If [the old fairy-tale /ending ‘They lived happily ever 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 would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were].
Who could bear [to live in that excitement /for even 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 the will and deliberately strengthened by habit;
reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace //which both partners ask, and receive, from God.
They can have this love /for each other /even at those moments /when they do not like each other;
as you love [yourself] /even when you do not 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 is on this love [that the engine of marriage is run]: [being in love] was [the explosion //that started it].
From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis