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So I am laying in my bed relaxing after a long day at work when I feel a tickle near my ankle. Being too tired to move, I ignore. That is until I realize this tickle is moving around and down my foot. I sit up and see a decent sized spider scurrying down my foot. Being deathly afraid of our eight-legged friends, the “holy shit there’s a spider on me” feeling kicks in and I flail my leg violently up in the air to get this thing off of me. This is where the story turns from run-of-the-mill spider murder to the stuff of nightmares. It happened to be particularly warm outside on this night and I had the ceiling fan in my room running at high speed. Keep in mind that my bedroom is in a finished attic, so the ceiling is lower than in a normal room. As I catapulted this devil into the air, rolling off the bed in the process, I hear a slight “poof” and look up to see a small darkish cloud. No. No. This can’t be.

It was FUCKING. RAINING. BABY. SPIDERS.

The motherfucker was pregnant and now all of her spider babies were descending down upon my chest, my face, my arms, everywhere. It seemed like there were hundreds. Surprised I didn’t go into shock and die right then and there. Needless to say I scurried outta there and left my house. Maybe for good.

After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.

She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.

Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.

The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.

The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.

Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.