Love or Commitment - Which is More Important?

As a marriage counselor, you would think that I would use the word love frequently in my work. “Do you love him? Is there still love in your heart? Can your love return?” I tend to avoid using this word. A recent blog post (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-the-name-love/200803/loving-two-people-the-same-time) highlights why this is so. This blogger asked the question, can you love two people at the same time. Examples were given where the individuals having an affair found themselves feeling love for their lover and their spouse.

Love is a word that is associated with feelings. While you can have positive feelings toward more than one individual, it is difficult to be fully committed to more than one partner. The deception that is part and parcel of an affair undermines a commitment to a relationship. One cannot be fully committed to their partner while lying to their partner. Openness and honesty are important elements of a committed relationship. Betrayed spouses often express more hurt over the dishonesty than the sexual infidelity.

While love is an important feeling, there are many other factors that attract you to be close to your partner. Respect and admiration for your partner’s role in parenting, business, and the community contribute to your attraction to your mate. In fact, one’s commitment to the marriage continues when feelings of anger temporarily push aside loving feelings.

While it's interesting to speculate whether one can love two or more individuals at once, it is more important to focus on identifying the elements of commitment in marriage. That is why buy my initial blog posting focused on the core elements of commitment in marriage. Go back, read that posting (http://marriagemattersblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/mission-of-this-blog.html) and determine whether you could have such a commitment to more than one person at a time. I think that you will find that you cannot.

Assertive & Vulnerable Communication

You have certain rights in a relationship:

1. The right to your viewpoint, although others may not share your viewpoint
2. The right to your feelings being expressed, although you don't have the right to hold others responsible for your feelings.
3. The right to your desires for the relationship, although you can't expect to have all of your desires met.

An assertive individual exercises these rights in a relationship. If you are in a caring relationship, you can expect your partner to care about your view, your feelings and your desires.

All to often, one partner will fail to express as assertive message in a vulnerable tone. The vulnerable tone is much more likely to hook your partner's caring. An aggressive or abrasive tone tends to repel caring.

Men's Strength Women's Desire

Image via WikipediaThis author suggests five attributes of a strong, desirable man. What do you think?

http://www.epaperflip.com/aglaia/viewer.aspx?docid=e3e2aa8d7a6d410bbafd0fb2d02f074d&page=40

Magical Thinking During a Marital Crisis: Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Remember "Step on a crack and break your mother's back."? This childhood game represented the magical thinking of a child. A child exaggerates their impact on the world, in this case his or her mother's health.

During a marital crisis, you can also be susceptible to magical thinking. In this case, the magical thinking is driven by a desperate desire to end the pain of the crisis in your relationship. You say if I do ______ , then I will restore my relationship with my spouse. Examples are:

• If I am unconditionally loving, he will draw close to me once again.


• If she sees what it is like to have to pay her own way, then she will end this separation.


• If I take every opportunity to show my love, then he will know that nobody will love him the way that I love him.


• If she realizes that I will fight her for custody of the children, then she will end her affair once and for all.

If your partner is ambivalent about his or her commitment to the marriage, it is highly unlikely that any effort on your part will end the ambivalence. Threats can actually create more motivation to survive apart from you. Efforts to show love without expecting to receive love in return can diminish you in your partner's eyes. You appear to be throwing yourself at your partner without regard to your self-worth.

Ann Landers, the popular advice columnist used the expression, "Wake up and smell the coffee." to suggest that the reader needed to come to grips with the reality of the situation. Magical thinking results from your struggle to accept how serious the crisis in your relationship is.

Be gentle with yourself, but accept that there is no easy, quick solution to a marriage crisis. Understand that the crisis is not an emergency and that time is necessary to encourage good decision making. Give yourself the gift of time so that you can more completely absorb the reality of the distance between you and your partner.