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I'm not an expert on safety issues, but I will hazard a guess that
more people are hurt in falls than in any other kind of injury. And
the type of fall that I have seen produce the most injuries is
falling in love! I offer this as a result of my observations over
twenty-five years as a marriage and family therapist.
When I ask, Is falling in love enough, I'm asking if it's enough to
keep a marriage going? According to the duet Nat King Cole and his
daughter sing, "If I fall in love, it will be forever." Don't kid
yourself. It won't be. Unless there is more to your relationship
than falling in love, it won't last long.
Psychologist Everett Shostrom, years ago, made an extensive study of
male/female love, and as a result of his findings, he developed an
excellent test called The Caring Relationship Inventory. He
examines five types of love essential to a lasting marriage and
developed a questionaire and evaluation scales to see what kind and
how much of these loves exist in any given marriage. The loves he
examines are eros, agape, friendship, empathy and self-love.
Eros
I mention eros first because this is the primary emotion that
precipitates falling in love. It isn't just the sexy look of the
significant other. An attractive personality plays a large part.
But we fantasize things about that personality that may not be true
at all, or, we might not see that the traits we admire are really
excessive and maladaptive when you really get to know this person.
A strong, competent man may turn out to be so controlling he
smothers you. A modest, demure woman may assure a man that she
would never try to control him, but she may actually be
maladaptively self-effacing, always punishing herself for real or
imagined failures. Wounding herself, she may not be a fully
functional mate.
These two types are often attracted to each other. But after
marriage, they are shocked by extreme behavior. Someone put it well
when he said, Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.
Agape
Agape love is essential to the marriage if it is to survive. While
eros survives on finding your mate attractive, agape love does not
require it. Agape chooses to love. It does not require the other
person to be attractive.
This is the love wherewith God loved us. God so loved (agape) the
world that He sent His only begotten son to die for us. While we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us! This is the love the
Corinthians were told would help them deal with the problem of
division in the church (1 Cor. 13).
The need for agape is essential to marriage. All marriages suffer
in some degree to a loss of eros, and there is a degree of falling
out of love. In our relationship with God we love Him because He
first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19). I have found that when a husband or
wife shows agape love, the mate is very likely to love in return.
It is for this reason that the current practice of couples living
together to see if it works, or to see if they are really in love,
is foolish. It is foolish because it lacks the committment to each
other that is found in agape, the choice, the decision to love and
make it work.
Friendship
Friendship in marriage is essential because it occupies us about
something besides each other. But at the same time, it promotes a
togetherness. Eros is a face to face relationship; friendship is a
shoulder to shoulder relationship.
I often think of this as my wife, Fay and I, sit side by side in our
recliner chairs, looking out of the picture windows at the beautiful
bay in front of us. As we enjoy the scenery together, we talk about
what is currently going on in our lives and reminisce about the
events of almost fifty-five years of marriage. We remember how
together we invested our lives in getting an education, our time in
the pastorate, in establishing a business, in raising four wonderful
sons and now are enjoying the benefits of ten grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.
And we also recognize the differentness in our personalities that
made essentially different contributions to our marriage and the
rearing of our children. We see the wisdom of God in creating male
and female and counterparts (Gen. 2:20). And that differentness is
respected because we see it as a God-ordained differentness.
Friendship is about something besides each other. Friendship is a
respect of differentness where each brings something essentially
different to the relationship.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to enter into what other people are feeling
and feel it with them. It's extremely important for husbands to
understand this.
Men tend to be creatures of the head; women tend to be creatures of
the heart. Because of this, men tend to be problem solvers. They
are ready to take out the calculator and explore solutions. Women,
on the other hand, touched by feelings, need to talk about the
problem. Talking to someone who is empathetic enables her to get in
touch with her feelings in ways that she can't do just by thinking
about the problem. Talking with an empathetic person often brings
to light feelings that she didn't realize she had. She is able to
understand her feelings better. And often, because she understands
her feelings better, she is less troubled by the problem. Many
times I have found that women will conclude that there is not a
problem that needs solving.
This phenomenon is not a liability to the marriage but a definite
asset. Women are able to explore dimensions of a problem in ways
that man does not naturally do--the feeling or
human dimensions of the problem. As counterparts, they bring
together the best in problem solving--the objective and the
subjective.
Self-love
It may seem strange to speak of self-love in a husband/wife
relationship. Aren't we supposed to love others instead of
ourselves?
The answer is this. We can't begin to love others unless we are
fully functional persons ourselves. We must understand that unless
we have a healthy view of our own wants, wishes and needs, we're not
going to have a healthy view of the wants, wishes and needs of our
mate.
The Bible speaks of self-love when it speaks of the creation of male
and female (Gen. 2:24) and the husband/wife relationship being a
picture of Christ and the church (Eph. 5:22-33). They are one
flesh; the husband loves his wife as his own body. A healthy
self-love promotes a healthy understanding of the needs of our mate.
Conclusion
The absence of any of these five loves, eros, agape, friendship,
empathy and self-love, can create a dangerous void in a marriage and
may hasten the process of falling out of love. Competent counseling
can go a long way to developing these qualities in a relationship.
Is falling in love enough? No, it isn't!
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