Pick something.

Months ago, I started a painfully chicky piece of chick lit called Love the One You're With. I knew that it wasn't self-help in nature, but I sort of wanted something that was. Buying such a book, though, is pathetic, and I absolutely wasn't going to Google something. So I searched my bookshelf for something already in my posession that might sort of do the trick, and Emily Giffin was all I had.

I ended up not able to finish it because I was all girly and emotional and ridiculous, but the dust has long settled through all of that, so I picked it back up a week ago. The story's protagonist is torn between two men. One is a man she dated once, and with whom she had a relationship that was desperately unhealthy and also interesting and dangerous. And the other is her husband, whom she loves dearly, but whom finds boring. Life brings her to a crossroads where she must choose what she's going to do, and she comes to this understanding:

Love not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

That's how I feel about it. Not that have to pick between two men, but that love, while it's a feeling, shows itself everyday in the choices we're willing to make for someone.

I told a friend that recently and he told me that my perspective was decidedly unromantic, though I must say I feel exactly the opposite. Committing over and over again to the same person by making his favorite dish or hearing out the latest stupid problem that's tearing her apart, or driving with the windows down even when you know it's going to ruin your hair just because you know he loves the feel of the wind. Those things are love. And all that makes me think that the who isn't nearly as important as the making of the choices.