A Fine Romance

Martha Hodges - 2006-07-02

Our friends Yolanda Crooms and David Cobb, high bidders on the “Name the Sermon Topic of Your Choice” item in our service auction, have asked me to share my wisdom on the subject of love and romance. I feel a bit like the preacher in a story told about the nineteenth-century Scottish author Thomas Carlyle. After listening to a sermon preached on love, he was overheard to grumble as he left the church, "The minister reminded me of nothing so much as a flea struggling in a barrel of molasses." So, with that proviso, this flea will plunge bravely in. If I haven’t re- surfaced in fifteen minutes, perhaps someone will be kind enough to fish me out.

I read and hear about fourteen year olds who are utterly blasé about sex; I see late-night ads for chat lines in which the word “romance” is a mere euphemism for casual sex; and I wonder if romance is still relevant in our twenty-first century American culture, in which everything is for sale and an attitude of cynicism, frank self-interest and ironic detachment seems to pervade our media. At the same time, we see the rise of religious conservatism, a kind of neo- Puritanism, and post-AIDS repressiveness. In this schizoid environment, where does romance fit in?

Well, the yearning for intimacy and connection may lead us down some strange paths these days, but, as human beings, we seem to be programmed to seek romance.

Something within us thrives on the heightened intensity and the hyper-awareness and sense of being fully alive that being “in love” brings.

Perhaps the closest thing to it in this respect is war. People who have experienced battle speak of the addictive adrenaline rush – the way living at extreme risk gives them purpose and perspective and focus that make other life experiences seem banal and meaningless in comparison. How ironic that these two phenomena, seemingly located at opposite extremes of the human experience, should resemble each other. And yet, war is as much about survival as it is about death, and romance is as much about risk and loss as it is about affirming life. In both situations, every action becomes loaded with significance and consequence. Both let us view our lives as narratives, with ourselves as the hero at the center of the story. So often our lives feel more like strings of random events in which we are but peripheral players. In both romance and war, we enter a state of mind akin to madness.

It’s no coincidence that the word “romance” originally referred to long narrative poems in which knights or other heroic figures performed fantastic feats in the service of some mission, a quest for glory. Three hundred years later, in the seventeenth century, the term came to mean a fictional prose tale of marvelous exploits and pageantry – a tale of the imagination.

In the first days, weeks and months of a romance, we submit to the intoxicating power of imagination in just this way. The world takes on an exotic glow. Everything seems strange and wonderful and newly colorful. We idealize the object of our infatuation much as literary romances idealize their characters.

When I was eighteen I was wildly infatuated with someone – not the boy who intended to give me up for Lent, but someone who seemed to me much larger than life. I can remember having the distinct impression that when he entered the room he brought with him his own little personal atmospheric conditions, so that his scarf blew out behind him as he walked past, even with all the windows closed.

This is the dangerous territory of psychological projection. Dangerous, because we inevitably awake from the dream and notice that our beloved does not, after all, walk on water – or walk about in a stiff breeze of his own generation.
The role of imagination in romance at this stage is primary. Not only in fantasies of future encounters with the object of desire, but in the creative genius we all seem to possess – the uncanny ability to formulate an idealized image of the other that meets all our needs, and to convince ourselves that all that we want to be true about the other is nothing more nor less than what he is. Of course we fall in love! Who would not fall in love with the ideal man or woman that we have created in our imagination?

As we mature and gain more experience with love, we are less likely to delude ourselves in this way – or at least it doesn’t take us quite as long to notice that this is what we are doing. But even a jaded veteran of love is not immune to the thrill that the possibility of romance awakens in us – even when there is no way we would ever pursue the possibility. This is because of that innate appetite for newness, for adventure, for heightened awareness of the other – that adrenaline rush – that is so much more than simple hormonal urges and adolescent idealism.
Add to this the affirmation of the self that romance provides. When we gaze into the eyes of the beloved and see our own reflection there, this alone would be sufficiently addictive to keep bringing us back to romance again and again.

But what if that reflection is not flattering? What if the beloved does not give back to us the image of ourselves that we long to see because he or she does not return our infatuation? No matter. We are just as much the heroes of our private romance novel when our love is not requited.

Either way, we are allowed to feel, however briefly, that we are uniquely interesting and that our stories have some meaning and direction. That they are worth living out to see what will happen next.

