WHAT IS TRUE LOVE?

What is true love?

Love is more than an emotion. It’s more than that fluttery feeling in our stomachs when we’re around a certain person. Love is a willful action — a deliberate choice we make — even when the other person doesn’t make it easy.

True love is revealed more in our actions than in our words. Anyone can say, “I love you,” but those words are proven — or disproven — by the way we behave toward that person.

When people talk about “falling in love,” what they’re usually describing is the emotion of love. Some people love being in love. They love the excitement, the butterflies, the way they feel when they’re around the person they’re “crushing on.” They love how they’re treated and how special they feel in those early stages.

And if we’re honest, most of us put our best foot forward at the beginning of a relationship. We’re careful. We’re patient. We’re thoughtful. We don’t want to lose that “special someone.”

But when dating turns into marriage, things get real — quickly.

Real life has a way of exposing cracks and fissures in each of us. The sweet feelings aren’t as constant. The butterflies settle. Bills have to be paid. Stress builds. Fatigue sets in. And suddenly, the person we once idealized says or does something that hurts us — sometimes unintentionally, sometimes not. And if we’re honest, we hurt them too.

The pressures of daily life reveal who we really are.

If love is defined only as an emotion, then when the feelings fade or conflict arises, the relationship can start to feel like a mistake. People begin to wonder if they were deceived. They look for an escape.

But real love was never meant to survive on emotion alone.

True love is a daily decision.

In spite of what was said or done (and setting aside situations of abuse, which are entirely different and serious matters), we must choose — every single day — to love our spouse. Even when we don’t like what happened. Even when our heart is wounded. We choose to respond with kindness instead of retaliation. We choose humility over self-righteousness. We choose to ask for forgiveness when we are wrong — and to extend forgiveness when we’ve been hurt.

That kind of love requires maturity. It requires sacrifice. It requires the death of pride.

And this principle doesn’t apply only to marriage. It extends to friendships and family relationships as well.

If we hurt a friend and can walk away without attempting reconciliation — without repentance, without seeking forgiveness — then we must ask ourselves whether love was ever truly present.

Pride makes reconciliation difficult. Pride resists admitting wrong. Pride would rather preserve self-image than restore relationship.

But love does the opposite.

Love humbles itself.

To walk away from a marriage or a friendship simply because we refuse to admit fault reveals something sobering: perhaps we love ourselves more than we loved the other person.

Real love fights for reconciliation.

Real love dies to self.

Real love chooses.

Love that depends on feelings will always be fragile. But love rooted in choice — in humility, repentance, and forgiveness — has staying power.

So maybe today the question is this: Where has pride quietly taken the place of love in our relationships? And what would it look like to choose differently?