Direct Answers Column for the week of August 22, 2005
Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara
Love
I read your reply to Ryan in a recent column. His wife left him after he was left in a wheelchair. You stated that love is not a decision
Oh, YES, it is!!! His wife, after making a commitment to stay with him for better or for worse, chose to put her own needs in front of her husband's. If she chose to, she'd still be there!
I moved from New York to South Carolina and was sorely disappointed in the move. I was disappointed in my husband and who I thought he was. I could easily decide to be miserable for the rest of my life, or I could decide to make a happy life here. I make a decision every day how to respond to my husband. In those decisions the well of love is fed.
Feelings are not a choice, but love is! Real love, unconditional love, is not feelings-driven. The divorce rate is as high as it is because people go by their feelings instead of decisions to be unselfish. Real love and commitment are decision-driven.
Gretchen
Gretchen, we looked in two dozen dictionaries. What we did not find in any dictionary is that love is a decision. Instead, each dictionary defines love as an emotion which includes intense feelings of deep affection. Each dictionary contrasts love, an emotion, with reason and decision.
When you say love is a decision, you set yourself up for failure. When you deny that love is one of the true emotions, you relegate it to being unreal. People who say love is a decision steal from those with a genuine love for mankind, a genuine love for their children, or a genuine love for their partner.
Why do some people claim love is a decision? Because of the word "marriage." In an attempt to save that institution they deny the reality of love. They can't package or sell love so they are trying to make love no longer an emotion. But this newfangled doctrine isn't saving marriage. It's destroying it.
Most decisions are made for personal gain. But the firefighter running into a burning building isn't doing it to save his paycheck, but to save a fellow human being. We give firefighters medals because they are moved by a higher emotion. That is what love is: the higher emotion which connects two people.
The divorce rate is as high as it is because people get into marriages for reasons. They make decisions. All my friends are getting married. He makes good money. I want to get out of my parents' house. But decisions are based on criteria, factors, and strategies--all of which may change.
Some people have a belief in a higher power. They say God is love. Do you want to say that God's love is merely a decision? Where is the comfort in that? Where is the truth in that? Mothers love their children. Would you reduce that to mothers decide to love their children?
Because of the factors in your own life, you've chosen to alter the definition of love. But when you relegate love to the lowly realm of decision, you destroy its essence.
I wake up every day knowing I love my wife. It's not a decision. It's a fact.
Wayne
Short Story
I've been seeing this fellow for three years. Lately he tells me we "lost" something. I think we are good together. What should I do?
Deana
Deana, isn't three years long enough to wait? At what point do you say it's been long enough?
There's a progression to a relationship which is going somewhere. It is like a story in which the characters develop and grow. If the characters realize a deep mutual love, their paths converge and they become one. But when the story doesn't build, women need to realize they are just as free to move on as men.
Tamara
Authors and columnists
Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at
www.WayneAndTamara.com
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