By Tony Tate
What is love? Is it something you can feel? How do people know if they have found the person they could spend the rest of their lives with? It would be easier to know if we've found this person if we could know what love is.
Initially when we meet someone we like there is probably something physical attracting us. We may feel attracted.
Then if all goes well - you go out, have a good time, and find you want to spend more time with one another - you may begin to have more feelings for one another. But is this love? Time is the answer to all of these questions and the tester of the relationship.
Then if all goes well - you go out, have a good time, and find you want to spend more time with one another - you may begin to have more feelings for one another. But is this love? Time is the answer to all of these questions and the tester of the relationship.
Keep sex out of the mix. When sex becomes part of the equation things become confusing fairly quickly. Sex is a strong and powerful gift that should only be used in marriage to become more intimate - more intimate than you could without it. Outside of marriage it only serves to destroy any chance of truly knowing if you have love for someone or, if they have love for you.
If your relationship is based on sex you are on an unstable foundation. If your feelings change so will your desire to have sex, so will your so called feelings of love with this person and, the same is true for them. Sex only works if love is the foundation of a marriage relationship.
Feelings change and this makes it an unstable foundation for a relationship as well. A lot of times feelings change when the bliss of sex has worn off or, the things you can't stand about the other person surfaces with more frequency. Sex will cause you to look past the things you can’t really live with in another person. And when sex fails to work for you, all you have left are all those things that irritate you about your partner.
So what is love? If you can keep sex from coming into the picture the time you spend together can help you find out if you can love the person you're seeing. You will learn what their values are. You will learn what makes them tick and what drives them. You will find out if you could love them through the time you spend together.
What are the interests you share? What things are you passionate about together? Are there things that get on your nerves - drive you crazy? Can you live with those things? Are you driven by the same things they are driven by? Do all these interests that you both share cause you to draw closer or, do they make you want to spend less time together? If after you have seen all there is to see in a person and you are still drawn then you are ready - Ready for what? -To make a decision.
Love is not a feeling or an attraction. It is a decision. In all the things you learn about one another you must weigh whether or not you can live with those things. Are the traits in this person the traits you are looking for in a mate? Do their flaws turn you off to the point that you will choose not to love at some point? Is there enough in them that you like and admire for you to make a decision to love them for the rest of your life? See, love is a verb. It is an action word. It is something you decide to do. It is something you make a commitment to do in good times and bad. In other words you are deciding after everything that you have seen that you can still love the person inside.
From the bible here is a description of love:
(4)Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud (5) or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. (6)It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. (7)Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (8)Love will last forever..(1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
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