Recently, a friend and I embarked on our annual discussion of how difficult committed dating and marriage is in today’s culture and how glad she was not to be “out there in that insanity.” Agreeing with the insanity we came to the why of it all. After circling around and around for a bit (I’m sure some of you can relate to the circular nature of certain conversations), I had a moment of clarity. We weren’t talking about the same thing. I was talking about choice and she was talking about commitment.
Now, I am all for commitment. But not just for the sake of being committed. Judging by my friend’s response, perhaps that concept is unique to our generation. (You see, my friend is in her 60′s and her generation came from the age of goodnight pecks at the front door and dance halls.) She kept bringing up staying in a marriage because you were committed. Period. And I kept going back to its not just the commitment but the desire to make that CHOICE to honor the commitment.
It may seem like a hair splitter, but to me its two very different concepts. My friend is all about honoring her commitment and I am all about making the daily choice to honor that (for me — admittedly hypothetical) commitment.
Frankly, what do I know? She’s talking from the experience of a life-long marriage and I am coming from the hypothetical. Not to mention that I think my road proves to be the more difficult of the two because it precludes the default mode that can come in oh so handy on the days when you wake up next to someone for whom you are decidedly NOT feeling the “I love you’s.” Those are the hard days when making that choice is vital.
When you look at the current divorce rate as well as the amount of people in their second half of life splitting from long marriages…I wonder if the commitment default mode is enough to keep a marriage together. I wonder if we don’t need to embrace the awareness that love is a choice. Commitment is a choice. Your actions are your choice.
Perhaps the only thing that will keep commitment alive is marrying it to the choice to stay. Every day waking up and making that beautiful choice to love the other person despite and perhaps because of our mutual humanity.
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