Love's Mutual Nature

We may glimpse love’s mutual nature most intimately in romantic love. When I conduct pre‑marriage counseling, I have the couple tell me their story, when and where they met, how they initially reacted to each other, how their relationship unfolded, who said "I love you" first, and when the "marriage" word surfaced. Then I ask them whether they merely love each other or are "in love." They each must answer for themselves. If they do not answer in the affirmative, I caution them against marriage. How do you know if you are in love? If you have any doubts you are likely not in love.

Telling me their story is in preparation for three essential questions about their love, designed to help them better discern their “one flesh.” The first question, "The love you have for each other, in the last analysis, did you create or discover it? That is, did you decide to love the other, and then the love emerged after your decision? Or did you come to discover the love over whatever period of time?" The well-nigh universal answer: "I discovered it."

While I ask the second question, I have them gaze into each other’s eyes. I ask, "The love for each other you discovered, is it one love or two? That is, in addition to your personal feelings, when you look at each other is there something distinctly between you, a "something more" shared by you both?

To explain, I ask them whether the English language is "yours or mine." The answer: English is distinctly "ours." It is our shared language by which we may establish and distinguish ourselves. I say that language reveals our three dimensional reality through the three personal pronouns, "I, You and We," I announce that their "We’ constitutes their "one flesh."

To make the point, I utilize two refrigerator door magnets. I say, "Opposites attract. Note that when these two magnets are brought close together an invisible magnetic field is generated. If you nail down the magnets while the field still exists, then toss iron filings over the top of them, an ellipsis would form around them, like an egg on its side, with the heaviest concentration of iron lodging between the two magnets. The ellipsis is a visualization of an invisible reality as real as the magnets."

Love is as the gravity of the mutual world. Love is as real as the persons who love, yet cannot exist apart from them. I ask: "Regarding these magnets, one plus one equals what?" They usually answer "two." I respond: "Doesn’t it also equal one, as in the Biblical phrase ‘And the two shall become one flesh’? Not only that, but don’t these joined magnets also equal ‘three?’ When they are proximate a third reality, namely their ‘field’ is generated."

Now they are ready for a definition: "romantic love is a spiritual organism existing between two persons, and only two persons. It is as real as they are, whether it lasts for all eternity, or dies the dreadful death of divorce. The love will continue evolving as constantly as the partners change. And since they are always changing, so will the relationship."

Comes my third question: "Concerning this shared love you both discovered, have you been, so to say, born again into it? Do you see each other as no one ever has before? You get to start over again; you get a brand new ‘at bat’ regardless of your past. Genuine love is re‑creative of persons.”