And there is still another aspect of romance that makes it virtually impossible for all but the most deeply wounded among us to resist – the most important part of its appeal: Romance, like its close cousin, mature love, answers the human need to reach across the chasm that separates us from other people. This longing is our spiritual response to our sense of being alone in the universe – an existential protest, if you will, to the reality that no one else can truly enter our private universe. At least not since infancy. Maybe we retain a primal memory of that oneness with our mothers that we long to rediscover, who knows? Maybe the pain of that first separation is what we seek to heal through merging body and soul with another, in love.

Whatever its origin, the longing for connection, for intimacy, is common to both romance and to mature love – and for that matter, to the religious impulse. Infatuation, if we’re lucky, grows into true knowledge of the other. More importantly for our psychological healing, perhaps, is the miracle of being known by the beloved in return. To be known, and understood, and accepted with all our flaws – this is what drives our search for love, and for some, depending on our religious bent, our search for God. Love ends, through death or disenchantment. Or rather, the relationship with a living, breathing person ends; love – true love –can endure, and often does, long after the beloved has left us.

But what of romance? Is it by its very nature ephemeral?
Is romance doomed once a relationship develops into love – once we become able to see the beloved as he or she really is? What does romance feel like once fantasy gives way to reality? What can it be if it’s no longer about enhancing our view of ourselves and employing self-delusion in the cause of making us more interesting to ourselves? Must romance, by definition, be something shallow and slightly ridiculous?

It all depends on what we understand romance to be. The English language really needs some more descriptive words to distinguish between the romance of the bodice-ripper novel and the romance of a long-married couple who still hold hands at the movies.

I recently came across the following advice on a website intended for women in search of romance: “Serve heart-shaped scones or pancakes for breakfast. Write "BEE Mine" across the plate with the syrup or honey. Leave a trail of small sugar message hearts leading to a surprise. Paste glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling above the bed. Turn off the lights and instant star-filled romance! Dana, a young mother of twin toddlers, writes "Eye Heart U" on the bathroom mirror for her husband to see when he gets up. "We don't have a lot of time for romance so I try to fit in little things every day. Jeff loves the morning reminder and since I'm a bit of a clean freak, I write with soap and not lipstick so it's easier to clean and write new notes!"

Now I don’t really have any right to make fun of Dana or heart-shaped pancakes. If it works for her, more power to her! On the other hand, I doubt that these little gestures are going to accomplish much if the romance has truly vanished. We’ve got to first figure out a way to understand enduring romance that is a natural outgrowth and expression of love. Then maybe we try the pancakes.

Unlike beginners’ romance, the romance that is an expression of authentic love is likely to come and go. It’s like the dessert that is part of a nourishing meal rather than a diet consisting solely of gooey sweets. Delicious as romance may be, we cannot live on it alone. But as a complement to everyday love lived out side by side over the years, yes! So how does it happen that some couples can tap into the romance that lies waiting under the mundane, the routine, the comfortable?
Romance can be triggered by memories of past deeply felt or joyful encounters with each other. It can come alive after a period of separation, when we realize all over again just how happy we are to be together, or it could manifest as the profound gratitude we feel for each other’s company after a particularly difficult experience, a defeat or painful conflict.

It can be expressed in a gesture, a choice or other mark of thoughtfulness that demonstrates that your beloved’s comfort and happiness and fulfillment are your priority. Mature romance can summon not just acceptance, but fondness for the other’s human shortcomings and can be kindled by forgiveness. It can occur when something your loved one does surprises you and you realize that there is more mystery in him or her than you had remembered. It can happen when honesty underlies your loving relationship, for honesty is bound to produce such surprises. Romance can return when you are tempted to betray the other in large or small ways and, instead, choose love. It can return when you are able to listen with such attentiveness to your partner that he or she feels amazed and grateful to have been truly heard and understood. And romance feeds on the ingoing and intentional celebration of the enduring and resilient love you share.

For all these manifestations of mature romantic love are examples of transcending the self. At its best, romance builds a bridge – sometimes a shaky and temporary construction, but a bridge nonetheless - across that great divide between our selves and the world that seems otherwise quite indifferent to us. If it is the human condition to be lonely, it is also our fate to seek a remedy for that loneliness. Without this hunger to connect, we would not love, we would not marry, we would not create homes and recreate romance in our otherwise small and separate lives. We would not imagine divinity, we would not strive to discover an authentic self; we would not love one another into the fullness of life. In all this, we are blessed.