Day 260: All-Consuming Love Part 3

     The girls continued on in this matter through their high school graduation.  Laney claimed to have grown out of her soap operas and was cynical towards relationships, after having been burned so many times in high school.  She believed all men were selfish, immature, and unfeeling.  At college, she partied with her girlfriends and only went on flings with guys if she was bored.  Maggie, on the other hand, was overjoyed to have finally found someone she loved who reciprocated the feelings.  Now that she was in love, reading her romance novels didn’t bring her pain, and she read them on occasion because she missed the stories and liked how they stimulated her romantic mood.  Unlike Laney, she did not allow them to influence her actions in her relationship with her boyfriend.

     Both sisters eventually married, although Laney has been divorced twice.  She has been married to her current husband for three years and lately has been feeling depressed that her marriage has died.  She has little hope that love exists between them anymore.  To fill the void in her life, Laney watches her soap operas again.  The drama in them makes her life more interesting, and she has enjoyed getting sucked up into their love affairs.  Instead of attempting to spend part of the evening with her husband on the couch downstairs, Laney prefers watching her soaps in her bed.  Last week, she started reading those cheap romance books because they read like a soap opera script.  God only knows what would happen if she tries to maintain a friendship with her husband. 

     Maggie has settled down with a man she met in her senior year of college, and they have two children.  She has found joy in being a wife, mother, and an editor at her job downtown.  Maggie still enjoys the warm feelings a good love story can give her because they remind her of the happy times she has shared with her husband.  Occasionally, she mimics some of the loving gestures in the books to her husband.  However, she has learned that the love she feels for her husband is much stronger than anything she ever felt from reading a book.  She works hard at her marriage to keep them in love through doing acts of love for him instead of merely accepting his love.  If there was one thing she wished Laney would understand, it’s that love is not merely an emotion but an action you perform every day.