11 All You Need Is Love
When I saw her in the lunch line I was captured right away. For me it was love at first sight. For Luella, it was just first sight! She was not so taken. I spent the next month trying to maneuver my way to a date with her. She finally agreed to go out with me, but she warned me that she was not interested in a relationship. I heard the words, but I didn’t really listen to the meaning. We had a wonderful time together; I made her laugh, which was important because she was dealing with a broken heart. Although she told me not to, I asked her out again. She repeated the warning but agreed to go out again. Each time I would ask her to see me again, she would issue the warning but would agree to go. Before long we were seeing one another consistently. In a variety of ways she seemed to be everything I had ever hoped for in a person I would choose to spend my life with. No, we never talked about the future. We were just enjoying one another in the present.
As the weeks and months progressed I became convinced that I loved Luella. I had never felt this way toward anyone before. So I began looking for an opportunity to say those amazing, life-altering words, “I love you.” I wanted the moment and the location to be just right. I knew that this was an important moment, and I didn’t want to blow it. I finally found what I thought was the perfect moment, and I ventured out and said what I had wanted and waited to say. I looked into Luella’s eyes and said, “Luella, I love you.” I thought I would hear birds sing and violins play. Luella’s response was swift and pointed. She said, “You love me? What do you know about love? Don’t ever say that to me again!” I heard birds dying! I heard violins breaking! I couldn’t believe it! After all my waiting and planning, she had thrown the words right back at me.
It is humbling to admit, but that evening Luella was right. I was the deeply mature age of seventeen, and I knew little about love. What I thought was love, I would not call love today. It should be obvious since Luella is now my wife that she didn’t give up and walk away from me. Our affection for and commitment to one another continued to grow. I will never forget the night when she looked at me and said, “I want to say something to you, Paul: I love you.” I responded in kind, and things have not been the same since.
WHERE IS THE LOVE?
What I am about to say will surprise some of you, but I am convinced it is true. There are many more loveless marriages out there than you and I would tend to think. As a young man, I was very attracted to Luella. I had begun to think of what it would be like to spend my life with her, but I didn’t really know what love was. There are many relationships that end in marriage that seem founded on love but really aren’t. There is a love drought that is causing marriages to dry up all around us. This love drought makes it impossible to have a marriage that is a lifelong relationship of unity and understanding. When it comes to love, we have two problems. First, there are many things we call love that simply do not rise to the level of what love is. And we lack a clear definition of what love is and what love does.
Many couples think it is love that keeps them together, but there are signs that they may be living in the middle of a love drought, and they don’t know it. The dynamic is much the same as what happens in your physical body. Perhaps you’ve had a car accident, and a few days later your knee begins to stiffen. At first, the pain in your knee greets you every morning and distracts you during the day, but before long you get used to it. The stiffness alters the way you walk, and at first you are very aware that you are limping, but before very long your limp just becomes the way you walk. In fact, at some point you are not aware that you are limping at all. What was once pain has morphed into the normal way your knee feels, and what was once a limp morphs into your normal gait. You don’t feel hampered or crippled by your knee, and you seem to get around quite well. Then an old friend whom you haven’t seen in ages visits you and immediately says, “You’re limping; what happened to your leg?” It is then that you realize that your normal isn’t actually normal.
We are all rocked to sleep by the regularity. The things you see and experience over and over again tend to be the things that at some point you quit noticing. If you drive to work the same way every day, I imagine there are sights and sounds that you no longer see and no longer hear. You have been lolled into inattention by the daily regularity of what you are seeing and hearing. If you live in the city, at some point you quit being distracted by the people and the traffic that is on the other side of your walls. Maybe the first few nights in your city house were sleepless because of all the noise, but now you don’t feel that you live in a noisy neighborhood. Now, you know that your block hasn’t suddenly become very quiet. No, you have changed. The regularity of the noisiness has made noisy your normal, so much so that you do not hear the noise anymore. You’re not irritated or distracted by the noise anymore for one significant reason: you don’t hear it anymore. Someone comes to spend a weekend with you in your loft in the city, and in the morning they say, “Is it always this noisy at night?” You’re thinking, “I don’t really think it’s that bad.” What is abnormal has become so normal to you that you live right smack-dab in the middle of it, and you neither see nor hear it.
