If there is anything I have learned from meeting someone you love, it is that love becomes a choice. You voluntarily choose them every second, every hour of the day.
Fairytales and storybooks have got it all wrong. We are often taught that love is a feeling, but feelings are fleeting and unreliable. Feelings are not a true source of support for you or your partner. A relationship cannot be defined by something as unpredictable as your feelings or your emotions in the moment.
Therefore, love is a choice and I am choosing to be with you. I am choosing to love you despite how afraid my heart is. I am choosing to let you in regardless of what my past has taught me. I am choosing to place my heart in your hands and hoping you will not break it. I am choosing to trust that you will remain loyal and that you will not intentionally hurt me. No matter what skeletons are in your closet — worst fears, insecurities, or doubts — I am still going to choose you. I am choosing to choose you because my heart knows I got lucky with this one.
I am choosing to be vulnerable and to let someone into my guarded, taped-up heart. I am choosing to heal my jaded edges and the damage that has been left by others because I want to be able to choose you full-heartedly. I am choosing to heal so that you do not have to carry my baggage — my doubts and fears.
I am choosing to wake up every day at 4 a.m. to watch the sunrise because I want to know why you like sunrises so much. I am choosing to accompany you on every adventure because I know you sometimes feel lonely and I do not ever want you to feel alone. I am choosing to explore your favorite restaurants with you because I know your love language is quality time. I am choosing to support you through every endeavour and reassure your insecurities and worries because you chose to do the same for me.
You are everything to me, and you do not deserve to be half loved due to ever-changing feelings. It is pretty simple: I am choosing to be with you. Because love is a choice.
Couples in long-term commitments often say that love is an ongoing choice. You decide every day how or if you cultivate love in your relationship.
You can experience great love in many ways — romantically, platonically, companionable — but it’s rarely a force out of your control. At some point, love is a choice — and a lot of work!
Why is love a choice?
Love is a choice and a decision because your actions determine if it lives on or ends. You are in control of how you act in your relationships and how much you push past conflict and challenges.
When you decide to work on communication, trust, intimacy, or emotional security, you’re choosing love.
What about hormones? If love is driven in part by biology, it may seem like something beyond your control that will continue indefinitely.
But, while hormones can sweep you up in the early days of love, Elizabeth Earnshaw, a licensed marriage and family therapist from Philadelphia, explains that lasting love requires conscious decision-making.
Hormones may continue making you feel reproductively attracted to your partner, for example, but that’s different than love.
“As your relationship grows, your hormones will no longer be the driver of the feelings,” she says. “This means you need to be the driver of the feelings. You do this by actively choosing to be a loving partner.”
It may feel easy to find love at first — your hormones are leading the way. Building love, which implies emotional intimacy, may take effort and action.
If you feel you love your partner despite the absence of loving gestures and actions from them, you may be dealing with an anxious attachment style or a personality disorder, among others.
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