A line from this movie flashed into my mind recently as I was thinking about the approach of Valentine’s Day, and I decided to repost this memory from the archives. May the only things we are measuring and counting out are the rich blessings of love and our loved ones.
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It’s a scene in Enchanted April, one of my favorite movies.
Lottie, unhappily married in 1920s London, is renting an Italian villa with three other women—also in various stages of unhappiness. She is guileless and honest and willing to examine the unfulfilling life she’s living—without pointing a finger of blame.
She begins, surprisingly, to miss her husband, and is feeling guilty about the lovely time she’s having in the lovely villa without him. In a conversation with one of her companions, she makes this confession:
The important thing is to have lots of love about. I was very stingy with it back home. I used to measure and count it out. I had this obsession with justice, you see. I wouldn’t love unless he loved me back exactly as much. If he didn’t, then neither did I.
The emptiness of it all.
I think about Lottie’s words from time to time. It’s funny, in a sad way, the emotional habits we cling to. How easy it is to stand in the middle of our marriage, tightly clenching the scales of justice, pointing out the severe/acute/obvious shortcomings of the one we say we love.
“Marriage,” wrote psychiatrist Frank Pittman, “isn’t supposed to make you happy; it’s supposed to make you married.” The “happy” results when we choose to have lots of love about—when we put the scales away.
This week marks the 49th Valentine’s Day with my Sam. He is the honest, guileless half this marriage who has always chosen love. I’m the lucky half.