There are many couples in the same situation in their marriages. They think their marriage is okay. They would say they think they have a pretty normal marriage, but they think this because what should be abnormal to them became so regular that it became the new normal, and when it did, they quit seeing and hearing it. The problem for these couples is not that they are dissatisfied with their marriage. No, their problem is that they are all too satisfied with something that falls way short of what God designed a normal marriage to be. They are limping through the noise of a broken marriage, and they don’t even know it.
Many of us are way too skilled at living with plan B. We are all too good at painting over cracked walls, at working around broken plumbing, and at rigging dysfunctional wiring. We are all too good at getting along, making do, and hoping for the best. We are all too good at talking ourselves into the belief that things will get better, that our problems aren’t really that big, and that we are better off than many couples. We are all too skilled at living with less and thinking it’s more. When we do this, we don’t look for help and we don’t work for change. Rather than fixing what is broken, we have learned to live with it as if it’s not. We are not moved to seek help because we don’t really see the places where help is needed anymore. We are comfortable when we should be concerned. We are passive when we should be active. We are satisfied when we should be dissatisfied. We get up each day and make things work the best we can, but our best falls way short of God’s best.
That is the value of a book like this one. Perhaps this book will help you hear again, see again, hunger again, and hope again. Perhaps this book will give you windows to look through that will help you to see your marriage with clarity and accuracy. Perhaps you will see things that you have not seen for a long time, and God will use that to ignite new desire and a renewed commitment to change. Perhaps this will begin a process of redeeming the realities of your marriage.
So, what are the markers of a lack of living, active love in your marriage? Let me give you several things that are indicators of a love drought.
Disunity. Jacob and Erin could not have been more different from one another. It was simply a fact of their married life. But those differences were what attracted them to one another and initially made their relationship exciting, personally enhancing, and complete. Jacob was a straight-down-the-middle Midwestern boy—no compromises, no deals. Erin was raised in Hawaii by back-to-earth, counterculture parents. Jacob and Erin woke up on different sides of the universe each morning, yet they had contributed to substantial growth and change in one another. But now, theirs was a house divided. It didn’t take much for them to disagree, for the disagreement to escalate into an argument, and for the argument to result in another stalemate. It was frustrating and exhausting for them both.
Now maybe you’re thinking, “Of course they disagree, Paul; they have nothing in common!” But an important point needs to be made here. It is that unity is not the product of sameness. Remember, the God who made lilies also made rocks. As creator, God has invested his world with difference; all things are not the same. He has made people widely different from one another. All this reflects his glory. And as sovereign, he chooses to bring different people into intimate relationship with one another for his honor and their good. Unity is not the result of sameness. Rather, unity results when love intersects with difference.
It is self-love that hates difference. It is self-love that makes you impatient. It is self-love that makes you want your own way. It is self-love that convinces you that your way is the right way. It is self-love that makes winning more attractive than unity. Love celebrates who God has made the other person to be. Love celebrates the process of working together to become one. Love celebrates the grace of change that operates in the middle of the difficulty of difference. Love prizes unity and is willing to make sacrifices to achieve it. Love turns difference into an opportunity to experience a deeper and fuller unity. Love isn’t impatient, and it does not walk away. Love perseveres. Love stays active until what God has planned becomes your actual experience. Love listens, works, and waits. Unity happens when love intersects with difference. Is the unity of your marriage growing?
Misunderstanding. Melissa and Randy lived a lifestyle of misunderstanding. They had so many “But I thought you said . . .” “No, I didn’t” conversations that they had gotten to the place where they dreaded talking to one another and expected misunderstanding when they were finished. Little things became big, confusing things. Plans that looked simple became convoluted and complicated. There was so much misunderstanding between them that even their moments of agreement turned out to be disagreements. No, Randy and Melissa didn’t need a course in communication; they needed a functional commitment of love. You see, a lifestyle of misunderstanding is a sure sign of a lack of love.
It is self-love that makes you more committed to what you understand than to understanding your spouse. It is self-love that causes you not to listen well. It is self-love that makes you unwilling to wait until you are sure that you have understood your spouse. It is self-love that keeps you from viewing your spouse’s words, perspectives, desires, and opinions as valuable. It is self-love that fills your brain so full of what you think and know that you have little room for your spouse’s thoughts. It is self-love that makes you value your own way more than you value real functional understanding existing between you and your mate.
