Weddingbee Blog

No pretty pictures today my dears, I’m sorry about that. But I’ve been thinking about something a lot lately, so I thought maybe I could share with you. I know, I know…I promised a post full of pretty details would be next. Forgive me?

I adore the Beatles, and I love their song All You Need is Love. Love it so much, in fact, that it will be the recessional for our ceremony.

But I don’t believe it. Love is NOT all you need.

This is where my encore status makes me a little different. I’ve been through two failed marriages. And I loved both of those men. Loved them completely, to the point where I sacrificed myself and my needs to them. But those marriages, they didn’t work. And it’s not because I didn’t love them.

It’s because love isn’t all you need.

Love is a major part of the foundation of any relationship. That I don’t deny. And I don’t think anyone should get married without love. But there has to be more. There has to be trust, and compromise, and loyalty, and dedication. There has to be that decision that you make every day to be with this one person.

The thing is, marriage is hard. Relationships are hard…any relationship. They are work. And in order to maintain a relationship or a marriage, you have to be willing to put in the effort. Every morning when you wake up, you choose to be with this person. You choose to stay where you are. You choose love, and your partner, and your relationship. And you do what it takes to support that choice. But if one morning you wake up, and you don’t choose love or you don’t choose your relationship… well that’s how you end up breaking up, or divorcing, or separating.

You don’t choose love because it’s easy. You choose love because it’s love. You choose for that to be more important than your budget woes, or the crappy thing that happened at work today, or that fight you had over the dishes in the kitchen sink. You choose love over a screaming child, or your stress. Sometimes you even choose love when you don’t like your partner very much right then. You choose it because you know you’ll like them again and you want them to be there when you will. You choose it because the dishes will eventually get put away, your children will go to sleep, your stress will get worked out, and you’ll figure out how to pay the bills. And when all of that is said and done, if your partner is suddenly not beside you, you won’t be happy anymore. So you choose love.

Marriage is something you do, actively. Simply loving, will not sustain it. But choosing will.

So maybe this is all so much garbledy-gook because I have so much emotion about this particular issue. And maybe you think I’m off my rocker. But there it is. I think about this sometimes when Mr. Lox and I are having a particularly animated “discussion.” I think about how easy it was to live alone and why I don’t do that anymore. And I think about how sad I’d be if I woke up one morning and we didn’t choose each other and love. And I know that I’m willing to work. And I know that he is worth that effort.

Right. Apparently I have no idea how to stop rambling so I’ll do it with a quote from an awesome children’s book that I gave to Mr. Lox for Valentine’s Day earlier this year. I know you all have probably seen it before, but I love it most for this:

Even if it was the 999th of July
Even if it was August
Even if it was way down at the bottom of November
Even if it was no place particular in January
I would go on choosing you
And you would go on choosing me
Over and over again
That’s how it would happen every time

- from “I Like You” by Sandol Stoddard Warburg

Why do you choose love?