Love is a decision, not simply a feeling

My brother and I were raised by parents who had a very good marriage. Because they made their marriage first, this was an area of great stability in my life. Things may have been swirling around us with the culture, in school or growing up, but their relationship was something stable that we never had to worry about.

They had them all in their marriage: good times and bad, sickness and health, richer and poorer. Because they made their marriage first, they developed the unity that made them able to weather whatever came their way. They always faced those “whatevers” together as a couple. My reflection here is based on my experiences working with engaged and married couples over my 23 years as a priest.

With this good experience of marriage as my backdrop, it is no wonder that as a priest, I love facilitating the Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter weekends. I very much enjoy preparing couples for marriage, and I keep in touch with my couples by sending them Christmas and Easter cards each year. It is a reminder to them and to me that on the day of their wedding we were all together for their exchange of consent that began their union as husband and wife. I want my couples’ marriages to last a lifetime; additionally, I pray for them constantly to be connected to God and his church.

I am especially mindful of how married couples interact with each other. Questions that I ask my engaged couples (and married couples who come to me for help) are the following:

— What was the initial thing that attracted you to each other?

— What are the qualities in your (future) spouse that led you to want to marry them, have children together, grow old together, and handle whatever may come?

— What was your experience of marriage growing up? What do you take from that positive or negative experience that is a help to your marriage?

— What do you see in your (future) spouse’s parents’ marriage? What do you take from that commitment?

— What are your strengths as a couple?

— What are areas that you need to work on?

— What are your favorite qualities about your (future) spouse now?

— What does the sacrament of marriage mean to you? How do you see yourselves as a sacrament?

These questions can help me to understand the engaged couple, but also can help a married couple rediscover the goodness of each other that led them to be this sign to the world of sacramental married love and to be a family.

I also talk to married and engaged couples about disillusionment in marriage, a time when the illusions are gone. It is where the person hopefully comes to the realization, “I married this person despite all of their warts and because of their goodness.” This disillusionment stage generally comes around six to seven years into marriage (and also priesthood). Disillusionment, discouragement or adversity can make or break us. They can make us if we choose this vocation of love and service again with the understanding that this person is whom she/he is, and we still love them, and this is all worth it.

When I look at a couple who has been married 40 years or 50 years, I know that there are many good things in what I see, but I also know there have been times of being let down, hurt and even betrayal or infidelity during those years. They chose it again, even when it was very difficult to choose again. Our society unfortunately is so geared toward immediate gratification, easy disposability or a life of happiness only, that the true decision and effort to love is not even tried.

I laugh sometimes when a mentor couple and I will share about our times of disillusionment in our vocations while doing marriage preparation. I watch as the engaged couples smile, but often are not able to relate to these difficulties as they are still in the romance stage of their relationship.

I liken marriage (and priesthood) to an incline where one can be doing very well or not so well at a particular point in their vocation. The same can be true for exercise, prayer life, a musical instrument, our professional vocation. Once we stop working at it, human finitude and sinfulness can slowly bring us down. It does not mean we may reach bottom, although that is possible. It does mean that we start to lose our edge and worse, lose our readiness to love. Love is a decision. It is not a feeling.

Our society tells us that love is a feeling: in music, literature and other media. It is not simply a feeling. Love is a decision. The goal of marriage is unity. Good feelings are a side product of this unity between husband and wife. Unity comes about by making the decision unconditionally to love the other and to talk about substantive things like feelings, dreams for the future as well as disappointments. When difficult times come, the good feelings go out the door.

If a husband and wife work toward unity by placing their marriage first, even when the good feelings vanish due to adversity, unity will remain and prevail. I often encourage married and engaged couples to make a Marriage Encounter sometime during their marriage. It is a great opportunity to give time to this most important commitment that has borne good fruit but needs care itself. It is a choice to take care of one’s vocation to marriage.

How does the sacrament give grace? How can couples tap into that grace? The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions” (CCC 1131). Grace (the divine life) is given the day of a marriage in the church.

I like to help engaged couples imagine that they are receiving a box on their wedding day that says “Grace of the Sacrament of Marriage” on the outside. When they open the box, they see that it is filled with smaller boxes labeled: communication, date night, couple prayer, forgiveness, risking sharing feelings, weekly worship, individual prayer, active listening, service to others as a couple, creating and raising children, compromise, anticipating one another, lovemaking, natural family planning and much more.

Some of these gifts in these boxes have been modeled for married couples through the ages and are eagerly opened, but some of these boxes are left unopened by couples who do not venture to make them part of their marriage. All of these little boxes, as you open them and do them, will help you cooperate with that grace that was given on your wedding day. 

Natural things like communication, honesty, date night as well as supernatural things like couple prayer, Mass, adoration for the Blessed Sacrament as a couple, interceding for one’s spouse will release this grace, God’s divine life, that is there to help live the promises made as bride and groom on their wedding day. It is not easy, but it is worth the choice to mutually love each other and to permit the living God in. It is a great gift that you give to each other, to your children, to God and to the world.

Written by Father Stephen Rapposelli
Pastor, Saints Peter and Paul, Turnersville, NJ