Love longs for the two of you to be on the same page. Love is willing to pay the daily sacrifice that it takes to reach real understanding. Love values the words of the other person. Love celebrates the process of understanding, as much as the result. Love prizes a lifestyle of peace because it not only honors God, but it honors the person that he designed to journey with you. Do you live together in the joy of street-level understanding?
Separation. It was more 1960s Cold War for Jimmy and Gayle than actual peace. No, they hardly ever disagreed and they hardly ever fought. Jimmy was content with the way things were. Gayle left him to himself, and he was not about to trouble trouble until trouble troubled him. Gayle enjoyed the lack of conflict, but she was far from being satisfied. She knew that what she and Jimmy enjoyed was not really a marriage in the true sense of what that means. Sure, they could have logistical planning and scheduling conversations. They could handle getting something to eat and going to a movie. But they didn’t really have a relationship. They had détente. They hadn’t grown closer and more unified. They hadn’t worked to forge a relational lifestyle. No, they had become tired of the little skirmishes and the all-out wars. They got tired of going to bed angry and waking up with acrimony. So, they forged a silent conspiracy. They conspired to live together, but separately. They became masters at giving one another a wide swath of space, and they studiously avoided any topic that would take them down the pathway of potential difference. From the outside it looked as though they had a good marriage, but a marriage is exactly what they didn’t have. What they had was a peacefully avoidant lifestyle of cohabitation.
Love will always find this kind of separation unacceptable and painful. Love is motivated by what a deep privilege it is to have someone to love and to receive love. Love thrives when the call is to build the relationship even stronger. Love is willing to make the painful sacrifices that togetherness always demands. Love understands that cohabitation is a location, not a relational goal. Love will not rest until we can rest in one another’s arms and experience rest. Is your marriage more a picture of cohabitation than it is of relationship?
Physical dysfunction. Any real sexual relationship between George and Jeanne had long since died. They had guilt-ridden, obligatory sex every couple of months, and even that was beginning to die. Jeanne wanted to be excited about being with George, but she wasn’t. She dreaded the cold and impersonal sex that lacked true intimacy and was over quickly. There were times when Jeanne felt that George was having sex with her but using it as a tool of masturbation. She felt guilt when she thought this way, but she knew for sure that what they experienced in the bed had nothing to do with love. She knew that George did not find her attractive and alluring, and she didn’t find herself physically drawn to him either. It is a tragedy when sex has little to do with love.
As I told their story, you knew that Jeanne and George needed something more than a better understanding of physical sexuality. I must admit, once more, that I am tired of Christian, body-part books. It’s as if we think that the many, many couples who are experiencing sexual dysfunction are doing so because they don’t know where their body stuff is. Seldom is the problem as simple as a lack of understanding of physical sexuality. No, what diverts and destroys physical sexuality is a lack of love. If your spouse hasn’t loved you outside the marriage bed, why would you think that she would love you when you are in the marriage bed? If she has been impatient and selfish with you on a regular basis, wouldn’t it make sense for you to expect that she would do the same when you are having sex? If your relationship isn’t a daily act of love, there is little chance that sex will be.
Love lives in awe of the holiness of the sexual relationship in marriage. Love finds joy in your comfort, satisfaction, and safety. Love will serve you and not use you. Love finds more excitement with giving than receiving. Love enjoys the unique vulnerability of the nakedness of the marriage bed and takes care that this vulnerability is never demanding or dangerous. Love sees sex as an act and celebration of the relationship of self-sacrificing love that the marriage is all about. Love knows that you never escape the true quality and character of your relationship when you are naked and in one another’s arms. Love turns sexual difficulty into an occasion to give and share a deeper love. Love celebrates the Creator’s design and in so doing is respectful of your body and the way it operates. Love seduces you in a way that honors you and does not turn you into an object of autoerotic satisfaction. Love is willing to wait so that together you can be fulfilled. Love gives and serves even when the heart is excited and the body stimulated. In the marriage bed, love loves. Is your sexual relationship a picture of patient, self-sacrificing love?
Conflict. Selena and Jose knew how to fight. They did it with frequency and skill. They knew what weapons to use against one another, and they used them well. Selena was susceptible to carrying around way too much guilt, so Jose knew he could win his battles with her by making her feel guilty. Jose was a romantic, so Selena would withhold romance in order to win the latest battle. No one could spend much time with Selena and Jose without watching them skirmish. It didn’t take much for conflict to explode, and each of them seemed committed to whatever was necessary to win. It wasn’t always this way. There had been a time when both of them would be upset that they had allowed themselves to get into a fight. Now, it seemed conflict was more typical than peace and division more regular than forgiveness.
