My brother told me this morning of a study he read about online. Some scientists, he said, had theorized that it was impossible for men and women to remain in love for more than 2-4 years and that anything people consider love past that point was simply companionship and shared interest.

But, he relayed further, a group of long-time couples told these scientists that they were, in fact, still very much in love. The people responsible for the study tested the endorphin levels, thought patterns, and brain reactions of this group of couples and discovered that, lo and behold, they were still “clinically” in love.

Decades past the puppy love stage and into what is usually characterized by a working partnership, it would appear they were still twitterpated.

wedding ring

Today I slipped it off, my double band. It was only to wash a dish and then I slid it back on that left ring finger. I twirled it. Toward my palm, back to my knuckle.

He had it custom made back then, because he knew what I had dreamed of and he wanted it to be perfect. And then he surprised me the day he pulled the ring from his pocket. Truly, I was shocked.

But I said yes.

 

I spun the ring and pondered that study and those scientists and their theory and their long-married subjects.

And I thought back to that time when I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep wearing this white gold circle clasping a brilliant diamond – the stone with an inclusion that likely happened hiking through Alaska on our honeymoon.

 

I wondered about the couples in the study. I wondered of their stories.

Are they actually in love now? They say they are. The research says they are.

But I don’t believe any of them have always been in love, since day one.

In fact, I’d guess many of them have felt pretty well out of love at some point in their decades.

Enough that, perhaps, they’ve considered taking off their rings?

 

I was young when I said yes and wore the ring. So young. I hardly knew my own mind, let alone my heart. I did what was right, and I did what made sense. I did know I loved this man enough to wear his ring.

So I did.

 

It’s been over eight years since the day he surprised me with a ring
and I’m telling you now about that time I thought of taking it off.

I mulled it in my brain, thought of all the ways it would be okay. Was drowned by the reasons it wouldn’t. I imagined my life, his life, without these rings we wore.

 

But then

one day

I chose.

I chose him.

I chose him all over again.

This man, this old-and-young-and-not-very-wise version of love.

He fought and he won. He held my heart close and he wooed me to his shoulder.

He had certainly been the one to pursue me then, those years ago, and I was captivated by him. But now he caught my heart and soul again and it was my turn to really choose.

And I chose him.

Really chose him this time.

 

And now? Oh, now… I didn’t know there could be such a cocktail of love and companionship and history and life.

 

I’m imagining those couples and their stories tonight. I wonder how many years they’d been together when the love wore away and they discovered the truth of it.

Love is a choice isn’t just something our grandmothers said because it sounded pretty. They didn’t tell the young brides that love grows with age simply to make conversation.

They were right.

It is a choice. An every day choice, a hard choice, a heavy choice, an I-have-to-do-this-if-it-kills-me choice. It’s a happy choice, a beautiful choice, a supernatural, God-empowered choice.

Without that? An infant love never becomes a mature love. It doesn’t know its own strength.

Sometimes everything has to break in order to heal all over again. For the bond to be strong, it must be tested.

 

Is it possible to be so very in love after twenty or thirty or forty years?

Yes.

But perhaps not without first falling out of it.

 


I’m very aware that there are marriages where one partner walks away, no matter the choice of the other, and that there are relationships that break for reasons untold and unknown. I’m simply speaking of my own observations, my own life, and my own experience. I know you know that and understand.

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