Decided Love Grows Naturally

by Dan Masterton

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but I know that my outlook toward falling in love changed when I realized that love perfects as a decision. It's something you hear (hopefully) from friends or older family members. It's not something you quickly understand or immediately make much sense of. But when you get it, it transforms the superficial romance and movie-narrative conceptions you might have otherwise carried.

To put it simply, I'd say love perfects as a decision when you realize what unconditional love actually means and what it really is. You know it means loving someone without putting any criteria to that love. You need to learn and realize the meaning of that and how to do it. Generally speaking, love is deciding to care for and accompany someone all the time no matter what. It means that you don't depend on positive emotions and the times when you feel affectionate toward someone to treat them lovingly. Even if you don't have butterflies in your stomach about someone, and especially when you're feeling actively frustrated with them, real, full, true love cares for that person nonetheless. It doesn't mean that love is emotionless and cold -- just the opposite: it means that the power of the heart's feelings is coupled with the strength of its decision.

In order to enter into a serious romantic relationship that has the potential for marriage and family, you really have to dig into this distinction. You have to know and believe that this is true love and that you can and will decide to love your spouse in this manner for as long as you both will live.

One way my wife, Katherine, and I talked about it during the earlier days of our relationship -- and a way we know is true still now -- is that this level of love means that you will give and receive the greatest love either of you will ever experience as well as give and receive the greatest level of hurt you may ever experience. The reason this is possible and true is that this sort of complete love means a level of vulnerability with one another that is deeper and fuller and steadier than anywhere else in your life. By deciding to love each other in this way, you cultivate a relationship that becomes the exemplar for all other areas of relationship in your life, including your relationship with God.

Though it may seem dark, acknowledging the capacity to hurt as well as to love brings clarity to the marriage. And it actually strengthens our ability and desire to maximize love and minimize hurt. We mutually dedicate great attentiveness to one another, and strive to be as sensitive as possible to each other's needs and desires. That sort of reality and dedication gives our marriage and family life the backbone it needs. It doesn't mean we're perfect, but it does make us more steadily faithful to loving well.

8 years later, not much has changed.
Oh, well, kids. We have kids now.

I think it's this foundation that made our desire to have kids and grow our family simpler and sort of easier. Certainly, we both felt called to parenthood, and I discerned marriage to Katherine in part because I saw the God-given gifts of an extraordinary mother present in her. Even more, though, I think our approach toward love and relationship predisposed me to have space already made for kids in my heart and in my outlook.

My heart already learned to love -- largely from Katherine, from my mom, and from my dad and wider family -- in a way that acknowledges the capacity for (hopefully minimal) hurt as well as (hopefully great) love. I know that if I'm doing this right, my life will overflow with love. If I am vulnerable to God in my prayer and my living, if I am vulnerable to Katherine in our married life, then my relationships should all flow out in this same fashion of good and complete love.

So, when it came to taking the plunge into trying to start a family, it didn't feel like new space had to be made. It didn't feel like drastic change was necessary. It just felt like this capacity to love (and to hurt) would gain a new primary relationship. And since love is not a zero sum idea, it didn't mean any love was lost in my life, or that something extraordinary was required to restructure my heart. It meant that the way my relationship with God and Katherine continued would now envelop a new little one. It just felt like a simple and natural reshaping of this sturdy circle of love.

Waiting for a fourth holy handprint
to join our family canvas.

Surely, some people would read this and easily criticize the lack of practicality. What about diapers, cribs, clothes, bottles, health-care bills, room in your home, etc.!? All fair. But I believed before our first daughter, Lucy, was born, and I believe now as our second daughter is about to arrive, that this wide, deep, strong foundation of love disposes the heart, mind, and soul to attend to all of those logistics faithfully. You may not anticipate them all as well as you'd hope; you may not handle them all as smoothly as you'd like; you will triage and discern and act effectively if you keep focused on this foundation of love and fidelity.

A few weeks from now, I will hopefully be piss-ass exhausted from several consecutive nights of taking the middle-of-the-night feed with this little girl -- and God knows my wife will have traded full-time work for maternity leave at home yet be even more tired than when working -- and from the daily life of a family of four. And I will be happy. I will be tired and aching and bleary, and I will be loved and loving.