Marriage

Today I have been thinking about marriage. I was thinking about all the preconceived notions people have about being starry eyed forever. I have been thinking about all the times Kevin and I have fought, and how much more in love with him I am after we make up. I am thinking how when we started dating I worked out and ran, and he loves me and thinks I'm beautiful even after I have the body of a woman who has given birth to two children. 

Sometimes we feel a million miles away, and it seems like we just fail to connect, but I take heart, because I know it will pass. 

I remember when we were planning our wedding, we wanted to skip the whole sappy love stuff. We wanted to focus on loving each other for who we are right now, not who we wanted each other to be, or who we would be in a few years. 

So, these are the readings we chose for our wedding. Not things that were sickeningly sweet, but things that were real, and things that spoke to what we thought love was. 

Here are some of my favorite:

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when alterations find

Or bends with the remover to remove 

O, no! It is an ever fixed mark, 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this is error, and upon be prov'd 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd 

(from "letters to a young poet")

And another thing. Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.... That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being "in love" has burned away, and this is an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found that we were one tree, and not two. 

From Corelli's Mandolin, Louise DeBernieres 

Love isn't going out for a fancy dinner. Love is ordering take out and laughing about the supper I just ruined. Love isn't long romantic dates. Love is finding those few moments alone together everyday to learn about each other. Love isn't always a feeling. Love is a choice. And I love my husband.