Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light.
We cannot love without suffering, and we cannot suffer without love.
-St. Gianna Molla
About 3 months ago I entered into my first relationship ever. Prior to it, I had never even been on a date. Suddenly I’m 21 years old and have a boyfriend. I remember talking with one of my good friends about it at the beginning and saying, “I have no idea how to be someone’s girlfriend.”
When entering into the relationship, I had this idea that things were supposed to go/look a certain way. As in, I thought there was a general timeline that everyone stuck to and a syllabus to be followed. Jokes. Not only does every relationship look different but, given ours was cultivated in the context of a small community, it looks especially different from many. Due to the environment, our relationship was sped up in a way that was certainly natural, but has progressed quicker than maybe a “normal” relationship would.
We’re now about three months in, and I still have no idea what it means to be someone’s girlfriend. I guess it means that I have another close friend to talk to and share life with. I have another person I desire to grow in love for and relationship with. I helped him move into his apartment and I pray with him most nights. I go on dates now. Cool.
I’m afraid of sounding cliché, but the first part of the relationship felt, and sometimes even now feels, like a dream—it seems so surreal. Then there are the hard moments, especially those that come from dating at a distance, that remind me that this relationship is, in fact, real, and certainly isn’t a fairytale. But, to be honest, that’s what makes it more of a fairytale romance in my mind. There’s something so raw and human about it that’s so necessary in order to continue growing with one another. Whenever people ask what our favorite things to do with each other are, we sound like we’re 65 or something, because we say we just like doing life together. We loved cooking, cleaning, doing homework, and going to Mass together in Arizona, and that’s part of the reason that distance this summer is so hard. We love doing the daily life things together.
The idea of free will has become more prominent in my mind as we dive deeper into this relationship—to date someone requires choosing to love them in whatever situation—whether it’s easy or hard at the time to do so. When we first started dating, I remember feeling like I was walking on air—I described this sensation as *sing-song voice* “daisies and roses, daisies and roses.” I knew one day it wouldn’t always be daisies and roses, so I soaked it up for as long as I could. Suddenly, it became very evident that two very imperfect humans were trying to build a relationship, and it was no longer just daisies and roses. The Evil One tends to get involved and bring a whole slew of lies and doubts with him—a tact that is somewhat easily identifiable, but that certainly doesn’t make it less painful. Truths of the human condition are discovered as well. For example, one of the hardest things I’ve learned is how selfish I am. Being single for over 21 years taught me a selfishness that, to an extent, was permissible because I was on my own with most things—there was no “we” in making decisions, just “me.” But my selfish world got flipped upside down. There is now a “we,” and I can’t just think about myself when making plans and decisions all the time. This has been so good and so necessary. I’m being sanctified! This aspect of free will comes in when we have to consciously make the choice to love the other person, even when it seems counter-intuitive to do so. I like running away when things get hard, and that selfish tendency doesn’t work in relationships. To choose to love another person, especially in this context, means the allowance of being drawn out of oneself in order to selflessly give one’s life away in love. As a beautifully perfect example of this, we can look to the Cross. There, we see Jesus Christ, who poured out His Love for His beloved (us) in a manner so selfless (death). We, too, can and must die to ourselves in order to freely choose to love, but it’s the most beautiful choice we can make.
That doesn’t mean that the daisies and roses are gone forever—there is a great, triumphant joy, along with a more mature love, produced through all of the purification and sacrifice. The result of Christ’s selfless act? Not only His re-entrance, but also the possibility of our entrance, into eternal paradise. The earthly result of this choice to love? Doing life joyfully with your beloved, all the while taking steps towards Heaven with him/her.
But then again, this is all null and void because this is my first relationship and I’m only 21 years old; therefore, I don’t know anything.