Love Is Not What You Expect

Love: In the Beginning

Give people the task of remembering first love (the early days of relationship) and find the reward of whimsical, sentimental half-smiles and a faraway gazes. Each one of the people remembering shares a common bond: unexpectedness.  First love comes unexpectedly and develops in unexpected ways -- but just once.
More than two decades ago, I expected to take a photography class with a weekly lab lesson.  I did not expect to fall in love with the lab instructor when our eyes met across a work table.  God had other plans and had paved the way for my husband to teach that lab, which he had not expected to do.  Fate?  No.  God.

Love leads people to participate in life, behave better than they usually do, enjoy every small gesture as if it will happen only once, live in hope of a next meeting, hold the object of affection in high esteem, communicate ravenously, discover new attractions to the other person, perpetuate the positive and overlook the negative, put opinions on hold in deference to forming a closer union, and look for similarities in word, deed, emotion, spirit and thought.

In new love, we try to connect.  We forge paths toward each other.  We bring together all the similarities we can find to increase common ground.  We put energy toward bonding them.  In short frames of time, we attempt to rewire circuitry in ourselves to better match our love interest.  We give the best of ourselves without asking for anything, but most definitely, we receive a return on that investment that comes by way of the other person's behaviors and words.  These things happen, and they feel automatic.

We make changes we don't mind making.  We make changes we don't notice we make.  We change.

We expect nothing from the other person, but cling to the hope that we will continue to receive as much as we give, but have absolutely no reservations about continuing to give.  That ability feels endless.  We will never knowingly conserve it or quit giving.

And we're right.  We don't do it knowingly at all.


Love: Forward to the Now 

After years (a few, several or many) of marital bliss followed by the invasion of reality that every relationship faces, many of us spare the giving because, guess what?  We are human.  We do not have an "endless" button.  The "automatic" of first love has moved toward the "systematic" of learned behaviors -- we focus on the behaviors our spouse has learned ... those which we detest.  Some of us have quit altogether.  And whatever the case, we have done it without knowing it.

Love is not what you expect.  It is not what I expect.  It begins without expectation and without tremendous effort, but it continues only with great expectation and with tremendous effort.

The trouble begins when we focus more on the expectation -- the expectation of what the other person will do.

We focus less on the effort -- the effort we put into the relationship.

As we move through our relationship, we need to reverse those tendencies.  Focus on expecting from ourselves the loving gestures we need to unearth, dust off and begin to give freely again.  Focus on the effort we put into our everyday encounters with our spouse, and into life itself.  Love with purpose.

Love is not a feeling.  Love is a series of gestures, mostly small ones, that require thought, a bit of planning, and a positive attitude.

We see those words all over the Internet and in media of all kinds, and we think, "YES!  I want that!"

We do want that. We want to feel it.  Be the object of it.  Act as the receiver.  Yet, each of us has to die to ourselves and live for God first and then for our spouses, in giving.  Love is not what you expect.


Rewiring Expectations

The rewiring of our expectations happens with our full knowledge, we cannot wait or hope passively.  The negative changes we have grafted or redirected through years with our spouses have happened in an "unknowing" state.  Why?  Because we have learned to cope rather than to address trouble head-on as we travel the road of marriage.  When we rewire around overloaded circuits we create a more mixed-up bundle of wires and the overloads still exist.  They arc and cause breakers to flip, and we flip it back and continue on around the problem, hoping to avoid the wires that cause the problem ... but not knowing which one.

Avoid the guessing.  Don't make one more electrical connection that doesn't serve to light love between you and your husband.

• Pray for open connections.  God has the job of Master Electrician in this area.  He charges no fees and his work is perfect.  He can work miracles you have never imagined.  
• Read all the verses you can find about love.  I don't want to beat I Corinthians 13 into the ground, but for goodness' sake, it's all there in beautiful prose.  The Golden Rule is shorter, and very direct -- do to others (your husband) in the way you would have others do to you.  Treat him the way you want to be treated.  
• Exchange some "Me Time" in favor of "We Time" -- make plans to take care of yourselves as a couple.  Work and play together, plan, hope, dream and expect good things.  We all need to take time to care for ourselves and to have a break once in a while, but balance holds the key here.
• Work toward oneness of *body, mind, spirit and emotion.  *(Physical intimacy feels impossible when you don't feel emotionally attached.  Your husband will feel emotionally attached when you engage with him in body.  We are polar opposites in our wiring on this.  Do what YOU can do to change this aspect of your relationship.  This is the area in which I made my first step -- and the benefits build on themselves).
• Don't expect perfection.  Marriage requires work, sacrifice, selflessness and time.  Some days, we don't feel like working, we don't want to give anything today, we feel selfish and feel pressed for time.  This is where we keep working at it, with no such phrase as "I give up" allowed.  Pray continually.  God will redirect you!
• Remember the good old days.  Memories of first love help us rewind and repeat.  Do this as often as you can because forgetting happens as life takes over and we lose that laser-like focus.
• Build on your successes.  
• Mistakes happen.  Try, try again.
• Focus on the little things.  Eye contact, a touch on the arm, holding hands, a hug, a smile, a little gift, a note on the steering wheel, a text or phone call -- the small things that make people feel noticed.  Do them.  Often.  
• Make it real.  No fake gestures allowed, no forced smiles.  Pray for the things you feel incapable of doing and find that wire coming alive and ready for connection.

With God, all things are possible.  Believe it, pray it, and watch it work.  Soon, you find your unspoken expectations have shrunken to almost unnoticeable levels and your marriage looks better than you have seen it in years.

Love is definitely not what you expect, but it's everything you give.