Is Your Relationship Based on a Myth?

Love is so much more than a feeling.

Source: Anna Tarazevich/Pexels

Our concept of love, at least as that word is understood in the English language, tends to be not only inaccurate but also just plain naïve. We have a cultural mythos around the topic, which in modern times has been shaped by Disney movies, but traces back to Shakespeare and farther still to medieval concepts of courtly attraction. The result of more than a millennium of storytelling is that the word love has been stretched into a vague and overreaching umbrella term for many different phenomena. The ancient Greeks, for example, had four different terms for aspects of what we would lump into the category of love. C.S. Lewis (2017) and others have undertaken detailed analyses of these distinctions. But many people—perhaps a vast majority—in our society continue to harbor a fundamental misunderstanding of what love is, and, laboring under that delusion, they suffer.

The most significant misconception many of us carry is that love is a feeling. It is not. Although our feelings can be invaluable guides, in and of themselves, they are not love. As a marriage and family therapist, when I observe a client trying to determine whether they still “feel” they are “in love” with their partner, it’s a huge red flag and also may provide insight as to why the couple is experiencing difficulties. After all, how could they ever have a healthy relationship if it’s built upon such a precarious and ephemeral foundation as a feeling?

If we know what love is not, we are led back to a question, which, although eternal, was perhaps most poignantly asked by Haddaway in 1993: What is love? Sometimes, when I ask people to explore this question, they’ll reference a song, poem, book, aphorism, or even the bible. For example, they’ll say, “Love is patient, love is kind.” And, although that may be true, it simply replaces one abstraction with others (kindness and patience can mean many different things to different people). This is not particularly helpful for couples struggling in the here and now who need practical tools to mend their relationship.

The following are four more specific descriptions of love that I consistently find in healthy relationships. Although I present these in the context of romantic love, with perhaps some slight modifications, they are applicable to just about any healthy, loving relationship between two human beings.

1. Love Is Observable

A lighthearted but powerful thought experiment I do with client couples is to ask, “If aliens were observing earth through a powerful telescope, what would they see between you that would demonstrate your love for each other?” The point of this exercise is that love, whatever it is, results in action. It’s true that from time to time circumstances arise in which it may be best for our partner that we take no action, that we not interfere. But, in a healthy relationship, there will still be plenty of other observable acts of love. Without concrete action, love is simply well-wishing and lacks meaning.

2. Love Is Work

A common reaction I get when I suggest couples counseling is something to the effect of, “I didn’t think things had gotten that bad.” This attitude, although understandable due to cultural stigmas, is very unfortunate. This is easy to see if we put things in only a slightly different context. For example, when a dentist says, “I think you should brush your teeth,” most people would not think, “Gee, I didn’t know my teeth had gotten that bad.” It is assumed without question that our teeth require daily maintenance and are valuable enough to warrant that effort. Although they may be durable and strong at the moment, that can change rather quickly if we lapse on our vigilance. So it is with relationships as well. (As I write this, I wonder how many of us devote even the 5 minutes per day to conscious nurturing of our relationships that we do to dental hygiene.)

The forces of modernity— economics, technology, shifting social dynamics, and more—are constantly pulling us all away from each other. There is a sort of emotional entropy that is ever present and to which relationships will often succumb if countering forces of at least equal intensity are not applied on a daily basis. For example, one day I’d like to write a piece focusing on situations in which one partner wants to go to counseling and the other refuses. This can often demonstrate the lack of value one partner assigns to the relationship as well as expose their ignorance regarding the complexity of relationship dynamics. Of course, the expectation to participate in couples counseling does not apply to extreme situations, such as any form of abuse. But, in the typical cases of a strained relationship, one member of the team refusing to put in the work often does not bode well.

3. Love Is Loss

In the healthy couples I work with, there are very few unilateral decisions made regarding matters of consequence. There is a team mentality built on trust. For example, one partner does not simply declare, “I’m going to Hawaii next month for a vacation; want to come?” or “I just want to let you know I’m going to quit my job.” Our societal values of individualism are so extreme that some people view any reduction in self-centered decision-making as stifling. But having a team mentality is not at all the same as one partner controlling the other. If there is an imbalance between the partners in this level of self-sacrifice, or it reaches too far into an extreme in which the self is annihilated, yes, it is unhealthy. But far more common in therapy are couples whose partners act as if their decisions do not affect the other. To some degree, we sacrifice total independence and autonomy when we choose to become so close to someone that our decisions have the power to harm them. This is a price, a loss, that many people are unwilling to pay.

4. Love Is a Choice

Love requires an act of will, a decision to love the other person (or more accurately, a billion small decisions to continue loving them). To this extent, love is a choice we can make. People assume there is some metaphysical spark, some unknown external element that descends on us to differentiate a “friend with benefits” from relationship material. But that spark comes not from outside of ourselves, but from within. Many of the happiest couples I’ve seen are people who could have been compatible as friends but made the decision to open their hearts to romantic love. It is not necessary to either condemn or endorse the institution of arranged marriage that some cultures practice for us to observe that harmonious long-term relationships can be founded, at least in some cases, with little more than the conscious decision of two compatible people to commit to each other. This is not to say that every friendship must blossom into romance. But, if people are looking outside of their friendships for love, they may find themselves waiting for the arrival of something that is not coming, because it cannot be bestowed, only cultivated.