That’s Love

October 14, 2007 by enchantingsunshine.

For this week’s episode of “That’s Love,” I’d like to share a couple of stories.

Years ago I read several books that discussed theories about what makes for a happy marriage. I use the word “theories” because even with case studies, any conclusions are still based on a researcher’s interpretation of the data. Famous marriage expert John Gottman has done the most compelling and scientific research on successful marriages and provides “recipes” for happiness and disaster. Though not as scientific, other marriage authors offer interesting insights into marriage, even if most of their guidelines for marital bliss aren’t gleaned from labs but rather personal anecdotes and self-reports.

One of my favorite books on the subject is by Judith Viorst, called Grown-Up Marriage. Viorst proposes that happy marriages stem from a mature understanding of what marriage is. Marriage isn’t a fantasy created in Hollywood where two individuals feel amorous every single day and never get irritated with each other. Individuals in happy marriages accept the reality of life, and have more realistic expectations. We live in a culture of choices that gives us the luxury of being choosy and demanding of perfection. We are less tolerant of flaws, not wanting, but expecting perfection. We are in the habit of regarding people with the same critical eye as we do our things. In a culture where “good enough” is considered “settling” and a bad thing, even though we ourselves are imperfect, Viorst asserts that happiness is not to be found around another corner. In a mature marriage, we know and accept that people are fallible and imperfect, we tolerate imperfections in our partner, in ourselves, and in our responses to each other. We don’t pathologize one another, constantly over-emphasizing defects as an excuse to leave. Instead, we focus on what we love, putting our energy into appreciating, not picking apart a spouse who could never live up to the unrealistic standard of perfection we’ve invented. Happy couples aren’t happy every day and they’re not without recurring arguments. The reality of life is that you can love someone with your whole heart, but if you spend more than a couple of years together, you are going to really, really get on each other’s nerves sometimes. And what’s more, if you keep working to understand one another, you’ll also love each other more deeply than you imagined.

It’s been a long time since I read the book, so that summary may be a conglomeration of other things I’ve read too. Anyway, you get the point.

My favorite story from Viorst’s book was about a husband who liked to line the medicine cabinet shelves with aluminum foil. His wife was never able to learn the reasons for the habit and found the whole thing rather troubling. Sometimes she would find herself staring inside the cabinet, pondering his bizarre behavior and unnatural affinity for tin foil and think “Who is this man and why did I marry him?” Haven’t we all been there.

This is all a long lead in to a weekly feature I’m starting called, “That’s Love.” I had the idea a week ago but a conversation with a colleague on Friday convinced me to proceed. It’s a way to remember that, even with Bush still in office, there are still so many examples of love and kindness in our world, and we notice what we focus on. So here’s focusing on the good stuff. Hope you like…

That’s love! Friday, a colleague, who I’ll call Jan, came into work in a sleepless fog because of a procrastinating husband. The night before, Jan’s husband was supposed to prepare the breakfast he was catering on Friday morning. Just before heading off to her monthly bridge club meeting at 7 p.m., Jan asked her husband if he needed help and was assured that everything was under control. When she arrived home at 11 p.m., her husband was just starting to make the food. Even though Jan was annoyed with her husband for procrastinating, she immediately started helping him make twelve dozen mini muffins, went to bed for a couple of hours while he continued to work, and then woke up at 4:30 to help him finish the catering work. When I said, “that was so sweet of you” she replied, “Well, I didn’t have a choice, did I?”

The thing is, she did have a choice. She could have come home, seen her husband working in the kitchen, kissed him goodnight with a slap on the rump and said, “Good luck!” and slept like a baby. She could have made him feel like a loser, lectured, and scolded, and made him feel two feet tall for a mistake he was already well-aware that he made. (Of course, if he has a chronic habit of being irresponsible, helping him might actually be hurting him, but that’s a topic for a different discussion.) With the love of a wife, Jan overlooked and forgave her husband for being imperfect, a fact they both knew, and even though annoyed at his behavior, sacrificed her own sleep to help her husband succeed. Friday afternoon, Jan received a call that the breakfast went off so well that her husband was asked to cater lunch the next day.

I have a few of my own examples of “that’s love” from the last week. On a trip to Baltimore earlier this year, I bought a poster of Memorial Stadium. Unfortunately, my childhood home isn’t in it, but even so, it’s a good picture. Earlier this week, my husband carefully unrolled it and weighted it down on the dining room table so that it would lay flat. Yesterday, when we were shopping, he suggested we get a frame, already having memorized the dimensions. While I searched for an item in a different part of the store, he looked through the many frames and picked out one that fits the picture and our decor perfectly. All without me ever mentioning anything about hanging up my poster. As I write this, he is hammering a nail into the wall behind me to hang it up.

Over the last four days, he’s spent his spare time trying to ascertain the source of our network issues (and still no clue, bless his heart). He researches on the Internet on one of the computers that can hold the connection for more than five minutes at a time, has tried reinstalling programs, unplugging this and that, back and forth, up and down the stairs he goes. If it were me, I’d have given up and bought a new computer and router two months ago. But with the patience of a saint, he continues to work at it, determined to fix our problems the right way, even though it means sacrificing time that he would rather spend doing other things.

Most importantly, one day I made coffee and as I poured it, remembered with disappointment that we were out of half and half. Half and half makes the coffee. It’s one of God’s most perfect foods. I opened the refrigerator and to my delight noticed that this most perfect creature I married bought a replacement, enabling me to enjoy the full glory of my coffee.

These things are like getting flowers. They’re an expression of caring that shows someone is thinking about you and your happiness, without the death and maintenance of replacing the water and cleaning up the dead flower bits that fall off on your dining room table.

In addition to the romantic relationship examples of “that’s love,” there are expressions of love in the ordinary, every day routine of life. Here’s what I mean. We often get homemade advertisements in our newspaper slot. They’re usually plain font, printed text on a white sheet of paper advertising lawn services, painting, home repair and the like. Often they’re unimaginative and unmemorable and aren’t read beyond the first couple of words as they make their way from my mailbox to the recycle bin. (I prefer to only use contractors found on Angie’s List.) This week though, there was an advertisement that said “love.” A paper flyer was accompanied by a laminated color business card complete with a logo. It was for a pesticide company, and as a good hippy, it’s not a service I’m hoping to need. Even so, I was tempted to save the card because when I looked at it, I could see the person on the other side, full of hope and excitement, lovingly creating a logo and laminating his business cards, excited about the prospect of running his own business, inserting it in my mailbox with hopeful anticipation of generating customers. A piece of the energy that went into making that business card and flyer came through to me. It’s those things that are done with love and care that melt my heart.

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