I am an incurable romantic. I actually love romantic comedies but I treat them exactly as they are: fiction. Real love doesn't resemble what Hollywood makes it out to be.
Real love is founded on a right relationship. This doesn't mean that those who started wrong can't build a right relationship. It just means that real love can't be built upon manipulation, impulses, sex drives, great looks or nice bodies. It can't even be built on having the same hobbies, liking the same music or having the same interest in foods. The relationship must build upon giving honor to the other person. It is being more than considerate. It is more than accommodation. It draws boundaries so that neither person is asked to violate their values. It fits the two people together as one as their values of faith mesh together. They become inseparable even when they are apart.
Real love is determined by commitment. There is no real love when there is a reservation of commitment. The commitment is to the death. Real love notices the flaws in the partner but does not hang onto those flaws. Real love confronts without threats. It expresses itself without walking out.
Real love makes each person very vulnerable. The lovers open themselves up to each other. This is why the commitment needs to precede the act of sex. Sex opens the two to each other. The lack of commitment makes sex cheap. The presence of commitment makes it precious. Many married people have sex problems after being married because they made it cheap before marriage. They make it just as cheap even though they are married because it does not represent opening up to one another. It is just as biological as scratching an itch. It does not have the lasting effect that it should have. It merely relieves the tension for the moment.
Real love is more beautiful than Hollywood has made it. Maybe that's why movies rarely go beyond the wedding. They either don't know what comes next or they believe that what comes next isn't interesting at all.
I am an incurable romantic who is totally in love with his wife of nearly thirty-five years. I believe Hollywood would never be interested in a story like ours. They would claim it is boring but I would disagree. It is the most exciting love possible.
Genesis 2:22-24 (ESV) 22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
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