Love Intentionally, Not Extravagantly

It still amazes me that something I wrote is the only information besides the Bible cited in the best-selling relationship book of all time—The 5 Love Languages.

I published it ten years ago this week as a Valentine's blog post titled, "Why One Text Message is More Romantic Than a Hundred Valentine Cards." It's about the relevance of a psychological concept called "object permanence" to love and romance. In honor of its 10th anniversary, I've revised and updated it for this Valentine's Day. May it inspire you to love even more intentionally!

I was an adult when I met my wife, but she turned my world upside down—I dropped about a decade from my psyche and started acting like a kid again. Around the clock, she was perched on the edge of every thought. It didn’t matter if we were in the same room or not, she was always with me. I even started writing a bunch of cheesy poetry.

Maybe all true love begins like cheesy poetry.

But it can’t last that way, can it? No relationship can sustain the passion and intensity of its earliest days—no jobs would get done, no kids would get raised, nobody would sleep. The world would grind to a halt if young love was in charge.

Yet, something essential is happening in the early days of our love, something we should not relinquish as the years pile up. We must extract it, preserve it, and live it.

Psychologists call it object permanence—the cognitive capacity to comprehend that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be observed.

To Be or Not to Be (Thought of)

Newborn babies lack object permanence. A big red rattle may make them coo and giggle, but when the rattle is suddenly hidden out of sight, they don’t go looking for it. In their new minds, the rattle ceases to exist. However, sometime in the second year of life, infants develop object permanence. When the delightful rattle is hidden, they go searching for it.

We begin our relationships this way, with the object of our love fixed permanently in our minds. When they’re away from us, we’ll go searching for them. I met my wife in the age before Facebook and text messages. But throughout the day, I would send her humorous emails. The truth is, I was just hoping to impress her with my wit so she’d stick around. But it turns out I was also sending one of the most loving messages of all:

Even when you’re not here, you’re with me. I’m thinking about you. You never leave me. When we’re apart, I’ll come searching for you.

I think all of us want to be like a red baby rattle, hidden within the folds of life, with the person we love coming searching for us, delighting in us when they find us again.

Text Messages…

We live in a lonely world, and one of the reasons we get married is that young love assuages our loneliness for a while. When we discover we are present in the mind of our lover even when we’re apart, it’s like a balm for our loneliness—a clear message declaring, “You’re not alone anymore because I take you with me when I go.”

When I worked with adolescents in my therapy practice, they were constantly getting text messages during their sessions, and they loved it. To be reminded over and over again they were a permanent fixture in the minds of others was to repeatedly have their loneliness eased. Fifteen years later, SnapChat has hacked that experience into an empire.

And teenager aren’t the only ones. Many of us would trade a bunch of extravagant togetherness for one message when we’re apart, just one message saying, “You never leave my heart, and I’m coming searching for you.”

It’s why missing trashcans matter so much to me.

…and Missing Trashcans

For years, when I got home at the end of a long workweek, I wanted nothing more than to walk directly in the house, kick off my shoes, and get into my pajamas, but it was my job to bring in the empty trashcans from the curb. Every once in a while, though, as I turned down our street and scanned the horizon for the toppled cans, they were nowhere to be seen. My wife had already taken them into the garage. The empty curb was a clear message to me: “I was thinking of you. You were with me, even while you were gone.”

Around Valentine’s Day, we think about big-fancy dinners, expensive jewelry, and massive bouquets. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But, ultimately, our souls don’t desire a love that purchases for us—our souls desire a love that searches for us.

That desire is satisfied for a while in the early days of young love. Yet it’s a desire that never goes away for good, and we can continue to satisfy it. One trashcan at a time. One text at a time. One message, in any form of word or action, that declares:

You’re on my mind and in my heart.

Even when we’re apart.

And I’ll always come searching for you.

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Looking back at this post now, I see a flaw. Some people do feel loved through purchases. The five love languages are gifts, acts of service, physical touch, quality time, and words of affirmation. What is your love language? What are your people’s love languages? Post them in the comments, along with one way you might more intentionally love them in their own love language this week. It’ll inspire all of us to more intentionally love our people!