Surprised by Love

When writing about love, I cannot shake the feeling that I should always begin with a sort of Socratic apology, something along the lines of, “I really haven’t the slightest clue what I’m talking about.” I am, after all, not quite thirty and not quite married yet. Both of those not-quite-yet situations will be remedied by the end of the year, but I still can’t write about love without first saying that I’m young, foolish, and generally a bit naïve. But if you keep reading the rest of this, that’s your own life choice, and I shan’t judge.

When my now-fiancé, Benjamin, first approached me about a romantic relationship, I was two months away from leaving the U.S. for a two-year teaching gig in Greece. I remember remarking humorously to a friend of mine, “This guy wants a relationship, and I’m just trying to leave the country!”

Love, after all, was the last thing on my to-do list. A little over a year prior to Benjamin’s romantic overtures, I had muddled through a very difficult several months, which culminated in about a week’s hospitalization. After leaving the hospital, I decided that I wasn’t going to date anyone for a year. I was going to work on getting better and on finding a job overseas.

It was a good year, actually.  A year full of job searching, job offers, a job contract signing, preparation for moving to Greece, and multiple accolades at work. For that year, I lived as a companion to a delightful ninety-year old woman. Esther had been single all her life, and while living with her, I realized that I could be single and quite happy too. In fact, I decided that besides generally taking a year-long break from worrying about my love life, I was going to live from then on in such a way that if I never got married, I wouldn’t look back at my life and regret wasting my time feeling sorry for myself over what never was.

And then came Benjamin. We met in college, and how we reconnected is a long story, but suffice it to say, it was a bit of a surprise to both of us.

So there I was, a year and a week or two after deciding to take a year off from any attempt at a romantic relationships, and two months from leaving the country, and an old friend was telling me he was interested in moving beyond a platonic correspondence into a serious relationship.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

There isn’t space enough here to write out everything that happened between two summers ago and today. That isn’t the point of this particular post. Rather, I want to write what I’ve caught myself reflecting on lately: the gifts that come with love—the gifts that I really didn’t expect—the beautiful things that Hollywood never told me about—the loveliest parts of loving someone else. And when I say love, I don’t mean a casual dating relationship; I mean the serious stuff, the kind of love that says, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you and get old and decrepit together.”

Vulnerability

Last summer, Benjamin and I were eating dinner together at a Mexican restaurant. In the midst of our conversation, I began choking back tears, trying not to cry while talking about a painful family situation.

“Would you like me to come over there?” he asked.

I nodded, and he got up from his side of the table, slid over next to me on the bench, and put his arm around my shoulder. I don’t remember too much of the particulars of the conversation, but I do remember that he reassured me that it was okay to cry, and he asked me if I wanted to leave the restaurant. While we were in the car, he looked over at me and said, “You’re beautiful when you cry.”

That wasn’t the only time I’ve cried in front of Benjamin, and he’s shed some tears in front of me as well. As we grow into adulthood, being able to safely fall apart in front of someone else becomes more precious. As a teacher, I’m supposed to have it together in front of my students all day long, I’m supposed to keep calm when meeting with parents, I’m supposed to act cool and collected with my colleagues. It’s part of being a grownup.

It’s a gift, then, to find that there is someone with whom I can be vulnerable, who isn’t going to tell me to get it together and come back later. Rather—to my surprise—he seems to appreciate it when I cry, when I tell him what hurts, when I tell him what I’m afraid of.  I wasn’t expecting love to be like that. But I’m deeply glad it is.

Forgiveness

There are times when I think about marriage and worry that I’ll mess it all up. After all, I’m very human, and sometimes a bit selfish, or just unintentionally oblivious to the needs of others. Of all the people in the world that I don’t want to hurt, it’s Benjamin. Marriage, however, seems to bring the inevitable reality of hurt with it. I shall, at times, hurt him. He’ll hurt me. Despite our best intentions, it’s going to happen. It’s happened already (although very infrequently). What, then, shall we do about this? Should we give up entirely on the institution? No. There’s a remedy, and it’s an implacably good one. 

The first few times I apologized to Benjamin for some wrong on my part, he surprised me by answering rather simply with the words, “I forgive you.” I was a bit taken aback. Aren’t we supposed to say, “That’s okay,” or “No worries,” or, “No big deal”? I was a little affronted that instead of excusing me, he forgave me. I think it wounded my pride.

But on second thought, forgiveness is better than excusing or brushing over a wrong. To ask for forgiveness requires humility. To extend it requires grace. And I have found that with those whom I’ve asked for or extended forgiveness, a greater bond is created. It’s as though the act itself—the act of giving forgiveness or requesting it—ties us closer together. Like vulnerability, forgiveness is not only necessary for sustaining love, but somehow multiplies it. When I catch myself worrying about the inevitable pain two broken humans will cause each other in marriage, I remember that forgiveness can repair a great deal, and two people who are committed to asking for and giving forgiveness will probably find that divine grace will more than supply for the want of perfection. After all, Jesus didn’t tell Peter that he must forgive his brother seventy times seven times because he wanted Peter to be a pushover; he wanted Peter to have the joy and closeness that often comes with forgiving another.

Laughter

There are a thousand other gifts that come with love, but perhaps one of the very best is genuine laughter. Aristotle was a proponent of the idea of catharsis—the notion that a cleansing of the soul via tears relieves us from the daily emotional baggage that we carry (it’s actually a little more complicated than that and has to do with observing the downfall of a tragic hero during a play, but for this discussion, let’s use a simpler definition). Vulnerability and forgiveness bring a kind of catharsis to relationships, and the outcome is often a deeper sense of joy. I’m convinced that I laugh more often and more genuinely with Benjamin than with anyone else. Perhaps it’s because after we’ve been able to share our pain and extend grace, we’re freer to honestly laugh at the ridiculousness of life and of ourselves. We don’t have to be polite about how humorous the world really is.

When we’re together in the car, Benjamin and I try to kiss if we are at a red light (yes, you can roll your eyes here about how mushy that is, but I rather like it). This January, we were driving back from a dinner party in downtown D.C., and we came to a red light. I leaned over to kiss him, and—to my surprise—he began leaning towards me but stopped short and gave me a bewildered look. His seatbelt was stuck. When he explained what happened, we laughed. In fact, I could hardly stop laughing for the next several minutes.

I don’t expect that seems particularly funny to anyone else, but we love each other, and despite love’s best intentions, sometimes we are beset with seatbelts that don’t work right. And the gift of love—at that moment—is not to bemoan our wretched fate, but to laugh at it, and to laugh together. Life isn’t a perfect romantic movie—it’s full of things that don’t work, or bodies that age, or crying babies, or dogs that bark at precisely the worst times. Love doesn’t make us immune to all this. It allows us to laugh at these things together, rather than alone.

I suppose I could—in closing—add other gifts that came with the love that surprised me two summers ago. But that’s enough for now. Valentine ’s Day is a nice reminder that we have the capacity to give and receive love. But the flowers, the chocolate, and the candlelight dinners are simply tokens of greater gifts. They are not the point. This, rather, is the point:

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." -1 Corinthians 13:4-7