Posted on 08/13/2015 9:27:31 PM PDT by imardmd1
Uh-h-h-h-h
I’ve said, since my first wife dumped me 18 years ago after 20 years of marriage that every single person on the planet is loveable AND hateable, depending on what attributes of theirs are your primary focus. And if you focus on their positives you are “friend”, and when you focus on their negatives you are “foe”.
When you DECIDE to marry someone, you ACTIVELY love them and you have committed to, “until death do us part” be their “friend”. When a person DECIDES to divorce someone, they no longer love the person, not because the person no longer deserves it - they never did. They have DECIDED to stop loving them. They have DECIDED to focus on the negatives. They have become their “foe”.
Every single married person on the planet has given their spouse reason, no matter how small, to not love them, but adult people of character and integrity honor their commitment to DECIDE to ACTIVELY love thier spouse. And the interesting thing is that when it is active, it is surprisingly easy and you WANT to make them happy - and take joy in it - even if you are married to what many would consider a brute or oaf of a man or a fat slob of a woman who mostly watches soaps and eats bon-bons.
But when you don’t have character and integrity, and you have married someone because you thought they would make YOU happy, eventually you blame them for your unhappiness, which always comes, if only fleeting. And then you DECIDE, incrementally, to no longer love them.
And the next thing you know, you’re calling a divorce attorney because your good-for-nothing spouse won’t say “how high” every time you say jump.
I love what a woman I worked with who was being divorced by her husband said: “I take responsibility for some of the problems in my marriage, but I am not responsible for the divorce. Why? Because I didn’t do it.”
Love is a decision.
Love is an action.
Good God, the insanity is overwhelming. You love your children. Perfectly yes/no, maybe and almost, or close maybe. The perfection of marriage is a gift, seldom granted. The attempt at sanity, of one on one love, is beyond all human ability. Men and women, unless severely tethered by moral perfection- are not made to live together. Sorry, this is a fact.
The (A) actions of marital "love" are based on the (B) belief that keeping the pledge will (C) consequently be beneficial to the object of one's love as well as oneself. A, B, C.
Decision/action is only a part of this formula that defines "love," and incorporating more elements in your explanatory statements shows that your initial premise lacks them.
This is just an observation on your premises, not an attempt to start an argument over what "love" is.
This is just an observation on your premises, not an attempt to start an argument over what “love” is.
i.e. I agree with everything you said.
With all due respect, this is not a fact. It is a human opinion, out of atheistic concepts. The Biblical truth is that men and women were created to live together as one being, to serve, protect, and sustain each other; and to propagate the race in a preserving environment. That is a survival fact.
And your expansion brought out the character of what charitable "love" consists of, without which no satisfactory relationship can continue, and with which I also agree. Others reading your comments will be edified and comforted.
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