For the posts already given on this subject, see * C. S. Lewis on Christian Marriage “I” & ‘II’. Continuing, he wrote (starting on page 98 of ‘Mere Christianity’).
“It is hard because so many people cannot be brought to realize that when B is better than C, A may be even better than B. They like thinking in terms of good and bad, not of good, better, and best, or bad, worse, and worst. They want to know whether you think patriotism a good thing: if you reply that it is, of course, far better than individual selfishness, but that it is inferior to universal charity when the two conflict, they think you are being evasive. They ask what you think of dueling. If you reply that it is far better to forgive a man than to fight a duel with him, but even a duel might be better than a life long enmity which expresses itself in secret efforts to “do the man down,” they go away complaining that you would not give them a straight answer. I hope that no one will make this mistake about what I’m going to say.
What we call “being in love” is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us. It helps to make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, and it subordinates (especially at first) our merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust. No one in his senses would deny that being in love is far better than either common sensuality or cold self-centredness. But, as I said before, “the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.” Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also many things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. If the old fairy tale ending “They lived happily after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement even for five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both parents ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you don’t like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love first moved them to promise fidelity: This quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It’s on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.
If you disagree with me, of course, you will say, “He knows nothing about it, he is not married.” You may quite possibly be right. But before you say that, make quite sure that you are judging me by what you really know from your own experience and from watching the lives of your friends, and not by the ideas you have derived from novels and films. This is not so easy to do as people think. Our experience is colored through and through by books and plays and cinema, and it takes patience and skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves.
People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person, you can expect to go on “being in love” forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. . . . ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York, New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1945), 98-100
