I had been driving to school in college, flipping through the radio stations when it hit me. Just about every song on the radio was on love. Having it, losing it, pining for it. Songs were laden with expressions such as, “you are my everything,” or “I’m nothing without you.”

I paused, turned the radio off for a minute, and reflected. Romantic love, I thought, seems to be the center point of people’s lives. It must be an essential to life, an absolute that gives us meaning and purpose. It has to be. Every artist knew this, and I did not. Why else would it be so ubiquitous?

In today’s age, we view romantic love as meant to fulfill and complete, concepts that were previously directed to the Divine.

What I didn’t know in that moment was that I was recapitulating my twenty-some years of socialization and the myriad of erroneous beliefs I had absorbed on romantic love, and I wasn’t even aware of it. I was falling into the line of thinking to believe romantic love as the most supreme of feelings and experiences in life: romantic love as only a feeling. Romantic love as a necessary quest to be journeyed on, to be sought after and found.

It wasn’t until many years later, where my thoughts on love would be challenged, and reframed ENTIRELY.

With that being said, that only begs the question, how would YOU describe love?

Would you describe it as a feeling, a knowing, a longing, a sense of connection, a choice?

For years, I would have said all of the above, minus the idea of choice. Love, choice? Gross. The idea of love being a choice would have caused me to gag. Surely, love was much more special and exciting. Love, I believed, wasn’t a choice; instead,it was a deep feeling of euphoria, mixed with infatuation, and an even deeper sense of knowing that the person you’re joined with is the “one,” your “soul mate,” “meant to be,” or whatever phrase you’d like to insert.

Love is what made you feel alive, fulfilled you, gave your life meaning, and validated who you are.

Or so I thought.

In Robert A. Johnson’s book, “We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love” Johnson traces the origin of romantic love, and posits that romantic love replaced what was essentially what was originally directed to the spiritual.

You see, in today’s age, we view romantic love as meant to fulfill and complete, concepts that were previously directed to the Divine. Before the Romantic Era, our deepest desires and needs were taken to God. There were no expectations of oneness or completeness from another fallible human being.

Johnson separates the concepts of “romantic love” and “mature, real love,” noting that romantic love is simply projection of the other person into an idealized self. Romantic love is about the feelings we believe the other person is giving us, which really have nothing to do with him/her, and everything to do with ourselves. Feelings of infatuation stem from the “high” one believes one gets from the other, but it’s completely and utterly distorted.

We get this high, and run with with it, believing we are “in love,” and have a sense of “knowing.” We take our feelings to mean something, and then when the feelings die down, we open our eyes to reality. We become disappointed when the person standing in front of us isn’t as grandiose as we once believed.

For some people, they cannot handle the falling out of infatuation, and find themselves in relationship after relationship, looking for the sustenance of high feelings, something that can never be sustained. For others, they find themselves constantly pursuing someone completely unavailable, which leads to the high. Chasing something you can’t have.

We haven’t exactly grasped the idea that sometimes doing things before the feelings actually leads to the feelings.

Mature, real love on the other hand, is like oatmeal, delicious, good for you, warming of the soul, but yet not quite as intoxicating and tempting as let’s say a donut, artificial in sugar, and empty in nutrition. Real love is about two people showing up for another, learning about the other, growing with the other, seeing the other’s strengths and weaknesses with eyes wide open.

Johnson says, “ultimately, the only enduring relationships will be between couples who consent to see each other as ordinary, imperfect people and who love each other without illusion and without inflated expectations.”

Our lover, therefore, is not a god, they are not perfect, not meant to fulfill us, make us feel alive, or even necessarily make us feel a certain way. They are someone we consent to, agree to, or choose (ah, that word again), and when ready, commit to and journey with in this life.

And perhaps love being a choice is what makes arranged marriages work. In the book “First Comes Marriage,” the author, Reva Seth, likens arranged marriages to a pot of water that begins flat, slowly growing to a simmer, and then eventually, over choosing each other over and over again over the years, comes to boil. “Love” marriages on the other hand are pots of intense boiling passion that eventually simmer down over time.

I wouldn’t dare to say that love is simply a choice all by itself. Choice and commitment are wonderful, but affection is necessary too, or else we find ourselves wrapped up in duty and obligation without any fondness. Ironically, however, action can often precede feeling. And it’s action and choosing with a full heart and well of self that leads to affection. We don’t really think this way as a culture. We do things when we feel like it, and we haven’t exactly grasped the idea that sometimes doing things before the feelings actually leads to the feelings.

Let’s take the definition of love a bit further. If you’ve followed me up until this point, we can recognize that love is a choice, sometimes infused with feeling, and sometimes not. There’s no deep knowing, there’s no putting the other on a pedestal. There’s not even unrealistic expectations of the other to make you feel a certain way. There is a choosing, a showing up, a commitment, a desire to learn and grow together.

In Tim Keller’s book, “The Meaning of Marriage,” Keller discusses the design of marriage from a Christian perspective. Keller’s thesis is that God created marriage to mirror the relationship we have with God. In our relationship with God, we falter, we disappoint, we seek forgiveness, and we receive grace. No matter what, the hope is that the faith and commitment we have to God is what keeps the relationship going. God, at times, has to forgive us from heinous sins, and yet, He loves us nonetheless.

All relationships in life will test our patience, our capacity to love and forgive, but the relationship we have with our spouses tests us the most. Family and friends may come and go, even one’s relationship with his/her children may waver, but if one upholds the vows made to their partner, “til death do us part,” the learning to love and forgive never ceases. We commit to our spouses in the same way God commits to us. Relentlessly, time and time again.

Keller writes, “ In sharp contrast with our culture, the Bible teaches that the essence of marriage is a sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. That means that love is more fundamentally action than emotion…contemporary Western societies make the individual’s happiness the ultimate value, and so marriage becomes primarily an experience of romantic fulfillment. But the Bible sees GOD as the supreme good — not the individual or the family — and that gives us a view of marriage that intimately unites feelings AND duty, passion AND promise.”

How beautiful is that?

Now, when I listen to the radio, I find myself sometimes chuckling, feeling as though I know better than before. I listen to these songs that are so encumbered with misguidance, and I wait for the day when words reflecting real love become much more commonplace. It starts with me, and it starts with you. So, next time someone asks you about what you think love is, what do you think you’ll say?