Real love means patience, selflessness, not emotion

By CHAPLAIN (LT. COL.) MICHAEL WRIGHT

We just celebrated Valentine’s Day, where we acknowledge our love for someone else in a special way. The problem is, not everything we call love is really love. As you may know, the English language has only one word for describing the diverse kinds of love we human beings can have—the single word is love. Other languages have several words to describe different kinds of love. Short of giving a language lesson here, different cultures have distinct words to describe the love expressed between a husband and wife, between parents and children, between friends, and even between God and humankind.
Yet, in our society the word love tends to cover a broad spectrum of things. Some use the word love synonymously with sex, “Sex is sex and love is love.” One may involve the other but they are not the same thing. This confusion is part of the reason we have so many broken relationships. There’s a major tendency in relationships to get the cart before the horse. Real genuine love and commitment, not sex, is the basis for strong, lasting relationships. Sex masquerades as love. This masquerade for love lures many of our young people down its path because it’s portrayed as the normal thing to do.
Most of us have seen the heartache and pain caused by this twisting of God’s instruction and gift of love. Love is not just a warm fuzzy feeling that comes and goes. Real love goes way deeper than shallow emotions that change almost as often as the weather. Real love involves commitment to someone else and is not based on how we feel every moment. Feelings come and go but mutual commitment carries us through the difficult times.
Love has some basic characteristics: patience, kindness, and self-less-ness just to name a few. There is a short moving stanza about love in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. Having a copy of it close by to review often will broaden our understanding of what real love should be.
We are painfully aware, and the statistics bear this out, that many suicides are rooted in relationship issues, especially among our young people/soldiers. Studies show that rewarding and fulfilling relationships are built on commitment. In contrast, relationships built on emotions/feelings, convenience, or something other than a real understanding of love are less fulfilling and have a higher rate of separation and break up.
Could it be possible that God knows what He’s talking about? He knows how painful broken relationships are. When we get the cart before the horse, i.e., confuse sex with real love/commitment, we are in effect, building a relationship on sand—not rock—and the tendency is for these relationships to fall apart. The emotional pain from broken relationships is so difficult to cope with that some look for a way to escape the pain.
If you experience a broken relationship because one person is not committed, seek counsel, talk with a trusted friend, realize you can get through the pain of separation and build a better relationship in the future. God wants you to have a rewarding successful relationship. He made us and knows what works best. We will do better in our relationships if we follow His plan.