Love is a Choice

In the end, Chip and I loved each other deeply. But it didn’t start out that way. I knew much more about love (e.g., recognizing it, giving it and receiving it) than he did at the time, so I always knew I’d be the one to express it verbally first. I was always OK with that thought.

One afternoon many year ago, we were laying next to each other napping (He loved napping but I’m a terrible napper…I always have been since I was a baby…so naps usually entailed Chip sleeping and me overthinking and overanalyzing). He was breathing heavily and steadily, so I thought he was sound asleep. I bursted aloud “I love you, Chip,” just needing in the moment to get it off my heart and to put it out to the Universe, even if he couldn’t hear me or process what I was saying. I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, but saying it directly to him was too scary at that time as I wasn’t sure where the relationship was heading.

When I said “I love you, Chip” out loud, his body jerked and his breathing paused for a second or two. Had he heard me in his sleep through the sounds of his deep breathing? Had my words jostled him awake like an earthquake would? Was he startled and freaked out by my words? Seconds after I put the words into the Universe, he went back to his heavy and steady breathing pattern, so I assumed he had heard my voice, but did not process what I said. I fell asleep next to him knowing that I had said what I needed to say, and it didn’t matter one iota to me if he felt love for me or not. I loved him, and that’s all I knew.

A few weeks before he died, I recalled this moment with him for some odd reason, and he admitted that he had heard me say the words to him at the time. I had never asked before, and he had never offered reflections on that moment. I had lived all those years not knowing that he had chosen to stay with me after hearing those words, and that the thought of being loved by me did not scare him or freak him out.

I don’t recall how many months after that it took him to send me the video of The Revivalists singing “To Love Someone” by The Bee Gees as his way of saying “I love you” to me for the first time. After he sent the video, we exchanged “I love you”s aloud countless thousands of times. But, whether he was saying the words, spending quality time with me or doing something for me, my 3 preferred Love Languages (we really liked the idea of The Five Love Languages and chose to operate on the concept in our relationship), I never doubted his love for me throughout our short time together.

For me and Chip, loving each other was about the choices and actions we took to show love and to remain in love. An article written by The Angry Therapist titled “How Do you Know When You Love Someone?” that I read back in January 2018 (I always save links to articles that resonate with me) summed up the way Chip and I felt about love (He liked the article too when I shared it with him at the time). We firmly believed that love was not about a feeling, but was about a series of choices made daily: to say I love you (or not) to each other, to do his laundry (or not), to help me unload the dishwasher (or not), to accept each other, flaws and all (or not), to apologize (or not).

A few snippets from the article that stuck out for me and him:

1) “So, how do you know if it’s love? That is not the question to ask. The question is: Do you choose to love this person or not? Right now. Not tomorrow. Today. Make a choice. Yes or no. If the answer is yes, love as hard as you can. Love with everything you’ve got (your capacity right now at this point in your life). If the answer is no, promise me one thing. Let the fall make you stronger.”

2) “Love is making a choice every single day, to either love or not love. That’s it. It’s that simple. Either to continue the process or not. We fall in and out of love when we’re in relationships. Read that again. Because people think if we’re not head over heels for someone, we shouldn’t be with them. Our feelings fluctuate, depending on the relationship but also how happy we are in our own lives. And yes there is drift and if you drift so far that you don’t know or like yourself anymore, maybe it is time to jump. Just know that there is a difference between feeling love for someone (caring about a person) and loving someone (choosing to love that person). You may have love for someone forever. But that doesn’t mean you choose to love that person forever.”

3) “Although love varies, it also deepens. This means the longer you stay on that flight and embark on the journey together, the more fruit the process with bear. Your investment pays off. Your choices become easier. You not only become stronger as a couple, but also as individuals, assuming the love process is healthy — which means you guys are both doing work. The choice to love creates opportunity to hit notes in life that you could never hit alone, and THIS is what makes your choice worth it.”

In remembrance of Chip, may we choose to love others today, and every day.