# Love is a matter of choice



## Roderic (Apr 18, 2010)

It is some months since I contributed to this forum, my wife having ‘departed’ suddenly for South Africa in April. When I started to consider what had happened, the issue of a person ‘choosing’ to love another emerged – a concept I had never before considered. Evidently the Bible and all the great philosophers support this notion and I would like to better understand it.

Having been to a great many wedding ceremonies over the years, including two of my own, I find I am now looking at some of the words in a different light. The prospect of loving our partner with the same level of emotion ‘until death do us part’, seems to be somewhat unrealistic. With less influence over emotion than logic, how can we say that we will still be as excited and overwhelmed by our feelings in say ten, twenty or even fifty years? Surely when we get married, most of us are still in the ‘eros’ phase of love which is naturally replaced by ‘agape’ love as time goes by. In fact, it is most unlikely that we will have the same feelings further down the line.

This makes me wonder if the Bible, and hence the Church, is asking us to commit to ‘choosing’ to love our partners, ‘for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health’. This is a more realistic promise and each of us can ask ourselves at the time whether, even though our emotional feelings may shift, we are prepared to commit to always choosing our partners over all others. Until the day we die, even though emotions may fade, most of us remain able to make our own choices and surely we have sufficient control to make such a meaningful pledge. We hear that a person’s life is the sum of their all their choices and this would seem to apply to love as well.

Have the Church, and the numerous civil authorities, recognised this complex idea when they constructed the carefully chosen words that they ask us to repeat? If so, how many of us really understand just what we are promising? I would appreciate the thoughts and opinions of other people on this forum.


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## Applepies (Nov 14, 2010)

Proverbs 5:17-19 (New King James Version)
17 Let them be only your own, 
And not for strangers with you. 
18 Let your fountain be blessed, 
And rejoice with the wife of your youth. 
19 As a loving deer and a graceful doe, 
Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; 
And always be enraptured with her love. 

What the world tells you is you 'deserve' to be happy. Things get a bit rough and people head for anything to distract them. Jesus said divorce is allowed because of the hardness of hearts. Love is long suffering, 

Corinthians 13:4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 
8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away. 
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. 
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 

A lot of people want to remain children and run after all sorts of distractions. Feelings are irrational, the heart is inherently wicked, who can know it? Love is a verb. God tells us how we are to interact as husband and wife. Wives respect your husbands, men love your wives. And on and on. He tells us adultery is a sin, you shouldn't do that and with all the possible things you can catch now, sounds like good advice. 

Many don't want to know what God says about marriage but at their own folly.


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## Applepies (Nov 14, 2010)

There are cases of multiple marriages in scripture but they never went very well. God tells us to leave our parents and cleave to your spouse. Two become one in the flesh. 

He does not say spouses. Remember, the people in the bible had massive issues and problems, they were not perfect.


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## Roderic (Apr 18, 2010)

Thanks for your replies, Applepies, but I'm not sure you have addressed the issue of love being a matter of choice. Maybe you have, but I'm now even more confused.:scratchhead:


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## Applepies (Nov 14, 2010)

Sorry for confusing you. I thought that was the info you were going for...

Let me look at your questions again.

"Have the Church, and the numerous civil authorities, recognised this complex idea when they constructed the carefully chosen words that they ask us to repeat? If so, how many of us really understand just what we are promising?"

Are you referring to the 'until we are parted by death'? 

And that people so easily dismiss the notion in these times?


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## Pandakiss (Oct 29, 2010)

i think on self point of view love is a choice. you choose who would like to date, even if you had chemistry you can still walk away.

you can choose who loves you. either you embrace it or run away. almost everything in life is a choice.


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## laurelanne (Nov 29, 2010)

Yes we do have "choices" continously in this life, and God not only allows this but I really think he "insists" on it...and our results in life are going to follow each of these choices. So while you are a bit snagged on this idea of perhaps...our ability to really follow through over many years on the choices, we need a bit more knowledge here to understand just how we can make a marriage choice (to love forever for better or worse) today and expect both of us to have ability to uphold that over years, in the face of things like changing emotions?

First thing is to have realization and belief that emotions are not something to put all our reliance on and trust in because they can change like the wind and even though we may think they are telling us the truth and leading us according to the truth, they can be very deceptive, so we need something more sure to put our trust in than just emotions.

Ex: We can really love our partner but due to any millions of reasons end up in an affair. Now there are new emotions for the other person, and the more time we spend with that person the more emotions are created and intensify. We realize at first we do really love our partner but the emotions become so intense that we don't want to surrender them, and then....

the results of temptation increase...and the wages of following temptation is various types of inward death (death of our oneness with our spouse, death of our feelings for the family & home that not long ago was the world to us, etc...)

So what we are talking about here is making a "Choice" not merely to Love for a lifetime, but to "choose" to Love, which also means "choosing" to avoid things that will destroy our love, weaken it, and ultimatley destroy our home, family, and the blessed life God gave us under Marriage which he himself honors and sanctify's.

A fav. word of mine here: "My people are destroyed for lack of knolwedge," (Hosea 4:6). Emotions are not to be our leader and guide, but the Knowledge of Truth that leads to "Life" that God has made available. Those who run off with someone else have not really done so because of any substantial reason other than...they allowed themself to become one/emotional attached to someone else...and within this "process" Sure...love at home fades....it wasn't dead...it was allowed to weaken...it was ignored and allowed to fade...

