We are told that generations practicing patriarchal marriage customs did not hold high view of the notion of romantic love as base for marriage. That perception appears to be true for base, but the assumption that romantic love was not present is erroneous. Romance was recognized, but may have been taken as a gift. When it was attached to the will to love, it was good. Romance was a side gift in marriage. It is a natural gift for those who are open and vulnerable to it. It can be fragile, sometimes broken. One wonders how many couples, finding it, will lose it. Genuine love, found in human will, is the base for good, lasting relationships, the best foundation for romance. Romance for modern life is treated as primary base, found in ephemeral passions.
For a marriage, when the foundation of the will to love flounders, romance fails. This is illustrated even in the experiences of Abraham/Sarah, of Isaac/Rebekah, of David/Michal, and others. The realities of their lives seemed to wound romance in their middle years, and sometimes love went to the children. For David and Michal, love died taking romance with it. They did not have children. They were estranged. Romance is not base for marriage. It is a sweet decoration on the cake, but it isn’t the cake. It is too little harnessed to be counted on for too much.
After first blush, the feelings of romance survive as long as the will to love survives. One is human: the other appears to be divine. Generally, or so it seems, men and women lose romance because they complicate their lives, they do not place priority on the reality of living in a love relationship, and they return to their self-interests. They add too much baggage and lose their intimacy, their animation, their mutual feelings of attraction, and disregard reasons for getting on in joyful intimacy. Counselors with long experience can usually identify couples who are quick to take umbrage at nearly anything either one of them does or says. They may even hold love for each other, revealed in the days of their significant needs, but they separate from the touch of romance – the touch of spirit, of empathy, of gentleness, of animation, of intimacy. Unity for them is elusive. The loss is common enough, but can be recovered to gain even higher heights.
Nine men were trapped for 72 hours during July, 2002, in a Pennsylvania coal mine. Water flooded in on them, and they prepared to die. They found an elevation, and by illumination of their hat lights wrote down their thoughts on scraps of paper and placed the notes in a lunch bucket. Dramatically, they were rescued, and in the numerous interviews that followed they referred, with conviction, to two things. One was prayer with faith, faith treated so casually before – but not now. The other was the awareness of how much they loved their families. They wanted to see their wives and children, to tell them how much they loved them. Some had not been verbal before, but they were now in death threat. They learned that the love they muted belongs partly to communication – expressions of affection. The will to love is warmed by the feelings of love, related to romance and other emotions, best when they are unselfishly communicated. We hope those miners remembered what they said, when they were dramatically rescued and went home. Did the years following prove the ideals enlightened in the darkness? Their experience aroused, for a period, some national vision for love’s human grandeur. My observation of a number of these unusual near tragedies is that the virtues declared by survivors last for some, but for some they seem lost in fall back, even to intensifying, their individual patterns. We show the best in us when we take upward directions, and refuse to fall back. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020