Is Love a Feeling or a Choice?

What is love? This is perhaps one of the oldest questions of all time. When we are young many of us learn to love first from our parents in the form of sacrificial, familial care and protection. As we grow we usually learn a new form of love, chosen familial love, which includes friends and maybe siblings. Then as we mature many of us begin to crave something more, a deeper more involved love, romantic love.

Romantic love is literally the stuff of legends. It is touted as epic and world-shattering. From hearing our first stories about true loves kiss to experiencing our first crush we are hooked (or possibly repelled) by this particular concept of love.

I have heard time and time again, “Love isn’t a feeling but a choice.” I call bullshit. It is undeniably both.

Love is a feeling when you look into someone else’s eyes and your heart beats fast.
Love is a choice when they do that thing you can’t stand but you choose them regardless.
Love is a feeling when you long to hear their voice.
Love is a choice when they use that voice to hurt your feelings but you stand by them anyway.
Love is a feeling when their touch ignites a passion inside of you.
Love is a choice when your both exhausted and can muster a spark of anything.
Love is a feeling when you know you can’t live without them.
Love is a choice when you realize you could live without them but you never want to.

Real love is the selfless giving of yourself to another. It is knowing someone’s deepest flaws and accepting them anyway. It is knowing what scares them the most and not taking advantage of it. It is acceptance, forgiveness and the promise of commitment to an imperfect person because you chose them. It is being vulnerable and open, knowing they could ruin you with ease but trusting they will not.
Real love is also the acceleration of your heart when they come near, the desire to hear their voice, smell their scent and fall headlong into their embrace. It is the feelings of sweet closeness in a kiss and of wanting them ever closer during intimacy.

Love is not the fairy tale we have been told where people find each other than live happily ever after with no problems, but love is magic, epic, and world-changing! Even with the ‘perfect person’ you will have problems, but you will also have an unbridled joy and happiness that only a true love can impart. For the experience of truly loving someone, and being loved in return, it is worth any risk!