Peace is a beautiful and sought-after thing for a person committed to a lifestyle of love. When you love someone, you are pained when things separate and divide you. When you love someone, you are willing to overlook minor weaknesses, irritations, and offenses, because you do not want anything to interrupt your life together. When you love someone, real lasting peace is more valuable to you than being right or being in control. When you love someone, you are willing to forgive, serve, wait, listen, consider, examine yourself and your motives, and make personal sacrifices—all things that create and build peace in a relationship. If conflict between you and your spouse does not cause you grief, what is being exposed is a failure to love. Love loves peace and hates conflict. In your marriage, do you hate conflict and do you work in whatever way you can to create peace?
WATCH OUT FOR FAUX LOVE
When you commit to examine the quality of the love in your marriage, it is important to realize that counterfeit love wears convincing masks.
Physical attraction is an amazing thing. God displays his creative glory in ten thousand different forms of human beauty. God displays his creative glory in giving us an endless variety of tastes when it comes to beauty. We all don’t look the same, and we all don’t look at each other the same way. We see beauty in different ways and are attracted to different people as a result. Physical beauty is a powerful attraction because it is physical. We live in a material world, so physical beauty is one of the things we all care about in some way. Physical attraction is not in itself wrong or dangerous. Perhaps it is the first thing that connects us. If someone is physically repulsive to you, the relationship will probably not last very long. The initial buzz of physical attraction has a very short shelf life.
Yes, it is scary but true that people do get into serious relationships and even marriage based on physical attraction. You are drawn to someone because of her beauty. You want to be near her and with her, just like you want to own the beautiful painting you saw at the art fair. You may even be fantasizing about life with her before you have gotten to know her. This is how powerful the draw of physical attraction can be. You may even have allowed yourself more physical contact with her than is appropriate before marriage, thereby deepening the physical attraction. You may think you love this person, but you don’t really. No, what you love is her physical beauty. What you think is love is self-love in the mask of true love. You want to be with her not because you love her, but because you love yourself and you want to decorate your life with her physical beauty. Now, I know this sounds harsh, but I think many couples have fallen into this trap.
Physical beauty gets normalized in marriage. You wake up that first morning to a person with baboon breath and rat’s-nest hair and you wonder what attracted you so. He falls out of bed and puts on rumpled and stained sweats and stumbles to the bathroom and makes sounds you’d rather not hear. Then it hits you: you married a fantasy, but you got the real person. Real people have imperfect bodies. Real people grow warts, gain weight, and get old. Marriages built on physical attraction always lead to disappointment.
An emotional connection with a man or woman is an exciting thing. To find someone that you can relate to, talk to, and feel comfortable with is fun and fulfilling. Who wouldn’t want to experience this? It’s fun to be able to talk without ever feeling one of those uncomfortable periods of silence while you’re searching for the next possible topic. It’s enjoyable to be able to relate to what the other one is experiencing and feeling. It is nice to have your personalities complement one another. It’s nice when you think and feel the same way about things. It’s enjoyable when you are in a relationship relatively free of stress and tension. It’s good to be able to anticipate how the other will respond and react to something that you will share together.
In marriage this emotional connectivity is important. You cannot have a long-term relationship with a person who is never on the same emotional page as you. But you can have all of this and not have love. The opposite could be said as well. You can have a relationship where the emotional connection between the man and woman was not natural and spontaneous, where it took much more work to connect in that way, but where a solid relationship of true love developed. Emotional connection is powerful and enjoyable, but the powerful thing you are experiencing may not be love.
Here is the point: like physical attraction, emotional connection can actually be self-love wearing the mask of true love. Could it be that you are powerfully attracted to someone because he is easy and enjoyable to be with? Being with him doesn’t take a lot of commitment or effort because you are so emotionally alike. Maybe you are attracted to him not because you have come to love him, but because you love yourself, and he is comfortable to be with, and you are drawn to the effortlessness of the relationship. Let’s be honest. Most of us don’t enjoy hard work and will avoid it if possible. I think this tendency to work-avoidance and ease-attraction has gotten many marriages off on the wrong foot by convincing couples that they are experiencing love when what they are really experiencing is faux love.
