"Many men can't trust female love and many women can't trust male love today. This situation is the most subtle, certain and total way of destroying a people. the vulnerable and trusting love of Jesus is the only sign of salvation. It can be raised up like a white flag in a cold war. The present antagonism and mistrust has all the scary signs of total war."(R. Rohr "Radical Grace" p. 218-219)
There are many reasons that I'm glad to be married. One of them, though hardly the most important is that I do not have to be on the dating scene anymore. I still like to go on a date with my wife and enjoy her company, but I don't have to put on an act to impress her or make her love me. She apparently loves me and all my idiosyncrasies.
When she tells me that she loves me, I don't find myself asking what does she want from me. Hopefully she doesn't ask that when I tell her that I love her.
As the parent of teenagers, and remembering my own teenage years that word "love" got tossed around a lot. Testing the waters of what does "love" actually mean. And what am I hoping to get when I say it.
When love between to people has trust, there are no expectations, no conditions to that love. When we feel we are being manipulated by that word, and do not trust the motivations behind it, trouble comes.
With so much uncertainty in our world, where the traditional gender roles are being blurred, it isn't all that surprising that in our own feelings of insecurity we would feel attacked and threatened by our opposites.
Yet I do not wish to go back to a time where there existed "women's work" and "men's work" but would rather see one where we are all doing things that we enjoy and that bring us meaning. Thereby freeing us to truly love the other.
That love doesn't always have to be physical, though that has its place. But it should always be genuine.
Blessings,
Ed
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