Falling In and Out of Love: What If Romance Culture Has Been Fooling Us?
To some degree, a lot of us (myself included) have ingested the magic potion. That is, the whimsical notion of falling in love. I mean, it’s kind of everywhere. Traditional fairytales, Hallmark movies, rom-com movies and lots of music lyrics. Taylor Swift has her own groupies, affectionately known as Swifties, who in many ways capture the younger generation’s version of love and storytelling. But make no mistake: it’s not just modern music. Even Elvis Presley’s famous ballad, “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” has contributed to our culture’s fascination and spellbinding loyalty to being love-struck.
Love is wonderful. But what romance romance culture dresses up as love can be deceiving.
As we hold on to the beauty of love, I want to encourage focusing on the posture in how you pursue love. Romance culture often encourages a posture of falling head over heels when the prospect of romance is budding. If we are not careful, we can get sucked into this strong vortex, not knowing what is up or down, so we just trust our feelings to navigate what we do next.
That part of our brain that helps us to get oriented, slow down, and make thoughtful decisions about the relationship basically gets trampled by the strong feelings of romance. You need the feelings, but you also need the wisdom. The wise part of your brain is crucial.
That’s why I am not a fan of falling in love. Romance culture presents love as something that just “happens” to us, that we are helpless in its presence. I’m more and more convinced that when romance culture speaks of falling in love, that idea is really more about physical attraction, and the big feelings that bubble up inside of us when we are really attracted to someone, than the meaningful stuff that lasts and helps grow a relationship. After all, if we can suddenly fall in love, can’t we also suddenly fall out of love?
Romance culture places a lot of emphasis on the feelings of personal happiness. Falling in love is largely about the onset of positive feelings we experience when a relationship begins. So we keep pursuing things that make us feel good. And falling out of love is when we stop experiencing the positive feelings from being with the person who once stirred those feel-good emotions. Romance culture prizes the positive emotional experience, and is fairly convincing that we must chase after it. When dating, romance culture can shape our thoughts in this direction: “This relationship makes me feel great and happy; this must be love.”
Maybe. Or, maybe not. It’s too soon to call.
Then, after marriage, romance culture can still influence how we define love: “If those butterfly feelings that I once had for you are gone, and I don’t feel happy anymore, then I have the right to find my happiness elsewhere.” The chase for things that make me happy resumes.
Romance culture touches on the very thing that many of us want: a beautiful love. Yet, it tries to convince us to largely base love on things that will make us happy. Falling in love is about pursuing happiness in this new and magical relationship, and falling out of love is the prompt to look elsewhere for happiness. It’s not that happiness is a bad thing. I just think we set the bar too low. Love is more than a feeling.
Bob Goff writes, “Love isn’t something we fall into; love is something we become.” So how do we become love?
One of the best places to look is in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
All of what is spoken about love in this passage points to a life of love in Christ. It is the fullness of love made evident in a life as His disciple. Whether dating or married, how we pursue love and romance matters. It is a posture that is bent on being transformed. Attraction is good, and so is happiness. But love is something that is cross-shaped and lived out in our actions. Not just our feelings.
Many things in this world don’t last. Love is one thing that endures. And how we pursue love matters.
