Love.

“Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” - CS Lewis

Love. So many of us spend a great deal of time thinking about it, dreaming of it, wishing for it. And yet many of us run from it when it is freely given, unable to recognize when it is staring us in the face.

I read a book recently that changed my perspective on love.

Taking place in London during World War II, “The End of the Affair” carried with it all of the elements that draw me in. It involves a man named Maurice Bendrix, who is the narrator, and he takes us through what has now become the very bitter existence that he has been reduced to after his lover, Sarah, abruptly ends their affair with no explanation. We meet Maurice about two years after his affair with the married Sarah (married to Maurice’s friend, Henry, no less) has dissolved. I usually find that one character in every book I read resonates with me in some way, but I didn’t expect it to be the two main characters at once. I didn’t expect to come to the realization that at different times in my life, I had been both Sarah and Maurice in my relationships. And I didn’t expect this book to shine a light on what love really is, and how we so often get it wrong.

One of the main statements that Maurice makes at the beginning of this story is profound in its self awareness, and yet even he reexamines it as the tale unfolds. He says, “This is a record of hate far more than love,” and indeed, upon reading his thoughts and feelings with regards to Sarah you can really feel the hate. We see this when, as the novel starts, Maurice runs into Sarah’s husband, Henry, and expresses in his own thoughts that nothing would have delighted him more than to hear from Henry that Sarah had fallen ill, was unhappy, even dying. Who could think and feel such things about someone they claim to love? But as I read on, it occurred to me that we so frequently misunderstand what our own feelings are telling us.

Maurice’s love for Sarah is expressed through his jealousy, insecurity, and demands to possess her completely - regardless of the fact that she is legally wed to another. Is this love? He seems to think so. During one conversation with Sarah he becomes enraged when he asks her how she would feel if he should choose to be with another woman, and Sarah promptly responds that if it is something that would make him happy, then of course that is what she would want for him. Maurice doesn’t understand this, and even says, “...I refused to believe that love could take any other form but mine; I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”

Oh, how vividly I recall being there. When I read that, it was like getting hit with a ton of bricks. I had been that person, consumed by my own jealousy. It was two, three years ago when I found myself in that situation. At that time, I, like Maurice, measured love by the extent of my own jealousy and what I suppose was the desire to possess. I had no other label for that feeling, but I know now and have learned since that it was not love. It was lust.

Lust consumes everything in its path and demands no less. It leaves disaster, broken hearts and bitterness in its wake. It cares nothing for the subject of its obsession, treating this person more like an object, but is concerned only with itself and its immediate needs. When I was there, in that space, I realize now that I only ever thought about how the situation was making me feel. I didn’t stop to think about him, the other person, and how he might be feeling. Not once. My thoughts revolved solely around what could be done for me, and never about what I was doing to him. He had been reduced to nothing but a shadow for me, and if you were to ask me what his favorite books were or anything other than surface level information, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. Because I never cared to know. Looking back on that it seems almost painfully obvious that was what was going on. But I am naive in the nature of relationships, and love has, until recently, eluded me. I had no other basis for comparison. I see this happen a lot with others.

As I reached the final pages, I understood this was really a love story about God, for it was He who ended the affair between Sarah and Maurice. I found myself in Sarah as well, and through her lens we are able to plumb the depths of human emotion and bear intimate witness to the painful sacrifices we make when the feelings are true, and pure. Her love is modeled after the One who loves us. It is here that it is demonstrated that love does not demand, nor does it consume. Rather it gives unconditionally, without hesitation. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7)

In the end, Sarah’s sin was not so great that she could be separated from God. Love, it seemed, won. I would venture to say that God can prove to be most unscrupulous in this capacity. Do we choose Him? Or does He always choose us?