Attraction Changes Love?

I really have loved our series in chapel lately.  It’s so refreshing to hear from other students.  Recently, Matt did a fantastic job talking about romantic love, or eros.  He did a great job of hitting an important point that God hit me with many years ago: before I can truly experience love with someone else, I need to find my center in being loved by my Lord.  Like a cup, once I’m filled I can overflow into someone else’s life.  But if I’m trying to constantly get someone else to fill my cup I will always be disappointed and I will always put God-like demands on them.

Yet, there is one thing I wanted to clarify about what was said about romantic love in Tuesday’s chapel.  It was suggested that love changes based on attraction.  If this is true, it’s sad.  Is that all we can hope for?  Is love only about physical attractiveness?  Is love over if I’m not as good-looking as I once was? 

I refuse to play the game (often a religious game) that says looks shouldn’t matter.  That’s not true.  One of my jobs as a spouse is to keep myself looking good for my wife.  That is one way to keep our romance alive, but it is one way.  We are often drawn to someone initially by attraction (often that is physical, but many have been attracted by attributes/characteristics and then found themselves physically attracted after the fact), and attraction remains a force to pull you toward each other.  But if true romance occurs then it becomes so by so many other things: talking, discovering each other’s likes and dislikes, fun shared experiences, openness and honesty, even going through and talking through difficult issues.

All of those things I just mentioned, plus attractiveness, become the means to life-long romance.  When we begin to let some of those things go romance can die.  We stop talking, we stop being open, we stop sharing time together and instead get absorbed in other things (work, other activities, friends, even church and children), and, yes, even letting ourselves go physically.  But age works against attractiveness, so married couples recognize that we need to continue to work at our appearance, and also to recognize that attraction will also be built around the life that we build together.