Years ago I was required to read a book for a psychology class I was taking. I couldn't tell you the title of the book or the name of the author, but it was the story of her struggle with undiagnosed mental illness. The book chronicled her life, the highs and the many lows, as she fought through what she later found out to be bipolar disorder.
Prior to diagnosis she had several failed romantic relationships. One, she recalled, was especially passionate in the way many fantasize love to be like, or ought to be like. Romantic gestures, amazing intimate encounters, grandiose proclamations & poetic compliments. Like something from the movies. But in between those moments were periods of violence, anger, jealousy, bitterness. Neither party was mentally healthy & it was abundantly clear by how they treated one another, how they viewed & valued one another & themselves.
By the time I was sixteen & reading this book I had learned a few things about love, mostly about what love isn't. I knew it wasn't always sunshine & rainbows, I knew that at times it was hard work, & I knew that if it was real & true it was worth sacrificing for. But I also knew, or thought, that it was never boring. To me, this relationship she described sounded like love - messy, full of ups & downs. I was viewing it through the lens of someone young & woefully unconfident, & someone likewise woefully unaware of that lack of confidence & experience. In summary, I was a teenager - convinced I knew it all, convinced I was smarter than the teacher who had assigned this book to read, convinced I was far more mature than my peers.
The most telling thing, looking back, was my reaction to the author's description of the relationship she had with her husband after being diagnosed & years of work on herself. While she had spent many pages talking about the love affair she'd had in her youth & in the throes of her mania, on the relationship with her husband she spent maybe one or two pages max. Mostly she described how stable it was - they respected each other, their fights didn't comprise of throwing things or screaming at the top of their lungs. In other words it was utterly boring.
What a let down.
I remember reading these passages & finishing the book & thinking, "Wait, that's it? She finally feels better but winds up being totally boring & lame?" It was like the scenes in A Clockwork Orange after Alex has been subjected to brainwashing & winds up a shell of himself. Sure, he's no longer raping people & causing mayhem with his fellow droogs, but at least back then he wasn't boring. Where's the excitement? Where's the personality? Where are the things that make these people interesting & stand apart from the rest of the so-called sheep?
That couldn't be love, no way, I thought. Love, healthy & real love, could still be full of excitement & passion, right? It had to. Something like love couldn't have inspired the hundreds of thousands of poems, pieces of art, songs, everything if it was as boring as this author was describing. No way was I going to have a relationship like that. No. Way.
And I didn't. For a long time my relationships looked more like the the one she had had while unknowingly battling mental illness. Mine were not as tumultuous as the one she described, but they definitely weren't healthy either. Though, at the time, I doubt I would have described them as boring. It's amazing what one will put up with in the name of excitement (or passion or whatever blanket term you want to use to mask the truth).
When my now-husband & I started dating it was a time of great excitement & adventure. He had & has a real knack for making things fun & whimsical, even the most mundane things you could imagine. I had never known anyone like him - absolutely full of joie de vivre. Like most relationships the beginning was story-worthy; surprise dates, beautiful love notes, random gifts. The budding romance had all the excitement I had dreamt of without all the nastiness I had become used to in previous relationships & had even come to expect. He never took my bait, held me accountable, always forgave even when I had totally flown off the handle. He remained steadfast; still does. I was amazed. I knew those initial honeymoon sparks would eventually wear off, so what would I do if we couldn't spice things up with a good ol' knock-down-drag-out fight once in a while?
Fortunately I got over that pretty quickly.
Now, eleven Valentine's Days together later, I've come to appreciate the steady type of relationship the author described as having with her husband. I appreciate it because it's what I now have, & I thank God I do. Yes, we are now that "boring" couple that gets excited about working in the garden together. Our biggest "fights" are about what we should watch at night. Our day-to-day life is pretty...day-to-day. We eat, sleep, go to work, take care of our kids. But we also dream together & laugh a lot. We still write notes to each other, though they tend to be a lot shorter. We still go on dates but they tend to be at the same three or four restaurants in our area.
From the outset things look pretty dull. 16-year-old me certainly would have thought so. But I wouldn't say life is boring. And the reason it's not is because that strong love is there & it miraculously continues to grow as we welcome more children into our family. If I just had to cook for myself, clean for myself, go to work to pay my bills, that sure as hell would be boring. But when I'm doing those things knowing it's providing a wonderful life for my family, for the ones I love, it loses its surface meaninglessness. The problem with boring lives, I have come to find, isn't that they lack excitement or variation necessarily - it's that they lack true, real love. The reason those other relationships fizzled out? They weren't real. It wasn't real love.
Real love is transformative. It takes the ordinary & makes it extraordinary. It takes water & turns it into wine. Real love is never, ever boring.
