not so warm and not so fuzzy feeling

So this past week I've been learning a lot about love and putting others first. As a society I think we have the tendency to think of love in a very different way than it is actually meant to be. We think that love is about having a "warm and fuzzy feeling" all the time, about living on an emotional high. We replace the meaning of love with infatuation. We are content loving others as long as we feel like loving them and as long as we feel that they love us. I think this is why a lot of marriages end in divorce, the couple no longer feels love for each other and then they bail. It's the same concept in all our relationships, not only marriage, we need to feel love in order for the relationship to be functional in our minds. To an extent we do need to feel loved, as humans that's who we are. We long for value and acceptance, and that's not bad, we need to fulfill that. But we also make love into solely a feeling and nothing more. But I've been learning that love is more than just a fleeting feeling, it's a concious decision, it demands action. It is a commitment to putting others before yourself. I read a quote this week that said, "True love takes the wants, the needs, and the struggles of others and makes them your own." That is so true, love is not just feeling emotionally attached to someone. Sometimes love is hard, and I know I won't always FEEL love for people but I can always decide whether to love them or not in how I treat those closest to me. This is why it says in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is patient, love is kind, it is gentle, it does not boast, it forgives and forgets, love is an action.