Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Love Ever Changes”

Around this time of year when I see you people picking out valentines, I think why does it take you so long to choose just the right one? Why not just grab and go? After a little research, I’ve concluded it is because you lovers are hanging out there in the greeting card aisle for a purpose. It is to find the card that speaks accurately and carefully of the love you feel. And that vital feeling may not be the same as it was last year. It is because love always changes. It changes from the first hot coals of desire to the cherishing love of two companions who have lived through thick and thin. And then maybe it changes back again. The only place the meaning of “love” doesn’t change is in tennis where it means you have absolutely nothing. If you had lived way back around the turn of the first millenium, people would have thought you daft to actually be married to the person you loved. Nobody in their right mind would have entered into a marriage contract as a result of a romantic attachment. Marriages were arranged as a way to increase the economic advantage of a family or a tribe. Romantic love itself was something else, usually illicit and off the record. Then along came a few brave hearts who married for love. These twelfth-century types made a conscious choice connecting love and marriage with the same person!! It blew everybody’s minds! I don’t know if we, who live amidst the current state of relationship hazards, should throw flowers and cheer them wildly or curse them. Because, since then, we have had nearly a thousand years to work out the consequences of choosing a marriage partner for the sake of love ( in both glorious and painful ways). See what we’ve got? Shifting sands. If we marry for love, it seems just as natural to divorce when love appears to die or show up feverishly in some other relationship that happens along. This is a brief but sad history-and-development of married love. Besides the conscious choice of marrying for love, don’t forget the unconscious choice which generates that love in the first place. Even a deliberate love choice involves hidden reasons, as well. There is this mysterious influence of a behind-the-scenes driving force that brings you together, like a mental matchmaker. The reason you felt love for this particular mate in the first place is because there was a purpose to this whole thing. You just forgot what it was. Without being fully aware of it, your heart was looking for someone to help you work out your emotional questions about life-in-the-world-of-relationships. It’ s about healing. Consequently, the nice thing about romantic choices, conscious and unconscious, is, in my opinion, that they leave room for couples to reinvent their relationship every few years. So-what if the original reasons for getting together don’t look so impressive now. I say people can decide to stay together for a whole new set of reasons that consciously seem to have nothing to do with their reasons for getting together.

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