Love and Marriage

I am to perform a wedding today at 4:30 pm. The young couple is hardly ready for marriage, but who among us was? I understood nothing about love. No one ever explained love to me. I saw it only as physical affection, petting really. I saw love as mere lustful touching. Truth be know, that is only the slightest germ from which love can grow.

I used to wonder why couples that had been married for so many years were not as rapt in their physical playfulness and puppy love insensible petting. I mourned for them the loss of their love and affection. It has only been as I have developed a true love for my wife that I begin to recognize that their affections have not withered but rather grown and matured. I love my wife not only for her physical benefits to me, no…not primarily for the physical benefits, but I love her for her devoting, her unwavering support, her fastidious loyalty to me.

These things run much deeper than the mere skin and bones of the physical. No other woman could ever possibly give me the things that my wife has…not now. Do I love her physically? God yes! But my love only started there. I now know what it means to not be able to live without her. Not because I crave her embrace or conjugation. Not because her curves so readily fit my hands. I can not fathom being without her support, her helpfulness, her devotion, her trustworthiness and her undying warmth for me. My wife’s goal seems to sacrifice herself to please me and fulfill me. This I cannot fathom: her fidelity to me the Ogre.