Is Love a choice

Feelings are not the end all be all. Feelings serve a purpose, yes. There is a reason however that we have the capability to feel one thing but can choose to do another. Just to be clear, everything is a choice – everything, and by not making a choice, we make a choice.

Any pre-marital book you read, and any relationship counselor you talk to will tell you that the “In-love” feeling will eventually go away. If you go into a relationship with the idea that you will always feel the way you felt in the beginning of a new relationship, you will ALWAYS be let down. Then you will decide you're not in love with the person and most likely move on. Being “In-Love” serves a very real biological purpose, think about how the process works for a second, it is directly related to our need to procreate. Not only will the “In-Love” feeling go away, but your love will change. I love my wife differently today than I did even 1 year ago. I actually love her more today (5 years later) than I ever have. It is not superficial, it is not like it was in the beginning when I was too “In-love” with her to see her defects, and I was excited in getting to know her. We (my wife and I) made a choice to grow in our relationship and friendship. We understood that at somepoint we would have to learn to truly love each other and we have. We have had to work through the tough times, the frustraiting times. We have both made the choice to work on our relationship no matter what and that divorce is not an option. That being said we have also made the commitment to not step outside the marriage, no matter what our feelings might tell us. It is seriously unrealistic to think that you will never be attracted to another person in your life, because you are married to the one you love. The difference is what you do with that attraction or those feelings.

This is a little parable that does a great job of describing our choice over feelings -

Choosing empowerment and positivity, or negativity and unhappiness, is a decision that you're making every day, whether you realize it or not.

Native American culture tells the story of a man who explains his own constant struggle between positive, empowering, creative impulses and negative and self-destructive ones by telling his son that he has two wolves fighting in his heart -- a good wolf and a bad one. The boy asks him which of the two will win the battle. The father replies, "Whichever one I feed."

It's very true. The feelings that we nurture and return to, time after time, are the ones which come to dominate our thoughts and actions, while the ones we turn away from fade away.
The exciting thing is, we have a choice. Although the two wolves both exist, we can choose which one of them we want to feed. That means, we choose which one will win.

You probably know people who feel sorry for themselves, who belittle others, who seem to get some kind of pleasure out of feeling miserable, who portray themselves as victims and reject the affections of anyone who doesn't offer constant sympathy. Often it seems to everybody but themselves that they actually have a whole lot going for them, but they're apt to be defensive if anyone should ever dare to point that out!

That's a classic example of what happens when you feed the bad wolf. You don't satisfy an appetite for any kind of feeling when you feed it - you only make it stronger. If you indulge negative feelings about yourself or other people, you strengthen them until they're very hard indeed to break away from.

The other side of the coin's what happens when you feed the GOOD wolf. If you know people who always seem to get a real kick out of life, who laugh a lot, have lots of friends and interests, and light up the room with energy and sparkle, who succeed in everything they turn their hand to and who always seem to have a lot of fun, you don't need ask which wolf THEY'RE feeding.


Choosing Empowerment And Positivity - Feeding The GOOD Wolf by Aislinn O'Connor Supreme Success