the many faces of love
There are few things I enjoy more than a really good, hearty, full-of-wisdom-and-learning kind of conversation ... and tonight I seemed to have several of those.It seems that I was most affected by the sharing of words and ideas I had with a recently married friend of mine. It had been a while since I spoke with him, so it was good to catch up and realize that he is the same ol' goofy Mat I always knew (oops, guess there's no anonymity with Krista) -- even if he is now a husband and is living thousands of miles away.
We talked about music and traveling and books and ideas, and it was good and safe ... and then somehow (and I'm still not sure how) we got on the subject of love. It was a little weird at first, because in some ways he is so incredibly different from my old single friend. He suddenly seems older than me (even though he's actually 5 months younger) and tremendously wiser.
While reflecting on our pasts, experiences, and relationships, we realized that there has been a bit of a change -- maybe even an evolution -- in our ideas about love and what it looks like. I still remember similar conversations that he and I had in college, where we questioned if love was really simpler than we made it or maybe more complex than we would ever understand. Because we were friends and somehow skipped past the whole "what if we were more than friends?" deal, we were able to delve into some issues that are sometimes a bit sensitive for men and women to talk about. Tonight we laughed as we recalled how we used to say that we would absolutely know for sure if someone was the "one", because the butterflies would never fly away, and the fireworks would never stop bursting. Our idealistic and romantic college student notions of an effortless kind of love undoubtedly came to us from the poetry we read in our literature courses and the badly written love songs we heard sung at the Friday night coffeehouse by artsy guitar-playing fellow students. There was no substance or reality to our ideas -- they weren't challenged by real life issues of hectic work schedules or mood swings or just the little eccentricities and unpredictable things that life sometimes throws your way.
I caught myself with tears in my eyes tonight as I listened to my newly wise friend talk to me about his discoveries regarding love. He is learning that love is not so much something that you feel or say, but something that you do and live. At first I pelted him with questions: "how do you know you really love your wife?"; "how do you know that she loves you?"; "what do you do when it doesn't feel like that love is there?"; "how do you get that love back?"; "what if that love doesn't come back?"
But soon I found myself shutting up and remaining silent as he poured forth words that were like gold to me. He reminded me that when he first met his wife, he had stronger feelings for her than he ever had for anyone. I remember teasing him at the time, because just a few weeks into their relationship they had both professed their love for each other, and I even heard the "M" word thrown around a bit. I remember being with him a couple times when he was on the phone with her, and hearing the breathless "I love you" at the end of each of those conversations, and hearing him sigh as he hung up the phone. At the time, I wondered how long it would last, or if maybe perhaps it really WAS love -- the kind that would last for as long as they would both live ...
Tonight, as I teased him again about those early days in their relationship, Mat admitted to me that it was so much easier to say "I love you" then because there wasn't as much involved. He could tell Jen he loved her but still hold onto the idea that he would eventually either act on that love or not act on it. It was still just words, really. A few more months into their relationship, things got rocky and soon it grew more difficult to say the words because they meant more. He had said "I love you" to other girls in the past and never really ended up doing much more than saying words and stealing kisses. With Jen, however, the words took on more and more meaning, and for some reason became more and more difficult to say.
Love, Mat told me, is not a thing that he and Jen feel the need to say to each other as much these days ... because their life together gives the opportunity to live it all the time. Jen loves him by washing his clothes and getting up early to turn on the coffeepot so that the coffee will be ready by the time he stumbles out of bed. He loves Jen by leaving her the last bit of the mint chocolate chip ice cream, even though he really, really wants to eat it. Each of them has a different way of loving the other, and those ways are constantly changing as their lives change. Neither way is better or worse -- it's just different.
We got a little deeper and compared love for another person to the act of worship toward God. I remember hearing a sermon once about how we worship God in every thing we do, even in the way we clean our car or brush our hair. It's not necessarily about WHAT we do, but it's about HOW we do it. Mat told me tonight that he has learned (and is still learning) that real love, at its core, is not about whether or not he tells Jen he loves her, or even necessarily what he does to show her that love ... but it's about his intentions and motivations behind whatever words he says (even if he says, "I like your socks") and whatever things he does (even if he just puts her dirty plate from supper into the dishwasher).
He doesn't wonder if he loves her, because he is too busy living out that love. He doesn't wonder if she loves him, because he is wrapped up in living with the way she's living out her love. There are moments when he feels her love more strongly, like when he reads a note that she hid in his pants pocket ... And there are also moments when he feels like he is loving her more, like when he is talking to a friend about his wife and how much he admires her and then realizes how much he really DOES admire her. Or when she is late for dinner and he worries about where she is -- so much so that he calls her cell phone, again and again and again (and again!) ... It is in those moments when the love that he lives is affirmed by his words and feelings, not the other way around ... he doesn't wait for the feelings to be there before he lives out his love for his wife -- he just knows that they will be there or not, at some times stronger than others.
I asked him when this "living out" thing started, and he told me it was when the speaking "love" grew difficult. This is amazing to me, and so beautiful. When they (or really, more specifically he) found it difficult to tell Jen he loved her -- even while they were still only dating -- he just began to look for other ways to express that love that he knew was still there. It felt different, and it took a different face, but it was still love in some shape or form ... and so he held on and lived it.
I still have so many questions, and so few of them got answered tonight. I'm not sure that any of this is new or profound to me. I just am so intrigued by this mystery of love, and how some express it by speaking it ... some express it by worrying about someone who is late for dinner ... some write a note or sing a song or bake cookies ... none of these is right or wrong -- they are all just many different reflections of one powerful ideal.
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