"Falling in love" is wonderful. Like someone said, here's a person who just *might* fulfill all your dreams. That's exciting. But it simply cannot last. Sooner or later, they're going to disappoint you. So then what? Get rid of them in hopes of finding someone else to audition for your dreams? You can waste a lot of years that way, 'cause ain't nobody perfect.
My church teachings have always been along the lines of "Love is a verb." It's what you choose to do, not what feeling happens to you. That's what marriage vows are about, really. Nobody needs incentive to stay married when they're rapturously in love. It's when you're looking around for a cast-iron skillet that you need that reminder that you made a promise. Some friends of mine got married the other week, and they wrote their own vows. The one I really liked was "I will love you when I am proud of you -- and I will love you when I'm disappointed." That strikes me as very healthy.
I've been married almost 17 years now. Some of those years were pretty rough. I used to joke that the only reason we stayed married was because we were too poor to afford divorce lawyers.
But really, it was because we had decided ahead of time that we were going to *stay* married, come hell or high water. (Part of that was the conviction that that was what Christians should do, and part was our personal backgrounds -- I had the good example of my mother staying married to my step-dad even when he made her miserable, and seeing things improve between them, and Kelley had the bad example of his mother getting divorced three times, and basically growing up without a father.) So we endured the bad times, and since then have seen things improve a lot. Our marriage is better now than it *ever* was.
I think I've wandered from the point.
I think my answer to the question is -- I love a good romantic fantasy, but I don't expect real life to look like that.