Spiritual unity is even trickier. It is essential that a husband and wife have spiritual unity. This unity is first based on the fact that they are both members of God’s family and therefore indwelt by the same Spirit. But this unity is more than that; it is unity of biblical worldview, of theological persuasion, and of Christian experience. It is very powerful when you are around someone who shares deeply held theological beliefs with you. It is very powerful when you are with someone who seeks in every way to look at life through the lens of Scripture. It is very powerful to be with someone as God is making his Word understandable and relevant to you both. It is very powerful to be in services of worship where you are led to celebrate God’s life-changing grace. These things create a connection and a unity that is like no other. To share the same values and to prize the same experiences is a sweet thing. To be connected to someone who takes his or her faith as seriously as you do is comforting and attractive. To be able to fellowship in the stunning wisdom of the Word of God together is an experience that must not be taken for granted.
All these things are good things, but they are things that you could probably experience with many believers. You can share a platform of spiritual values with someone you don’t actually love in the full sense of what love is and does. This will trouble some of you, but it must be said: the powerful attraction of spiritual zeal and unity may not be love; it may actually be self-love in the mask of true love.
I can’t number how many women I have counseled who married men because they were attracted to their “spirituality,” their biblical literacy and their theological knowledge, only to sadly come to realize that the men didn’t love them. Their future husbands were attracted to them because they shared a platform of spiritual unity that may make building a relationship a lot less work than it otherwise would be. And in almost every situation, the men were drawn by the way the women looked up to them as a theological mentor. But when the women demonstrated that they are sinners and not always willing students and the men showed that they love the theology of the women more than they do the women, the house of cards came crashing down.
Culture is a huge issue in marriage. You always drag your familial and cultural influences into the development of a relationship and ultimately into your marriage. God has crafted locations, situations, and relationships for you that have formed your cultural instincts and tastes. You have certain likes and dislikes (food, clothing, entertainment, etc.). There are experiences in life that have formed your sense of what is important and what is not, what is enjoyable and what is not, what is beautiful and what is not. You come to every relationship you have with certain assumptions about what is proper and to be expected. You have a certain definition of father, brother, sister, friend, worker, neighbor, boss, etc. Your wardrobe and your decorating both reflect enculturation.
We carry with us differing definitions of what is polite and what is not, what is tasteful and what is not, what is expensive and what is not, what is casual and what is dressy, what should be public and what should be private, and the list could go on and on. So you bring to your potential partner a whole set of assumptions and unspoken rules. Even though you may not be conscious of it, these exist in every area of your life. They become one of the lenses through which you look to evaluate the people in your life, so it is very compelling when you are in a relationship with someone and you share the same assumptions, expectations, and unspoken rules. It is hard not to be drawn to that person, and it is tempting to mistake your cultural unity and the attraction it creates as love.
Once again, the powerful attraction of cultural continuity may feel like love, but it may actually be self-love masquerading as love. Perhaps you are drawn to your spouse not because you love her, but because you love yourself, and you are stunned by how much she agrees with you. She is attractive to you because she thinks you are right about life as much as you think you are, and you find this to be a very attractive thing. Perhaps you don’t actually love him. Perhaps what you love is the similarity of your cultural assumptions. This too will almost always be challenged in marriage as you come to realize that you are not clones of one another and you are faced with the reality that there are many places where you disagree and look at life differently. Again, what looks like love may be just another compelling form of faux love.
A LOVE STORY
It had all come crashing down, and Chris and Sarah didn’t know why. It began with Sarah complaining about Chris’s silence and distance. Things had changed. Chris would come home from work and go to his office. Sure, he would say hello but not much else, and he would quickly retire to his nightly retreat. They had simply stopped talking except for the necessary conversations about plans, bills, and schedules. Sarah went to Chris more than once to talk to him about his withdrawal, but he would always assure her that he loved her and that everything was all right.
Chris was tired of being controlled, but every time he tried to talk with Sarah about it she would get emotional and shut down the conversation. It wasn’t that Sarah was mean; it was just that she had to be in charge of everything. Chris felt that he was being smothered, but he told himself he would deal with it, that he loved Sarah too much to mess up their marriage.