And then we "say" love died....I don't love you anymore. Maybe so, but we all had and do have the "choice" whether to rule over our thoughts, our emotions, or to let them go where they will. this principle applies to many areas of life not jsut marriage. We have the "choice" of what this body does and what we allow or resist or contribute to the "senses and passions" of this body. 

We can either let the body..the senses...the desires that may and can strike up...have their own way and lead us who knows where....or we can control and rule this body from the "inward" heart/spirit....and this body does and "will" obey what we feed into it.


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## Roderic (Apr 18, 2010)

I had not thought about what we choose not to do -



laurelanne said:


> what we are talking about here is making a "Choice" not merely to Love for a lifetime, but to "choose" to Love, which also means "choosing" to avoid things that will destroy our love


To me, thinking more about it now, choice involves free selection based on due consideration of the facts as we know them. When making any choice, we need to be aware that there will be consequences for which we are responsible, and to choose to love someone is one of the most serious undertakings we can ever take. 

At the point of marriage, we are not choosing to make a contract with our partner based on what has gone before, but on what feelings we are committing to have in the future. In committing to a relationship, we are committing to the keeping of our promises, promises being the things we say, and commitments being the things we do as a result of those promises. 

Also, it seems reasonable to say that commitments do not take place at a single moment in time, but are things that we do on a continuous basis over the rest of our lives. There are no emotional, physical or mental exit routes from a committed relationship – the commitments made as result of our marriage promises, oblige us to make our union work, whatever it takes.

My wife says that she misses me, she thinks of me and asked me recently if I had any idea how much she still loves me, albeit on a different level. Well isn't that how loves progresses anyway? She says she loves me but refuses to commit to counselling. She agrees that the day we married was the best day of her life - so far! - but she still now chooses to live an independent life so far away from me. She is an educated and articulate woman who says that our separation was never meant to happen. How on earth do I get her to consider that love really is a matter of choice and our marriage commitments deserve more serious investigation? I wish I knew where to begin.


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## laurelanne (Nov 29, 2010)

She refuses counseling? I don't like the sound of that, combined with how she feels so free to say that she loves you...as if nothing is now preventing her from saying that? why? Being a woman too, I "sense" the new freedom she is feeling in all this. I may be wrong but seem to sense it. This freedom is what has set her mind/emotions free to be able to say I love you greatly...without feeling like that puts her under obligation. Something's up with that.

I hate to mention it but I wonder if she's got someone else over there? I Love you but.... and I'm happy? It is possible to miss you and also be with someone else...years of life together don't just vanish like that.

I hate it, but it feels like she's holding out. You need a new strategy. Something to make her 'really' miss you...and not feel so free to live it up all the while "knowing" you're there at any time. Something to cause her to...."Think." 

I could be all wrong, I don't know. From what it sounds like here I think I would back off and let her gain the reality that....No I'm not just going to sit and suffer and die hoping you'll come back...atleast "Act" like you take her very very seriously....so she can Realize the Reality she has created...in Reality!

She may still just go her own way...but crawling just doesn't always work....unless you've got some level of want to or cooperation..even in heart....on the other side.


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## Roderic (Apr 18, 2010)

Hi laurelanne, my wife and I have had the closest of relationships and we were the very last couple that people thought this would happen to. We have always been very close & tactile, right up until the day she left. My wife is disabled and has taken a great many drugs for the last 13 years or so, including morphine for pain every day. I have speculated about chemical imbalances, midlife crisis and addiction, and each one may be playing some role in this.

My wife became seriously involved in an online computer game and she fled Greece, where we lived, to stay in South Africa with the family of a friend from the game. This was a 20 hour journey, on three 'planes, in a wheelchair, to stay in a dangerous country with people she had never met. She is now back in England and she has volunteered the information that there was nothing but friendship between them. He also is very involved in the online game. My wife is basically truthful, but sometimes economical with that truth.

I am beginning to think that her reluctance to accept counselling is a result of the fact that she knows her commitment to the internet will be revealed. She has convinced her family that she needed to leave in order to manage her health in her own way – their words! This is blatantly misleading and, many months on, her health is actually worse than it was in Greece. She now lives alone and she is free to be involved in the ‘game’ as much or as little as she chooses. Her family are nearby to help when she needs them and the term ‘independence’ is a cloak to cover up her dependence on the computer. I am the only one who really knows the depth of her involvement in the ‘game’, therefore her love for me is a threat, I am a threat, and our marriage must regretfully be sacrificed. I have tried communicating this to her family, but I was emotional, I did it badly, and now I am public enemy No1.

Meanwhile, I have returned to Greece, and she remains in the UK. It is a desperately lonely existence.


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## Roderic (Apr 18, 2010)

I am beginning to wonder if laurelanne is not correct and the reason that my wife is reluctant to see a counsellor is that there is nothing between her and her South African friend - *yet*! She is usually an honourable woman and maybe she is back from SA to tie up loose ends so that she might one day return and act differently. Like everyone here, I seem to be basing my life on speculation.


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