Attraction is a feeling. Love is a promise.

[jeffstudio]

Hi All:

 

Marriage can be a satisfying and exciting life-journey for a man and a woman who love each other. However, the significant number of divorced and separated persons indicates that there is a fundamental problem with their marriage preparation.

 

The dreaded phrases “I just don’t love you anymore” and “where has the love gone” are common among those who mistook their intense feelings of attraction as love. Attraction is not love. Attraction is an emotional force that we can feel, while love is a promise to do four progressively challenging things.

 

1. To accept everything that you know and do not know about her now.

2. To accept her regardless of what happens in the unknown future as you both age - for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health for as long as you both shall live. Even if she is disfigured by an accident or crippled by illness, you accept her.

3. To forgive her later. Since neither of you is perfect, you both depend on each others' forgiveness.

4. To encourage her to improve. This 4th one gives purpose to your relationship - otherwise it will get boring.

 

If you are both ready to make and keep these promises to each-other, then you are ready to love. When you keep them, you demonstrate your love for each-other. After you formally make your promises at your wedding, you complete or consummate these promises with sexual intercourse. Every time that you subsequently have sexual intercourse, you reinforce your promises – it is truly a wonderful and mutually satisfying experience.

 

If you have sexual intercourse before making your promises, then you show her that you are capable of justifying forsaking her for a younger, shapelier rival when she gets older. If you are able to restrain yourself when your attraction for her is at its highest, then you show her that you are capable of resisting the rival that will inevitably come.

 

Source: This was taken from the book: "Attraction is a feeling. Love is a Promise" by Grenville Phillips, president of Walbrent College. (LoveIsAPromise.wordpress.com)

[todreaminblue]

Beautiful sentiments......deb

[daletom]

Those are some of the fundamentals on which you can build a lasting marriage. There are other, more tangible, factors that can significantly enhance, or hinder, your ability to keep those promises. And even though I experienced the physical and emotional intensity of a double-virgin wedding night, which started teaching me what it means to "consummate" a marriage, the original post doesn't do a very good job of linking sex to those principles.

 

And it's a little unfortunate that material like this has to come in a package which feels like "slick marketing". Essentially the same post, almost verbatim, seems to be on a couple dozen web sites loosely related to relationships and marriage. I'm puzzled how being the "President of Walbrent College" gives Mr. Phillips special credibility on this matter, since that school seems to offer only short training courses in construction trades. Puts me on the alert for ulterior motives or hidden agendas as I try to consider the ideas on their merits.

[firstworldproblems]

well, I don't know about the "sex is reassuring these things" part, but it is important to remember the difference between attraction, lust, and love.

 

Love is the Action. and true love is long-lasting commitment, acting out love over your lifetime.

[ThomasD]

well, I don't know about the "sex is reassuring these things" part, but it is important to remember the difference between attraction, lust, and love. . .

Long-term couples seem to have mixtures of being "in like" as well as "in love" and even "in lust" with each other, with the proportions of each ingredient varying from couple to couple and over time for a given couple. In contradiction to current trends, many (probably the majority) of long-term couples I'm well acquainted with added sex to their relationship AFTER the mental and emotional connections were well established. I hope you get to experience a pleasurable and satisfying sexual relationship with your life partner.

[jeffstudio]

... the original post doesn't do a very good job of linking sex to those principles.

 

Sex is addressed in promise number 4.

 

I'm puzzled how being the "President of Walbrent College" gives Mr. Phillips special credibility on this matter

 

If you checked out his site, you will find that he has counseled couples before they got married for the past 15 years, without having one of them separated or divorced. He finally wrote the basic principles in a book.

[firstworldproblems]

...If you checked out his site, you will find that he has counseled couples before they got married for the past 15 years, without having one of them separated or divorced. He finally wrote the basic principles in a book.

 

Yes, but being president of Walbrent College seems to me to have nothing to do with these credentials. It seems being a college president has little to do with adding credentials, and his history in marital counseling adds substantial substance to his credence. A better by-line would mention his involvement in those things, not his builders college.

 

(I think the points stand for themselves, though. Common, if old fashioned, sense.)

 

 

.....In contradiction to current trends, many (probably the majority) of long-term couples I'm well acquainted with added sex to their relationship AFTER the mental and emotional connections were well established. I hope you get to experience a pleasurable and satisfying sexual relationship with your life partner.

 

Thank you! I just say I am unsure about the nookie part because its not part of our relationship, we are indeed waiting so I just have no experience in that ;-)

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

I've been there once. It ended though. I hope I find it again some day and this time I hope it lasts.

[ThomasD]

In contradiction to current trends, many (probably the majority) of long-term couples I'm well acquainted with added sex to their relationship AFTER the mental and emotional connections were well established. I hope you get to experience a pleasurable and satisfying sexual relationship with your life partner.

Thank you! I just say I am unsure about the nookie part because its not part of our relationship, we are indeed waiting so I just have no experience in that ;-)

In another thread I mentioned that BOTH of you wanting to have sex with each other is an indication that you should be considering marriage. My wife and I chose to refrain from intercourse before marriage, though we enjoyed various forms of affection and physical intimacy before then. I don't think there's such a thing as truly "No-Strings Attached" sex, but I don't think that sex can create love or attachment that doesn't already exist. (I know that sounds contradictory. There's a lot of things I don't yet understand about sex.) A marriage is MUCH MORE than sex, though I must admit that on a few occasions, for very brief times, sex was perhaps the main thing connecting us.

 

This is a topic for a thread by itself. Very few of my friends "waited for marriage" - though most of them had been exclusive to each other, and many refrained from sex until they were formally engaged.