A Compelling Kind of Love

There are two dimensions to love, two very distinct and significant kinds of love – one of them we could call the pleasant love, the pleasurable love, the love that makes you feel good, that makes you feel content, satisfied, full, complete.

There is another love, maybe even more crucial and essential to relationship and this I think we could call the compelling love, the kind of love that doesn’t let you be content. It motivates you, compels you to get up and do something. It’s a love that compels action. It can be described more as a commitment, a devotion, a responsibility to the one you love and that kind of love is probably the core, the heart of a relationship.

So here’s the point. The point of it is that there is a certain kind of love; there is a certain kind of sympathy, a certain kind of considerateness that we can describe as beautiful. Love is beautiful. But there is another kind of love that is not only a response to someone or something, but it actually makes things happen. It’s a love that causes things to happen. It is not a passive love.

And it kind of leans more toward responsibility and commitment, it’s more like devotion, than sensitive. And it’s a little hard to pin it down exactly, but usually when we think of love, when we think of a relationship, we are thinking of warm feelings. Pleasant feelings, which comes from pleasant opinions about the other person. But the general aura of it is pleasantness – pleasing.

But there is another kind of love. Very different. This kind of love feels more like devotion than pleasantness. More like “ we go down together, or we don’t go at all.” That doesn’t feel so pleasant but it is much, much stronger, it makes things happen. That kind of love compels you to behave a certain way, to do certain things, which the other love would not.

There’s a story regarding the Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, the Rebbe’s wife that illustrates this point.

The Rebbetzin, in her later years, would go out for drives, down to the waterfront, to the beach. One time, the driver was taking her down to the ocean, and the road that they usually took was closed, repairs or something, and they had to take detour. They were going through this other road, and there was one house where there were some police cars in front of the house, there was some tumult going on, and they drove by. After a few moments, the Rebbetzin said, “ turn around please, let’s go back to that house and see what’s going on there.” They drive back and the driver asked what’s going on and founds out that there is a family there that can’t pay their rent and they are being evicted.

So the Rebbetzin told him to found out how much they need to pay the rent, and he found out and the Rebbetzin wrote out a check and paid off the bill and resolved the situation. The driver was absolutely stunned. So in the car she explained to him. “ My father taught me that you never see anything unless it is relevant to you. The reason we had to take an alternative route and drive past that scene, I felt it must be that I could do something about it, otherwise why would I have seen it.” So she went back and fixed it.

So there is love that is a kind of a plateau of feeling where I have always been looking for love and I found the love and now I am content. And there is another kind of love that is the exact opposite of content. It’s an urgent love and it makes you want to do something. The story of the Rebbetzin stopping and finding out what was wrong and fixing it – this is not the pleasant kind of gentle love, this is a love that is commitment, determination – you don’t let it go by, you make it happen because of the love for another human being.

Love is a commitment. A relationship is a commitment. And the commitment happens to be, or can be pleasurable. But pleasure is not a relationship. A relationship can be pleasurable. But if all you have is the pleasure, it’s not a relationship; it’s just an event. A relationship has permanence; an event is only an event.

There was a group of women who asked me to come to speak for them and help them with a problem they were having. They’re all recently started keeping mitzvas and their husbands are not supportive.

So I said to them, let me tell you from a man’s point of view what is bothering your husbands.

You came home one day, and not thinking, and not even suspecting that anyone can be uninspired when you are inspired, and you tell your husband that “ from now on you have to …” He didn’t hear the rest of the sentence - it didn’t matter. He heard the words “ have to” and he said “ no I don’t” What’s this all of a sudden? It’s my house, my life –“I have to? I don’t have to.”

Now if you had said, “ well, you’re right, you don’t have to, I’d really like it if you did.” He would have no problem now. But you said, “you have to...” So it’s not about having to keep kosher, or Shabbos or whatever. It’s that you changed the rules. You introduced new rules into his life. Why would he want to accept that?

But that’s not what’s really bothering him.

What’s really bothering him is that you came home inspired – and not about him. You came home excited and it wasn’t about him. He’s jealous. At home you’re bored, but you come home from this class and you’re all excited – what’s going on here? Who is the center of your life? What happened? You used to get excited about me… Now that hurts!

But that’s not really his problem. His problem is much deeper than that.

His problem is that if you had come home and said that you had met a really good looking guy, he would be upset, he would be angry, and he would fight it. You came home and said, “G-d said”. How do you compete with G-d? This is not fair. This is completely off the board. It’s not following the rules of the game. So he doesn’t know how to handle this so he is digging in his heels.

But even that’s not his real problem

His real problem is, you came home and said, “ G-d said to keep Shabbos. So I am keeping Shabbos. G-d said to keep kosher, I ‘m keeping kosher. G-d said to keep mikva, get out of my bed. And that doesn’t bother him. What really bothers him is, what if G-d tells you to dump me, since I don’t cooperate and since I’m not religious enough for you, what if G-d says, dump him. What would you do?

That’s what bothers him. I said I promised not to tell, I won’t tell your husbands, but just tell me, if G-d told you to dump your husband, what would you do? And there was silence in the room. Silence.

I said, “you’re thinking?” They said “ yes”.

“About what? If I were your husband, I would be very upset. What are you thinking? You know Jack Benny’s joke, your money or your life – I’m thinking, I’m thinking…What are you thinking?

According to Torah, if G-d came and said, dump your husband, what should they say?

