He still had two years left to get his bachelors degree when we were married.

It wasn’t the end of our love story though. Thirty-five years, four children, and three—almost four grandchildren later, we’re still writing it. If you think the need for passion, love, or the flame of desire diminishes over time, well, you’re wrong. It doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t quite as all consuming as it once was, but it’s still there. What you value and appreciate changes, but not the need for romantic love.

Valentine’s Day has been associated with romantic love for hundreds of years. The oldest surviving Valentine is a love poem from twenty-one year old Charles, the Duke of Orleans to his sixteen year old wife, Bonne in 1415. He wrote it while he was being held in the Tower of London after he was captured in the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years War between the French and the English. It’s a little glum understandably, as he describes his love as a sickness during those dark circumstances.

I am already sick of love,
My very gentle Valentine,

Since for me you were born too soon,

And I for you was born too late.

God forgives he who has estranged

Me from you for the whole year.

I am already sick of love,.
My very gentle, Valentine,

Well might I have suspected,

Having such a destiny,

Thus would have happened this day,

How much that Love would have commanded.

I am already sick of love.

(Source: Wikipedia)

It’s interesting to note that this relationship started out as a marriage arranged for political purposes, but obviously grew into something much deeper during the years they had together before he was captured.

Lasting love is poorly understood these days. It has become an endangered species, a unicorn. Consequently, both traditional and non-traditional families are falling apart. Self fulfillment is the name of the game—self fulfillment at all costs. The irony is, nothing is more fulfilling than lasting love. Everything else turns to ashes in the end.

You may be thinking that lasting love is a nice thought. But is it realistic? What does that unicorn look like and how does one capture it? This is what it looks like to me after thirty-five years:

• Being with someone who knows me intimately; he knows my deepest fears and insecurities, what I like, what turns me on.

• He sees me at my worst and loves me anyway. He forgives me and has my back when the vultures start circling.

• He supports me in my dreams. He’s happy about my achievements and he’s proud of me. He’s my biggest fan.

• He weathers life’s storms with me. He cares if I’m sick or down. He protects me when I’m vulnerable and I trust him enough to be vulnerable with him.

• I also trust him to be faithful to me because he isn’t looking in greener pastures (which are usually just mirages anyway).

• I come first in his life—before his job, friends, family, even his dreams. And he doesn’t resent me for it.

• I feel safe enough to express my mind to him when I’m angry or we disagree. He never intentionally hurts me to win an argument, even in our most heated ones.

  You’re probably thinking I’m married to the world’s one and only perfect man, but the truth is, I’m not. He and I are just very ordinary, flawed people like everyone else. An important step to finding someone who will do and be the above things for you is being willing to do and be all those things yourself.

Our marriage has had its ups and downs and we’ve both felt like killing each other sometimes, but we stuck it out anyway. It’s changed us both into better people in just about every way. Committed relationships are an alchemist’s cauldron of personal refinement and can turn you into pure gold. Unfortunately, many people can’t take the heat and jump out of the cauldron too soon, settling for being a dull hunk of lead instead of what they could be. And they lose something very precious in the process; they lose lasting love.

Can anyone have long lasting romantic love? Perhaps not everyone, but I believe most people can if they’re willing to do the work and make the sacrifices. I asked Amy Daves, MS, LMFT, a marriage and family therapist who is also my dear friend, about what makes a successful relationship. She told me there a lot of things, but some of the most important ones in her mind mostly have to do with trust: fidelity, safety, reliability, trusting love, and so on. “Also important is the willingness to be vulnerable. Too many defense mechanisms lead to high conflict or avoidance.”

If you asked me what the secret to our happy marriage was, I would tell you one thing. We have both tried really hard to put one another’s comfort and well being ahead of our own. We always fight over who should take the last cookie, not who gets it, who should have the best seat on the airplane when we’re traveling together, etc. Since he’s a very chivalrous Alpha male with a huge stubborn streak, he usually wins, I’m ashamed to say. However, he’s still the main focus of my life, along with my faith, every single day and I do my best to anticipate his needs and fulfill them as much as I possibly can. I don’t think this tip works very well if only one person is doing it though. That person usually gets burned out, resentful, starts feeling voiceless and invisible and it cankers the whole relationship. In lasting love, it takes two to tango, as the old saying goes.

It’s important to remember that lasting love doesn’t look the way I described it above in the beginning. It isn’t like a lightning strike. It might feel that way at first, but if you don’t do the work, aren’t willing to bend and change, it’s going to go away as fast as it came. It’s duking things out a lot, struggling to not only blend two different personalities, but two different families together, mixing in big doses of forgiveness and patience. But the effort is well worth it to have something sweet and lasting…to love someone so much, you could never stand to part with them and to be loved that way in return.

The Secret Haven book series I wrote is not only about suspense, but it’s also a study of the evolution of a relationship which starts out almost like a lightning strike. It develops into something else during intense struggle and sacrifice while powerful, external storms threaten to beat it down. There is a tug of war going on between the main characters, Laura and Nick, as they define what their relationship will ultimately become over the course of the books. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07XQK6NDQ

I would love to hear your opinions on lasting love. Please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

The marriage of Charles of Orleans and Bonne of Armagnac at the Chateau de Dourdan, from The Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry . (Credit: Online Library of Liberty)