attraction and it's falsehoods

I just finished reading the book by Lawana Blackwell, The Widow of Larkspur Inn, and I was very impressed by the author's style of writing. She presented her characters as if they were based on real people's lives; their emotions, thoughts and actions were portrayed as if they were taken straight from a collection of historic diaries. Normally, I try to stay away from Christian Romance books because I believe that most of them misrepresent love and how God intended love to be between a man and a woman. Granted, there are some books in that genre out there that are worth reading. Francine Rivers has written many Christian "Romance" Fiction books, that not only grip the readers interest by her frank approach to sensitive topics like abortion, prostitution, social injustice, but also promotes a healthy attitude towards the romantic side of relationships. Dee Henderson wrote a series of books based on a fictional family (The O'Malley series) of orphans that have gone on in their lives to careers that often put them in danger. Each book presents a possible real life mystery and love story intertwined. Her characters are complicated and yet show many human traits as they discover true love.There are many more Christian Romance novels out there that present God's intentions toward romantic love. Grace Livingstone Hill, Janette Oak, Colleen Coble to name a few.
In the book, The Widow of Larkspur Inn, you do not find out until the very end that the main character, the Widow, has become the object of another character's affection. Thru the book there is no tender looks or caresses, no romantic sentences to clue you in to their relationship. The only thing that sets the couple apart is their respect and consideration towards each other. The Widow goes thru the whole book mourning her first husband and in the end realizes that her marriage was based on physical attraction. She comes to the conclusion that there is a difference between loving someone based on compatibility or attraction and mutual respect and honor. Both sides can look and feel like love, but which one is lasting? The Widow concludes that love is a choice that you stand by no matter what. In the end, she chose love her man even though she was not attracted to him.
The difference between love and attraction isn't as fine line as we think. Attraction has to do with only the physical aspects of love. It involves the five senses and often can cloud judgement of character or situations. With love being a choice, it involves the mind, soul, heart (the seat of emotions), and the body. True love is a consuming choice to stand by someone thru anything that may happen even at the cost of self. Selflessness is love. To give up one's self is the biggest thing that a human can do because in the giving, there is a molding to the other person that happens. God intended man and woman to become "one flesh" through the physical and mental act of sex. All forms of sexual contact links a man and woman on a level that is hard to break. Spiritually speaking, though sex is an act, it also connects the heart (again, the emotions) and the soul which is the essence of a person. Which is why I believe that the feelings and thoughts evoked thru reading, for the sake of my topic, Christian Romance, can lead to impure thoughts and actions, and largely a wrong sense of how God created human love to be.
Hollywood takes physical attraction and labels it love. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted as they are. Those "feelings" of love make money. You might ask if attraction needs to come from love and I say both yes and no. Yes, it needs to not be the first desire in a relationship, and no it is a part of how God created us to accept each other. But it isn't the main purpose of love. Physical attraction is just that. Physical. If we depended on attraction first before getting into a relationship, where would that leave those who we say are not "attractive"? Or what about the elderly couples? Do they stay together because they are attracted to each other or because they make a choice? A selfless decision to love someone in spite of how they look or act is the most powerful part of love. In as much as you want to be accepted and loved, so does everyone else. It all comes down to a choice.
Why am I writing about this? And so strongly believing this? It really struck me about the choice to love. It's one thing to like someone because you are attracted to them and a whole other thing to choose to love someone who has beauty in their person but not necessarily physically. Attraction often comes after love when love is truly applied. As you learn to love someone selflessly, you see past the unattractive, like bad breath or scars, or overweight. Those things begin to not matter as you see into the other persons heart and soul.
I have made the mistake of falling for attraction first and ended up losing him. I believe it is because we based our relationship on attraction and not on meaningful things like compassion, encouragement, dedication, accountability. Our "love" was shallow and self serving instead of being rooted in the good things. When our relationship fell apart our of the blue, it wasn't by my choice. He chose to walk away from our friendship and relationship, resulting in him choosing to not even talk to me. Four years of our lives together and it's as if they meant nothing. Talk about devastating. It caused me to question whether or not I was attractive, or lovable, or even just likable. I had based my importance and identity on the relationship that ended up failing. I wanted so much to be loved and to love that I overlooked the truth that attraction is shallow when if comes before selflessness. Beauty fades but character doesn't I want to learn to have a good character so that I can selflessly give myself to someone else someday. And even if that doesn't happen and marriage isn't for me, then at least I can say that I accomplished a life full of character building and selfless love for others.