When I was younger, my sister and I would discuss the ideal way to meet our future husbands. She was intrigued with experiencing “love at first sight,” while I preferred the idea of falling in love with a friend.
While “love at first sight” is romantic, I thought that having love grow through friendship would better ensure that we really loved and appreciated one another on a deep level, and would more easily avoid the pitfalls of mere infatuation.
We all meet people with whom we know from the start that we could have only a friendship, and nothing more. But I’ve heard multiple stories of happily married couples who built the friendship first and the romance came later. I even know a couple who actually didn’t like one another when they first met. I admit that’s an unusual story, but they are now happily married with three children.
Regardless of our personal opinions about how love “should” happen, I think we need to ask if today’s media culture has managed to indoctrinate us with the idea that sparks should be flying and hormones raging upon the first encounter with our date.
Yes, I know some great stories of “him seeing her across a crowded room,” but how many of us have had that happen in a relationship which, in the end, did not work? Certainly that can’t necessarily be a predictor of a good, long and fulfilling marriage.
Other couples didn’t have sparks flying right away but were attracted by something unique about the other person, and allowed knowledge of the other to grow, opening the door to a deep and lasting love and attraction.
Fan of St. John Paul II that I am, one of my favorite writings of his is a play he wrote titled The Jeweler’s Shop. As anyone familiar with his writings knows, he writes with incredible depth about the profundity of the male/female relationship.
The play is written more as a meditation, focusing on the words, rather than the action. I recently saw it performed for the fourth time and was again reminded of the beauty and depth with which John Paul writes. I’ve read the play multiple times, but was still struck by new insights. Though I’m sure St. John Paul II is a believer in the possibility of “love at first sight,” the picture he portrays in the first act of The Jeweler’s Shop is in fact quite the opposite.
The character Teresa has just been proposed to by Andrew. He does not ask her if she will be his wife, but rather says, “Do you want to be my life’s companion?” Andrew reflects, “I went quite a long way before reaching Teresa, I did not find her at once. I do not even remember if our first meeting was marked by a kind of presentiment. And I don’t think I even know what “love at first sight” means.”
He continues to speak about the act of will that his choice of Teresa entailed—even though at first he resisted it. It took effort.
"For my senses fed at every step on the charms of the women I met. When once or twice I tried following them, I met solitary islands. This made me think that beauty accessible to the senses can be a difficult gift or a dangerous one; I met people led by it to hurt others—and so, gradually, I learned to value beauty accessible to the mind, that is to say, truth."
This was not easy for him though. “I was ready to follow sensation, strong, forceful sensation. I wanted to regard love as passion, as an emotion to surpass all—I believed in the absolute of emotion. And that is why I could not grasp the basis of that strange persistence of Teresa in me.” Andrew resisted the mysterious draw of Teresa, but as he explains:
"Thus grew my interest in Teresa; love grew, in a sense, from resistance. Or love can be a collision in which two selves realize profoundly that they ought to belong to each other, even though they have no convenient moods or sensations. It is one of those processes in the universe which bring a synthesis, unite what was divided, broaden and enrich what was limited and narrow."
The whole process was very difficult for Teresa, who was already attracted to Andrew, but who, without his interest, wouldn’t let herself nourish unanswered feelings for him. Andrew at some point realized her suffering and the gift it was for their relationship. He concludes, “And I know I cannot go further. I know I shall not seek anymore. I only tremble at the thought that I could so easily have lost her... I recoiled from accepting what today is for me a most magnificent gift.”
This thought was echoed to me by a friend just the other night. Before marriage, he and his wife were friends for a few years. For quite a while she was attracted to him, but for a long time he didn’t have the “spark” for her. Now, after many years of marriage he said he shuddered to realize that he almost lost the most beautiful gift of his life—his wife.
We can learn many things from the “Pope of Love,” but for today, let’s allow our understanding of the true nature of love and the many ways in which it can develop to be broadened. This is guaranteed to enrich all of our future relationships and, God willing, our future marriages!
By the way, The Jeweler’s Shop, though at times a bit obscure, is quite beautiful! It’s totally worth reading the entire work more than once, so you may want to order your own copy