"Let all that you do be done in love." - 1 Corinthians 16:14
Prior to diagnosis she had several failed romantic relationships. One, she recalled, was especially passionate in the way many fantasize love to be like, or ought to be like. Romantic gestures, amazing intimate encounters, grandiose proclamations & poetic compliments. Like something from the movies. But in between those moments were periods of violence, anger, jealousy, bitterness. Neither party was mentally healthy & it was abundantly clear by how they treated one another, how they viewed & valued one another & themselves.
By the time I was sixteen & reading this book I had learned a few things about love, mostly about what love isn't. I knew it wasn't always sunshine & rainbows, I knew that at times it was hard work, & I knew that if it was real & true it was worth sacrificing for. But I also knew, or thought, that it was never boring. To me, this relationship she described sounded like love - messy, full of ups & downs. I was viewing it through the lens of someone young & woefully unconfident, & someone likewise woefully unaware of that lack of confidence & experience. In summary, I was a teenager - convinced I knew it all, convinced I was smarter than the teacher who had assigned this book to read, convinced I was far more mature than my peers.
The most telling thing, looking back, was my reaction to the author's description of the relationship she had with her husband after being diagnosed & years of work on herself. While she had spent many pages talking about the love affair she'd had in her youth & in the throes of her mania, on the relationship with her husband she spent maybe one or two pages max. Mostly she described how stable it was - they respected each other, their fights didn't comprise of throwing things or screaming at the top of their lungs. In other words it was utterly boring.
What a let down.
I remember reading these passages & finishing the book & thinking, "Wait, that's it? She finally feels better but winds up being totally boring & lame?" It was like the scenes in A Clockwork Orange after Alex has been subjected to brainwashing & winds up a shell of himself. Sure, he's no longer raping people & causing mayhem with his fellow droogs, but at least back then he wasn't boring. Where's the excitement? Where's the personality? Where are the things that make these people interesting & stand apart from the rest of the so-called sheep?
That couldn't be love, no way, I thought. Love, healthy & real love, could still be full of excitement & passion, right? It had to. Something like love couldn't have inspired the hundreds of thousands of poems, pieces of art, songs, everything if it was as boring as this author was describing. No way was I going to have a relationship like that. No. Way.
And I didn't. For a long time my relationships looked more like the the one she had had while unknowingly battling mental illness. Mine were not as tumultuous as the one she described, but they definitely weren't healthy either. Though, at the time, I doubt I would have described them as boring. It's amazing what one will put up with in the name of excitement (or passion or whatever blanket term you want to use to mask the truth).
When my now-husband & I started dating it was a time of great excitement & adventure. He had & has a real knack for making things fun & whimsical, even the most mundane things you could imagine. I had never known anyone like him - absolutely full of joie de vivre. Like most relationships the beginning was story-worthy; surprise dates, beautiful love notes, random gifts. The budding romance had all the excitement I had dreamt of without all the nastiness I had become used to in previous relationships & had even come to expect. He never took my bait, held me accountable, always forgave even when I had totally flown off the handle. He remained steadfast; still does. I was amazed. I knew those initial honeymoon sparks would eventually wear off, so what would I do if we couldn't spice things up with a good ol' knock-down-drag-out fight once in a while?
Fortunately I got over that pretty quickly.
Now, eleven Valentine's Days together later, I've come to appreciate the steady type of relationship the author described as having with her husband. I appreciate it because it's what I now have, & I thank God I do. Yes, we are now that "boring" couple that gets excited about working in the garden together. Our biggest "fights" are about what we should watch at night. Our day-to-day life is pretty...day-to-day. We eat, sleep, go to work, take care of our kids. But we also dream together & laugh a lot. We still write notes to each other, though they tend to be a lot shorter. We still go on dates but they tend to be at the same three or four restaurants in our area.
From the outset things look pretty dull. 16-year-old me certainly would have thought so. But I wouldn't say life is boring. And the reason it's not is because that strong love is there & it miraculously continues to grow as we welcome more children into our family. If I just had to cook for myself, clean for myself, go to work to pay my bills, that sure as hell would be boring. But when I'm doing those things knowing it's providing a wonderful life for my family, for the ones I love, it loses its surface meaninglessness. The problem with boring lives, I have come to find, isn't that they lack excitement or variation necessarily - it's that they lack true, real love. The reason those other relationships fizzled out? They weren't real. It wasn't real love.
Real love is transformative. It takes the ordinary & makes it extraordinary. It takes water & turns it into wine. Real love is never, ever boring.
"Let all that you do be done in love." - 1 Corinthians 16:14
Comments
Post a Comment