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Do You Understand What Love Is?
Improper understandings of love are responsible for many of the struggles some individuals and couples have in dating, courtship, and marriage.
From a devotional address titled “As I Have Loved You: Agency-Based Love in Dating and Marriage,” given to students at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, USA, on April 2, 2019. For the full address, visit speeches.byu.edu.
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I would like to talk about how each of us can more fully emulate the Savior’s example of agency-based love in our current or future dating and marriage relationships. I believe that the principles I will discuss are applicable to a wide range of other relationships as well, including friendships, parenting, and other family relationships.
I should also note that while I will share some insights with you from my studies as a marriage researcher over the years, the truest and most transformative lessons I have ever had on love I have learned from my dear wife, Stefani.
For my remarks today, I would like to address three questions about love.
1. How Important Is Love?
How important is love? And, in particular to our emphasis today, How important is love in dating and marriage? In our culture today many would say that love is the only true reason for a couple to come together and stay together in marriage.
Part of the complexity of understanding love comes from the fact that we use the term in very diverse and inconsistent ways. We may use the term love to describe our relationship with our fiancé or spouse, but we also say that we love double-fudge ice cream. Clearly, we don’t mean the same thing. In fact, different conceptions of love are often at the root of the different trajectories we see in couple relationships, for better or for worse.
As a result, many young adults struggle in their relationships because they primarily think of love as an intense feeling or state of being that they cannot quite explain, but they are sure they will know it when they see it—and they often struggle to know if their current relationship has enough of it.
Of course love and happiness matter, but while feelings of love and happiness are indeed present in good marriages, they are best understood as the fruits of those relationships, not necessarily the roots.
2. What Is the True Nature of Love?
What, then, is the proper view of love? How can we assure ourselves of having the deeper, fuller foundations of love in our relationships?
As with all meaningful questions in life, the answer is found in emulating the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. He said, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you” (John 13:34). “As I have loved you”—that is how Christ asks us to love. How can we come to love as the Savior loves? That, my dear friends, is one of the very few questions in life we truly need to answer.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland explained: “True charity, the absolutely pure, perfect love of Christ, has really been known only once in this world—in the form of Christ Himself, the living Son of the living God.”1
Thus, we see that love is so much more than an emotion or feeling. Indeed, properly understood love is not a state of being, it is an actual Being. And that Being is Christ Himself. As we strive to be true followers of Christ, He can shape our hearts, elevate our desires, purify our motivations, and magnify our actions so that we, in time, can come to love as He loves and ultimately live as He lives.
Agency, Covenants, and Love
Emulating the Savior and following His injunction to love as He loves involves embracing an agency-based view of love. As Elder Lynn G. Robbins pointed out in his book Love Is a Choice, “Because love is as much a verb as it is a noun, the phrase ‘I love you’ is as much a promise of behavior and commitment as it is an expression of feeling.”2
In modern-day revelation, we see that the word love appears five times in the proclamation on the family, and each time it is linked with action words such as “to love and care” or “to love and serve.”3 Thus the language of the Lord suggests that love falls within the scope of our agency. Love is something we do, something we can control, and ultimately something we can choose.
3. How Can We Actively Create Loving Relationships?
How can we use an agency-based approach to love to actually create and produce love in our relationships? The answers to this question point us to the true roots of marriage, which individuals and couples can foster with their intentional choices and actions. Allow me to share five principles for creating love in our relationships.
Thoughtful Service Produces Love
When I counsel with individuals or couples who are wondering if they are in love enough in their dating relationships, I encourage them to evaluate the amount of loving behaviors in their relationship. How we feel may be uncertain or confusing at times, but how we treat others and how we are treated in relationships is much more certain. I think this is what President Gordon B. Hinckley wanted us to know when he said, “True love is not so much a matter of romance as it is a matter of anxious concern for the well being of one’s companion.”4
Commitment Produces Love
One of the most common myths I hear when it comes to dating is when someone states, “When I find a really good relationship, I am going to commit to it.” The reason why this is a myth is that really good relationships do not exist without commitment. Commitment is one of the fundamental parts of creating an enduring environment of love in a relationship.
Commitment should come in a sequence of progressive steps and stages, not all at once. Without proper commitment at the proper time, dating relationships languish in a wait-and-see pattern that leads one or both partners to hold back rather than deeply invest.
Equal Partnership Produces Love
I have taught my students that the most important principle they can use as their guide for making wise dating decisions and fostering a future lasting marriage is the doctrine of equal partnership. President Gordon B. Hinckley taught: “In the marriage companionship there is neither inferiority nor superiority. The woman does not walk ahead of the man; neither does the man walk ahead of the woman. They walk side by side as a son and daughter of God on an eternal journey.”5
At its core, equal partnership is about embracing interdependence and learning to make important life decisions together.
Practicing Virtues Produces Love
Marriages are fuller and more resilient as spouses strive to cultivate virtues such as compassion, self-restraint, friendship, generosity, and forgiveness. These virtues can be developed if we foster them with appropriate care and attention and pray for a fuller measure of them through the endowing power of the Savior’s Atonement.
There is something very powerful when spouses are each other’s strongest supporters—when spouses rally to each other’s side rather than turn away, when they encourage rather than criticize, when they see the best in each other rather than the worst, and when they lift each other up rather than push each other down.
Sincere Discipleship Produces Love
The primary action each of us must do to create love in our relationships is to commit to the daily patterns of sincere discipleship of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Elder Holland commended to each of us the only true pattern for securing enduring love in our dating and marriage relationships. He said:
“You want capability, safety, and security in dating and romance, in married life and eternity? Be a true disciple of Jesus. Be a genuine, committed, word-and-deed Latter-day Saint. Believe that your faith has everything to do with your romance, because it does. You separate dating from discipleship at your peril. Or, to phrase that more positively, Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, is the only lamp by which you can successfully see the path of love and happiness for you and for your sweetheart.”6
I add my simple testimony to the truthfulness of this divine pattern as well, and I do so in the sacred name of the One who can endow each of us with the fulness of love we desire in our marriage and family relationships, even Jesus Christ, amen.