Little irritations quickly began to morph into big arguments. Today’s incident became the occasion for dredging up last week’s or last month’s hurt. Hurt and bitterness caused simple conversations to be nasty and complicated. Both Sarah and Chris carried anger and defensiveness into each conversation. Each argument went over the same ground. Sarah would accuse Chris of being cold, uncaring, and distant, and Chris would tell Sarah that she was the most domineering person he had ever known. Each was good at self-defense while repeating the same lengthy list of accusations against the other. And together they had become exhausted and discouraged with it all. For Chris that meant even more withdrawal, and for Sarah it meant that she was on Chris even more, telling him again and again that something had to change. Chris’s withdrawal activated Sarah, and her activism drove Chris into hiding.
No, neither one of them had been unfaithful, and their arguments had never become physically violent, but they both wondered if they had made a huge mistake. Chris sat one Tuesday night at his desk in his office and realized that he had been staring at his flickering laptop for a long time. When he came to and realized what he had been thinking about, his thoughts scared him. For the first time, he had been fantasizing about what life would be like without Sarah. It sobered him that thoughts of being single would be so comfortable and attractive, but they were. No, he wasn’t going to leave Sarah and file for divorce, but he did feel smothered, and he didn’t know how in the world he was going to find what he needed to go on.
Sarah had hit a similar moment, but it was when she was with one of her friends. Jenny had asked Sarah if she could break away for lunch, and since it was such a nice day they decided get a sandwich and sit in the park. When Jenny asked Sarah how she was doing, it all came blurting out. Sarah talked of Chris’s distance and of her discouragement. She told Jenny she just didn’t think she could go on. She talked of how she dreaded the moment Chris would come through the door each night because it would mean either painful silence or another one of those horrible arguments. She said she tried to “make nice” but it never worked. Jenny looked into the face of a despondent and exhausted woman and looked for the right thing to say.
No one who knew Sarah and Chris had a clue. People in their small group noticed that they weren’t as affectionate as they had once been, but they also weren’t newlyweds anymore. They never fought in public and always managed to treat one another with polite respect when others were around. They stayed faithful to their church, and Chris continued to teach the Sunday school class he had taught for years. Sarah continued to go to the nursing home every other week. She loved her time with the old folks, and they loved her guitar and sweet voice. Sarah and Chris managed to cooperate with one another during the holidays when extended family was around, and they worked to limit their skirmishes in front of the children. From a distance their marriage looked much better than it was. The public smiles did not remove the private pain.
As I listened to their story, I knew I was going to have to say something to Chris and Sarah that would be hard to hear. They were going to have to face the fact that they were now harvesting seeds that they had planted. Let me explain.
Sarah met Chris during her last year of college. She remembers the moment very well. She was leafing through her mail in front of the bank of mailboxes near her dorm. He walked up to talk to the person next to her. It was an embarrassing but fateful moment. Sarah was so distracted by Chris that she dropped most of her mail at his feet. They both spontaneously bent down to pick up the mess and bumped heads. Then, laughing at what happened, they said hello and began to talk. Sarah said she was taken by what a beautiful human being Chris was. He was tall and handsome and didn’t seem to take himself too seriously. They decided to get together later that week for coffee. Sarah was blown away when, in that first conversation over coffee, she realized that Chris was a Christian and, like her, had been raised in the Midwest. He was talkative, and she was the type who loved to listen. He was athletic, and she loved the outdoors. He loved good food, and she loved to cook. He loved movies, and so did she. He was from a small town, and so was she. He liked coffee—what else could she ask for?
It seemed so perfect. Their times together were comfortable and easy. This was the man Sarah had been searching for. Chris fit her life like a glove. He was physically attractive, fun to be with, spiritually in tune, and seemed like a guy who was going somewhere. Sarah couldn’t be with Chris enough, and it wasn’t long before she was making mental plans for their future. She knew Chris was the one, and she was going to make sure she would not lose him.
Chris liked the fact that Sarah and he had similar backgrounds. He felt she would have a natural sense of “where he was coming from.” He liked the fact that Sarah was decisive. This was a woman who knew what she wanted. He liked the fact that there weren’t many surprises with Sarah. She said what she thought and what she wanted. With a common background, shared interests, and that all-important spiritual connection, it seemed that Sarah really could be the one. Chris was in no hurry, but he really did like Sarah, and she seemed ready to make a lifelong commitment any time.
So six months later, on a cold winter afternoon, Chris popped the question. Sarah was in a daze with joy and managed to say yes about thirty-four times before Chris gave her the kiss of her life. Immediately Sarah began to make plans. She knew just what their wedding should be like and just the kind of house they would need to live in. She told Chris that he needed to find a job in a small town so that they could experience together the life they had both enjoyed growing up. Chris thought it was funny that Sarah was so focused and driven, and he teased her about planning their entire life in about three days.
