Sometime you might ask one another, ‘Why do you love me?’ You’ll take turns listing each other’s attributes, but you won’t be able to come up with any reasons. Really, it’s a ‘You’re prettier.’ ‘No, you’re prettier,’ sort of argument. You might get to the end of this conversation feeling a little bit frustrated, because although you’re now full of compliments about how wonderful you are, you won’t have actually gotten to the bottom of it.
You could try and address the question analytically, and decide that a number of socio-economic factors determined your location in the world and that your proximity to one another and your relative positions within your social circle led to your inevitable coupling. But the coincidences leading to your meeting and realising your attraction won’t get you to the bottom of the question either.
Love is a slippery little weasel, isn’t it? It can’t be listed, it can’t be held, it can’t be unpacked. It’s often mistaken for that simpering wee ogre, the cupid. Whatever you do, never forget that love can’t be boiled down to an orderly quality. You can’t break up each other’s features into a stack of elements which add up to a reason.
You might say ‘I love you because you are part of my soul,’ but you know fine well that a soul is an analogy, and that although this statement is true it can only slide off the surface of real meaning like water off a weasel’s fur.
The most honest answer to ‘Why do you love me?’ is ‘I don’t know.’
Don’t worry, and don’t wobble; it doesn’t mean you’re uncertain. On the contrary, you know that you don’t know, and this is fantastic bravery of the highest order.
Nor does it mean that the question is redundant and that you should stop asking each other. Always ask, ‘Why do you love me?’ It will remind you that you love each other, and besides, this conversation never loses its exasperating shine.
It is what marriage is made of.
