If you had to pick, which would you pick - Romance, Sex, Love or Committment?

January is often times a month of reflection for me as it is probably for a lot of you. I am going over the past year and making plans for the new year and how to improve it or at least maybe make changes.

Also, I am coming up to that big 50 year in my life. Shocking to think about as I really don’t feel older than 22. But if I had only been so wise as 22…grin.

So I won’t think about time as in years but in experiences. I’ve had many experiences to draw upon. One thing I was pondering was how sex, romance, love and commitment all draw from one another and in a perfect world, you have all four at one time, hopefully in one relationship. But more often, if you have two out of four, it can be a fairly satisfying relationship. But experience has taught me that even with love, love is not enough to sustain a relationship under the wear and tear of daily living if you don’t have commitment.

And finally, even without romance, sex and love, if you have commitment, you can get through the very roughest of times.

Love is a strong, compelling emotion that has no reason or thought behind it for the most part.

Commitment on the other hand is a pledge, a promise, to obligate yourself to. This takes a conscious thought process that one puts yourself into and maybe it is emotionally base, maybe it is goal based, but it is almost always based upon a morality or character trait that propels you toward whatever you are committing to.

If you look at the word pledge, it means something delivered as security for the payment of a debt or fulfillment of a promise, and subject to forfeiture on failure to pay or fulfill the promise. So while love may hold a promise that attracts us to the person whom we feel love for, commitment is the fulfillment of that promise that attracted us in the first place. Love may be what brings us together but commitment is what keeps us together when love and all the things that are the foundation of love – romance and sex, don’t fulfill us during times of trouble and stress.

But how long can a person live on commitment alone? When do we decide that sex and romance are no longer desired or required for a life that would still be full of promises and expectations? I watched my mother take care of my stepfather for many years as his mind slowly regressed. He became more and more like a child and an unruly and bitter child, at that. My mother fed him, cared for him, doctored him and saw to his every need, all the while, caring for their home, their assets, their finances. She had made a commitment to be his partner, but he had stopped being her partner many years prior to his death. However, if she had broken her commitment to him, where would he have gone? Where would he have lived? These were the questions she asked herself and not being satisfied with the answers, she continued her commitment.

She continued to be committed to a man that she no longer even knew and before his life ended, he was more of a child to her than the man she had loved and married and committed to. Romance had been gone for over ten years. Sex followed the way of romance shortly after that. Did love follow as well, maybe more slowly? I have never asked her that. But I know that commitment never died, even when she went days without a conversation from the man who share her home with her.

So this thing called commitment… this pledge, this promise – it may not bring us happiness in the sense of gaiety and fun, but it defines us and gives us a place in life that we can count on and sense of who we are. And it isn’t complex at all. It’s about treating others they way we would want to be treated ourselves. So if my mother ever needs care as she grows older, she knows I am committed to her and her well being, just as she was to my stepfather. And she knows I do it not out of a sense of obligation, but because I love her. But it’s also because I love myself. And I want to know that I am the kind of person who can make a promise and fulfill it. It gives life meaning to know what commitment is and fulfill it, don’t you think?

I have loved several people in my life. If I believe what I have been told, I have been loved by several people in my life. However, the ones that truly impacted me fall under two categories –
The unexpected acts of kindness and sacrifice
Those who made commitments and kept them, even when it was Inconvenience or not pleasant.

So maybe commitment is not without love but is love with something added. Maybe it is love plus sacrifice.

But that brings us to another topic for later. Thanks for reading.