They married the day after graduation, moved to small-town Ohio, and began their life together. Children and promotions came quickly, but their relationship quit being comfortable. Chris worked long, hard hours and spent most of his evenings and weekends exhausted. He didn’t have much free time, but he loved hunting, fishing, and golfing with his friends. He also loved blogging and keeping up every day with the blogs that he had become hooked on. Chris wasn’t very domestic. It wasn’t that he refused to help. No, what began to bother Sarah was that he never volunteered to help.
Sarah loved her three children, but it was hard work. She felt that she had less and less time with her friends and that Chris and she had little time together. She also resented the fact that Chris seemed to think that the entire house was her job. She always had a list of projects for him to complete, but he took his good time getting around to them. Sarah felt that she had a house guest instead of a husband, and Chris felt that he had a home superintendent instead of a wife. Chris was growing tired of Sarah’s demands, and Sarah was done with feeling that she lived alone.
Both Sarah and Chris couldn’t help wondering what had happened. It all seemed so easy and so perfect. It had seemed as though their dreams were coming true. How did they end up in such a discouraging mess? There is but one answer to this question. It is hard to accept but vital to face. Sarah and Chris had a major love drought in their marriage because very early in their relationship they had confused faux love with true love.
It was devastatingly hard for Sarah to admit it, but she finally did: she had married Chris not because she loved him but because she loved herself. Physical attraction, emotional connection, and cultural and spiritual unity were what drew her in. She was drawn to Chris because he was everything she had ever wanted for her life. Her attraction to him was powerful and compelling. He could not have fit more perfectly into Sarah’s dream for her life. Sarah’s attraction to Chris was all about what Sarah wanted for Sarah. What masqueraded as love wasn’t love.
It was also hard for Chris to admit that he had been drawn to Sarah because she made things so easy. She seemed to like Chris for who he was, and she made all the plans for him. Chris was able to coast his way into a great relationship; he thought he had hit the jackpot! But he didn’t get married because he loved Sarah in the true sense of what that means. No, Chris loved what Sarah did for him and his life. Faux love wore the mask of true love, and Chris had been completely fooled.
The lack of unity, the constant misunderstandings, the distance and separation between them, the lack of physical intimacy, and the catalog of regular conflicts were screaming loud and clear that what was missing in Chris and Sarah’s marriage was love—real, other-centered, self-sacrificing love.
Things began to go wrong when their relationship quit being self-satisfying and the need for other-serving became dominant. When the hard work, which faithful love requires, began, Chris and Sarah got discouraged and began pointing fingers of blame. The sad reality that they had to face and confess was that their relationship had not been built on a foundation of love. It had been built on the weakest and most impermanent of relational foundations—self-focus and self-love.
They had never really considered the hardship of a flawed person living with a flawed person. They had never considered the daily and costly sacrifices that are necessary to make a long-term marriage work. They didn’t think about what they were being called to give to one another. No, what occupied their minds was what they were being given by the other. So their marriage was doomed to fail, because there is no such thing as a good marriage that is not fueled by love, and there is no such thing as love that does not require personal sacrifice. Selfish ambitions and unrealistic expectations had set them up for the discouraging moment that they were now in.
But this sad moment was a moment of wonderful, God-given, grace-infused opportunity. It was God, in love, who had brought Sarah and Chris to the end of themselves. It was God who had provided resources of help for them. God knew that until they gave up on the old way, the new way would not be attractive to them. Theirs was not a story of hopelessness and abandonment, but of persevering and transforming grace. It is an understatement to say it was a moving moment when Sarah looked at Chris and confessed that she had never loved him in the full sense of what that meant. And it was equally beautiful to hear Chris confess the same.
I was greatly privileged to witness this couple begin to love one another for the very first time, and in so doing to set their marriage on a new and better course.
What about you? Could there be a love drought in your marriage?
Could it be that what you have called love is not really love? Could it be that God is bringing you to the end of yourselves so that you will look at yourselves with new eyes and seek the help that only he can give? Could it be that a brand-new commitment in love is what is needed for you to experience a brand-new beginning for your marriage?
If you are God’s children, then like Chris and Sarah you are not alone, and this means there is hope no matter how big the love drought is in your marriage.