Daily Mail insertion #3. Should have posted this last week but somehow it slipped through the net. Anyway hope you E is for Enjoy.
C is for Commitment
For many of us, when we see the word ‘commitment’ we read ‘confinement’. Like marriage, it is more a sentence than a word. “Settle for one person? For the rest of my life? I’d rather be committed to an insane asylum than committed to one partner – I’d be just as mad.” But here’s the thing. Love is a verb not a noun. It’s not a flutter in the tummy or fireworks in the mind. Love – true, lasting love – is a choice; in fact, a series of choices that we make every day. Love means choosing the fact that our partner snores so loudly that the ceiling keeps cracking. It means choosing to laugh at the same place at the same story at every single dinner party. It means saying, yes, I’ll do the dishes, even though I cooked the meal. It means, yes, by all means, let’s have the in-laws over for lunch on the afternoon of the FA Cup final.
So, while C also stands for Cute, and Curvy and Come Hither, it equally stands for Calm, and Companionship and Contentment. And these are the things that commitment delivers.
Commitment is not a wedding ring. It’s not a contract. It’s not even a promise we make to another. Commitment is a promise that we make to ourselves – to choose and keep on choosing the one we love, for all their faults, for all time. It is leaping the gap between flirting with life and living it, between playing at love and making it real.
Commitment is:
Grasping the nettle: Sometimes love means just doing the dishes, or putting out the rubbish, or sorting out the attic. Short term pain means a lifetime of gain.
A self-fulfilling prophecy: Scientists at Montreal’s McGill University found that the more committed you are, the less attractive you find other people who threaten your relationship.
Trying new things: “We enter relationships because the other person expands us,” says Dr. Aaron, of McGill University. “Couples can get some of that back by doing challenging and exciting things together.”
