Stop Looking for a Love That Makes Sense

The first time I felt loved by a boyfriend, I panicked.

That week, stress and anxiety plagued me. My mood swung like a wrecking ball. And my then-boyfriend's response stunned me—he didn't run.

I don't know why I thought he would. The relationship was still new and still seemed good. But when he saw me at my worst for the first time, I braced for a breakup that didn't happen. Instead, he supported and encouraged me. He loved me. And to me, that didn't make any sense. I didn't know yet that love hardly ever does.

"I am moved by it, and I am alarmed by it because I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT," I wrote in an excited but distressed email to my spiritual director.

This is exactly how a person responds who doesn't know yet that love is a gift. I had to learn that love isn't earned, that whether you "deserve it" is irrelevant. At first, I doubted that. Part of me wanted to run and part of me still wanted to prove that I'm lovable. But love taught me this: I don't have to do either of those things, and neither do you.

But I understand why we sometimes want to.

It's easy to be surprised by a new, beautiful person's interest in or love for you. But please don't forget: You are a beautiful person, too.

Yeah, you. A person who fights a constant unseen battle like anxiety. Or a person who's new to chastity. Or a person in recovery because of a porn addiction. Or a person who spent a lot of young adulthood in and out of jail or on drugs.

You—a person. Created in God's image. Fearfully and wonderfully made. Wounded, but not totally corrupt (CCC 405).

Having to fight doesn't make you a failure; it makes you a fighter. A sordid past doesn't magnify how bad you are—it magnifies how good God is. He pulled you out of your past life and put you in front of somebody who just might want to love you despite it.

Now isn't the time to act like you're not good enough.

It's not the time to run. It's the time to accept that human love was never meant to make total sense to you because it is intended to illustrate God's love, which is never earned and certainly isn't deserved.

Your relationship should make sense, yes. It shouldn't suck the life out of you. You should like each other. You should be attracted to each other. Your values and goals should align. You should define marriage and sex the same way. Neither of you routinely should feel disregarded or insignificant. But both of you should feel safe enough to admit it when you do. 

And dating at all should make sense, too. That means you aren't perfect, but you're collected. You know you have wounds and you've begun to work on them. Maybe that's in counseling with a licensed therapist, or with a spiritual director, or both. 

But your love? If your love made sense, it probably wouldn’t be love. 

It makes sense to commit to a person who has no annoying habits, whose wounds never affect you, whose presence doesn't ever challenge you. And do you know what love becomes when it's never difficult to stick around? It becomes unnecessary. 

But how many of us are still seeking that?

How many of us long to vow to stay with somebody in good times and bad—but only if while dating, there are no bad times? 

By remembering that marriage is supposed to illustrate God’s love, maybe we will stop searching for perfect people and instead accept that we're all growing as we go. Maybe we will stop searching for people we can love effortlessly and instead accept that love always requires effort. 

And maybe in the process, we will accept that we are worth the effort, that even when we don't feel our value, we don't have to prove it exists. And we'll learn to trust that God created other people with the capacity to accept us, to embrace us. 

That's when you'll begin to believe the truth: that God is so big and so good that he can give others the grace to be patient with you, to forgive you, and to love you.