I Will Love You Until My Dying Day

It seems like whenever I find myself watching one of those dramatic, mushy, tear-jerker, love stories, one of two things happens: I think to myself that love like that doesn't exist, or I pray that love like that does exist and that some day I will find it. Usually I waffle back and forth between the two.

I think a large part of society leans towards the second. (If this weren't true then I don't imagine that the romance genre would make so much money.) Sadly, I think there is a smaller subset of that group that has given up hope of finding such love and instead immerses themselves in the romance of movies, television shows, and books because they know that is the closest they will ever get to real love. In a country in which the divorce rate seems to rise higher and higher each year, and in which it seems like every relationship around you is broken and dysfunctional, we can resign ourselves to thinking that our only hope for the love of fairy tales is, well . . . in fairy tales.

Why? Why is it so hard for us to love and love well? Why is it so hard to love and be loved in return? I think it might be because these dreamy love stories make love seem so easy, and they gloss over the blood, sweat, and tears that go into "making it work". Thus, we fall in love and try to maintain that moonstruck, honeymoon period, but once it wears off we realize that love isn't that easy, and instead of "making it work," we check-out and move on to something else or someone else. The best love stories are the ones in which great conflicts like distance, war, time, death, and everything in between must be overcome in order to be together or stay together. I think it's hard for people to fall in love and stay in love because they don't want to spend the effort to overcome or live through the "everything in between". We give up too soon.

I haven't been to too many weddings, but I imagine that there are more than a few wedding guests out there who have secretly wanted to laugh when listening to a happy "couple to be" exchange their wedding vows (like anyone who ever attended any of Elizabeth Taylor's weddings). For richer or for poorer? Yeah right. If he was poor you wouldn't be marrying him. In sickness and in health? As long as there is more health than sickness! Until death do us part. More like, until I get sick of you or find someone more attractive!

I can say that I've sat through weddings thinking about the divorce rate and wondering which 50% of my friends will be the statistic that will be divorced in ten years. I look at the happy couple and think, they look so happy now, so in love. What is it that happens to make that go away? I think you can fool yourself into thinking that all the couples at every wedding you go to will certainly stay together, but statistics are against you (and them).

I think that if I were a therapist (be glad that I'm not) I would ask troubled couples to bring in video or pictures of their wedding. I would sit there with them and make them watch the video several times. I would have them look hard at each and every picture. Then I would ask them what it was about that person that made them want to marry them? Maybe some of them would admit that they never wanted to marry in the first place. Some would probably acknowledge that they'd married for the wrong reasons. I imagine that some of them would know why they'd loved that other person and some of them wouldn't.

I've loved people without really knowing why. I'm not sure I understand how that can happen. After a recent failed relationship with a man that I'd loved most of my young-adult life, I could not really name very many reasons why I loved him. I couldn't even name very many redeeming qualities that he possessed. I just loved him. I didn't know why. I couldn't explain it. I think love like that is dangerous. Love is more than just a feeling. And I think loving without really knowing why will cause you all sorts of problems. Now, I don't deny that there is something about love that is deeper than words, but it's just not enough to get you through all those tough times.

Love takes effort. It takes work. It take resolve. It takes someone saying, no matter how bad or difficult things get, I will continue to fight for our love. I will sacrifice everything I have for you. I will put your needs before my own. I will love without fear. It takes two people saying that, and meaning it, and living it out, for love to work. For love to live on. Until death do you part. Most of us aren't willing to do all that. That's why most of us fail at love. We are selfish, afraid, and we give up too easily. Rick and Ilsa didn't give up too easily. Noah and Allie weren't afraid. Romeo and Juliet weren't selfish. And if you have no idea who any of those people are then you probably fail at love too.

I guess it just makes me sad that a creation that is capable of living such great love stories (both romantic and otherwise), most often falls so miserably short of the greatness it could achieve. All we have are these glimmers of hope in the stories of others, and maybe a determination that we can be the exception and not the norm. I will probably, despite my occasional pessimism, continue to lean towards the later of my two thoughts: I pray that love like that does exist and that some day I will find it.