CS Lewis wrote in his book Mere Christianity about the distinction between being in love as a feeling and love as a commitment, “Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairytale ending ‘They lived happily ever after’ is taken to mean ‘They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,’ then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’ is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it… People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the [Air Force] and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing some delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does this mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and becomes a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening. This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”
Love is a choice of commitment, not a feeling. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of this love, often called Charity. Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for us all, and is thus filled with unconditional love for us. The idea behind Charity is that the higher the price you pay and the more you sacrifice, the more you will love that which you sacrificed for. When I was eighteen, my parents helped me take out a large loan to do flight training to be a pilot. When I began flight training, I jumped right in without even doing an introductory flight. Learning to fly really is thrilling, as CS Lewis stated, but as I have been flying for a few years now, it has lost a lot of the thrill. I have sacrificed so much time and money to fly and it has been one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. I am no longer in love with flying, but I am committed to it and I love it. As we apply this to dating, we can see that it takes sacrifice and dedication for love to last. How much of the world just gives up when the thrill dies away? We should date long enough to fall out of love before getting married to avoid the pitfall of mistaking being in love for love. Let the relationship become boring so that you know it is not the novelty that you love. Do not marry someone unless they consistently choose you.
Brother Dunford, designer of this curriculum, had a student ask him how to maintain love when the feeling of being in love fades away. Brother Dunford wrote to the student saying, “You wake up every morning and you make the choice. You ask Heavenly Father to help. You look each other in the eye and will yourself to stay faithful to that choice. You go to bed and you make the choice again; it gets easier over time. It gets more rewarding each day that you make the choice. You go on dates and remind yourself why you made the choice in the first place. You follow Jesus and the choice gets easier and easier. You work at it and you never stop working at it. You tell her every day and she tells you. You spend time every day thinking about what your life would be without her. You see her; truly see her, and your heart longs to stand with her. You don’t look at others. You don’t think about others. You choose her not only with your actions, but with your thoughts and the emotions in your heart. And you pray with all the energy of your heart every single day that you’ll be filled with charity—that you will be filled with a love for her that will never end.” We must ask the Lord for Charity, as it is a gift from God (Moroni 7:47-48).
You do not need to be in love with someone to love them. You do not need to have ever been in love with them to love them or even marry them. It is okay to not have that attraction at first, and it would likely come later. A match is when there are no deal-breakers, not just when there is attraction and you are both in love with each other. The world has decided that being a match only means being in love with each other. Marriage laws have even changed to go along with this definition of a match. The Lord’s laws of marriage do not change, and He has ordained marriage between a man and a woman. We will get into why it is necessary to have a man and a woman together as we talk about needs and blind spots in pitfall #6.