Is love a feeling or a choice? I can hear the opinions already beginning. There are two sides to this question and it’s a question that will never have a right or wrong answer. But, if I have any helpful incite from the years I’ve lived through experience and observance, then here is what I think.
Love is a Feeling. But love ultimately is a choice. Every day you are choosing whether to love your significant other or to give up on them. The longer you are together, you will lose that ‘honeymoon phase’ you were in in the beginning. You may sit back and think to yourself, “I don’t love them the way I used to. We’re just not what we used to be. There is no more spark between us.” This is when your relationship truly begins.
When times get hard, this is when you need to stick to your relationship the most. Because falling in love is effortless and amazing. In the words of our girl Hazel Grace (The Fault in Our Stars) ‘I fell in love with him slowly and then all at once.’ It’s “destined” to be. You feel that you can compare your love to every great romance out there, and that is not bad. That will never be bad. Enjoy it; it’s what brings you two together to become one.
But when your relationship comes to a point of no more birds singing every time you get a text or call, the butterflies fluttering in your stomach don’t happen as often you would like, or the excitement of being with your partner every waking moment is your top priority… Don’t lose hope. You are in the best part of being in a relationship. This is when you get to really get to know each other. You get front row access to seeing all the good and bad parts and knowing all their deep secrets. The trust grows the strongest here because you choose each other every day and believe in them more and more. If that doesn’t sound like real love, I don’t know what does.
I want to choose my future love just as much as they will choose me. I want to know that we are in it together through all the bad parts. I don’t want a fling that lasts for a few months, I want to let someone into my life and be brought into theirs for a long time. Like a good wine, I want our love to age. When I’m old and gray and I’m rocking back and forth in my rocking chair, I want to look at my spouse and be proud of the both of us that we chose to love each other every day and didn’t give into the easy route of giving up. We chose the harder pathway to love each other and to choose each other. And it was more than worth it.