This Is True Love

Romance is important in a relationship. But what happens to romance? It can have highs and lows, ups and downs, ins and outs. It’s like a roller coaster. It can be an intense rush of adrenaline and pleasure and suddenly come to a stop.
Feelings of being in love and the emotional high of romanticism tend to hit their peaks in courtship and early marriage. Often, six months to two years into an intimate, highly charged romantic relationship, emotional feelings tend to lose intensity and mellow down. So, what do we do? What do people do when the romantic feelings fade? Some say, “I’m going to choose to love you no matter how I feel.” Others say, “I’ve fallen out of love” and “I’m no longer in love with you,” and choose to look elsewhere for romance.
This is how we can tell the difference between true love and romantic love. One sticks and one splatters into pieces when the feelings fade. When romantic feelings become the most important component of a relationship, people jump ship when the feelings aren’t there anymore. When a disagreement arises, they jump out instead of working it out. If we all based our relationships on romantic feelings, we’d all be jumping ship every couple of years. Some people are doing just that.
True love goes so much farther beyond romantic feelings. True love is this: connecting with and commitment to loving and cherishing someone on physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels. It’s intentional and unconditional love towards someone in every level and area of their lives.
True love is a predetermined commitment to love someone even when romantic feelings fade, they don’t feel like they’re in love, they don’t love you back, they hurt you, disagreements come and disasters strike, they change, they get sick, and things aren’t going the way you want them to. Needless to say, true love can be tough. But with this kind of love and commitment, you’ll experience true love that lasts.
Some people make the commitment to love someone for life without truly grasping what that means. Or perhaps they have a pretty good idea of what it means to love a partner when they get married, and they start off pretty good, but over years they get settled in their ways and not really putting in the effort to love their partner like they deserve to be loved. We don’t want to be these people. We want to be those who experience true love, cherishing and loving our partner on physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual levels for the rest of our lives, right? So, we’ll expand on what that means as we move along.