We have two possibilities – we have to find a precedent in Torah so that we know what we are supposed to do. One day, G-d comes to Avraham and says, you know your son, your only son, your favorite son Yitzchak, bring him up on the altar. What did Avraham do? Got up early in the morning and with gladness of heart set off to do what G-d had commanded. From this we would learn that if G-d tells you to dump your husband, you should get up early in the morning and with gladness of heart, set off to do what G-d told you to do.

Now there is another story. The other story is that G-d came to Moshe and said, the people are so bad, they made a graven image. I am going to dump them. And Moshe said, if You dump them, You have to dump me too. Erase me from Your book. From this we would learn, that if G-d comes to a woman and says, dump your husband, she should say, alright, but I am going with him.

You can’t not obey G-d. Dump him. And go with him.

Now which of the two stories carries, holds the answer to this question. Very simply. G-d didn’t say to Avraham, dump Yitzchak. He said, raise him back to heaven. What was Avraham supposed to say? If he goes, I go. He wasn’t invited. So Yitzchak wasn’t being dumped, he was being taken back to heaven, and you can’t invite yourself to heaven.

So when G-d came to Moshe, and said, I’m dumping the people, I’m not taking them to heaven, I’m abandoning them in the desert, Moshe said, well, then I go with them. And we don’t find anywhere in any of the commentaries, we don’t find anywhere that G-d was annoyed with Moshe. It’s almost like He gets an argument from everybody – the people don’t listen, He talks to Moshe, He argues with Him, He gets no cooperation from anybody. G-d wasn’t angry with Moshe. On the contrary, that’s exactly what G-d wanted Moshe to say.

These women found an inspiration, an excitement – they found a truth, a compelling lifestyle and they got so excited and they were certain that just mentioning it is going to excite their husbands, and the husbands are also going to want to do things. It doesn’t work that way. They have to convince their husbands that this excitement that they have and this commitment that they have to mitzvas and to G-d, has not replaced the husband, nor displaced him. He still comes first.

Why? Because that’s what G-d wants. So it’s not a choice, G-d or your husband. G-d wants you to choose your husband.

Now that kind of love – the love that says, if you mess up, and you’re in trouble, then I’m in trouble with you, that’s not the pleasant kind of love, that’s not the pleasurable love, it’s a much richer, it’s much stronger love, and it compels certain actions, certain behaviors. Because just being content to be in love is not enough. It does not satisfy this other kind of love.

So what happens when two Jews get married? There are subjective feelings that come and go. Rise and fall. Excitement /boredom. Sometimes you can’t believe how lucky you are; sometimes you wonder if this is all there is to life. Sometimes you’re feeling high and giddy in the relationship, and sometimes it’s just nice. Those are all subjective feelings.

There is an objective reality to love that doesn’t come and go. It’s not that fickle, it’s much more stable, much more permanent. It’s the commitment, the devotion, the fact that you are no longer single - that doesn’t change from day to day. The fact that you are a couple, that doesn’t change from day to day. You are not more of a couple one day, and less of a couple the next. That’s a consistency, which is an objective reality that is stronger than our subjective feelings.

Now how that happens is a mystery. We have not yet discovered a really convincing explanation or answer to this question. Two people, strangers for the first half of their lives, quarter of their lives, get together and by free choice decide to share a life and they get married.

How did this completely subjective decision or choice create an objective reality that is stronger and bigger than both of them? How does this happen?

You know that people say that divorce is like an amputation. It’s a pretty appropriate description. How does this happen? They are still two separate people. They go their separate ways. Why is that an amputation? Okay, you’ve invested in the relationship, you’ve got a lot of memories…but amputation? Somehow, marriage – that bond which is created voluntarily, gets out of control. You lose control. Once you’ve stood under the chuppah, all voluntary and volitional behavior is gone. Now, you have no choice. It’s not subjective anymore, now it’s objective. This is your wife and this is how you have to treat her. And what if I don’t want her to be my wife? Well, then you have to have an amputation.

Because something happened under the chuppah. You know, we think we have freedom of choice and then all of a sudden, it’s gone. No more freedom of choice. It’s a very powerful thing. That is the love that is compelling, not the love that is pleasurable.

The love that is pleasurable you give as a gift to whoever appeals to you. You share that kind of love as a present, not that it should be frivolous, but it’s yours. You give as you choose. But this other kind of love doesn’t have that looseness to it. The other kind of love once given is out of your control. Maybe it wasn’t in your control ever. Maybe that’s not the kind of love that you can choose to give. It’s the kind of love that happens when it is supposed to, not when you want it to.

And maybe that’s why sometimes we find ourselves married to a person we cannot live with. I mean literally, and end up divorced. Why? Because …it’s not like people sit there thinking, boy did I make a mistake. What was I thinking to marry this person? I must have been drunk.

That’s not true at all. The kind of love that ends up in marriage was really not the kind of love you gave by choice. It was never under your control. There was some kind of a destiny here, some kind of a purpose here, and there was no way that you could have prevented it. And that’s why when it happens with a person that you do get along with, it’s a marriage, not a friendship. And when it has to end, it’s an amputation, the party’s over.

So the respect we have for the institution of marriage has got to be much greater, much bigger, much more real, if this is believable, it has to be much more important than the respect that we have for our own emotions. So when a person says, I am in an abusive relationship, he doesn’t treat me right, he makes fun of me, that’s nothing compared to the truth and the strength and the power of the marriage. Because what’s hurting is only that pleasant love, that voluntary love that comes and goes. But what’s in place is that other love that is an attachment, a commitment, a dedication, and a compelling oneness that is beyond our control.

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