Love, Aquinas, and the Meaning of Two Beings Bound Together

Sunday, February 9, 2025.

St.Thomas Aquinas never had to schedule an emergency session for a couple on the verge of divorce.

He never sat in a dimly lit office watching two people, exhausted from years of cold war, chew their lips bloody as they struggled to say anything at all.

He never glanced at the clock, wondering whether another 50-minute hour could even begin to untangle the knots in their love.

But Aquinas knew something about human nature. And that’s all couples therapy really is—an attempt to wrestle with the raw, unreasonable, incomprehensible stuff of human nature.

The good saint knew that love isn’t a feeling, or a reward, or a cosmic accident.

Love is a thing that people do, day after day, in defiance of entropy.

It is an act of the will, a choice, a sacrifice, a small rebellion against the overwhelming loneliness of being alive.

Aquinas did not think this was particularly romantic. He thought it was true.

“To love is to will the good of the other.”
— St. Thomas Aquinas

The Problem With Modern Love

Most people come to couples therapy expecting a refund.

They feel robbed—by time, by biology, by the person sitting next to them who once made their stomach flip and now just leaves dishes in the sink. They want their love back. They want to know where it went.

But love did not go anywhere. It just stopped being convenient.

Aquinas would say that love isn’t something that happens to you. It is not a jackpot win, a lightning strike, a gift from the gods.

Instead, It is a moral act. Love, in its highest form, is the deliberate commitment to someone else's well-being.

And that—that right there—is what modern couples get wrong.

The moment love stops feeling like free-falling ecstasy, they assume it is dead. They treat love like fast food—if the first bite isn’t hot and fresh, they send it back.

Aquinas would say:
"What did you expect? Love is not a fever dream. It is a discipline. A practice. A virtue."

The Physics of Devotion

In couples therapy, there are two kinds of people:

• Those who think love is a passive state. They wait for the feelings to return, like stranded sailors watching the horizon. They say, “I don’t feel in love anymore.” As if love were a train they simply missed.

• Those who understand that love is a practice. They say, “I choose to love you, even when it’s hard.” They recognize that love is a thing that must be built and rebuilt, like a cathedral, brick by brick, over a lifetime.

• Aquinas was in the second camp. He believed that love must be actively sustained—not because it is fragile, but because all good things require tending.

In modern therapy, we call this rituals of connection—the small, daily acts of kindness, gratitude, and patience that keep a relationship alive. The checking in. The reaching out. The willingness to see your partner clearly, even when they are at their worst.

Aquinas called it caritas—the highest form of love. The kind that asks nothing in return.

Modern couples would do well to study this idea.

The Humility of Imperfect Love

Most people think love dies when it becomes difficult. They are wrong. Love begins when it becomes difficult.

Aquinas believed in something radical: love, in its truest form, is an agent of transformation.

In therapy, we talk about this in practical terms. We tell couples that conflict is an opportunity for growth, that the person sitting across from them is not their enemy, but their mirror.

Aquinas would nod.

"Love will reveal you to yourself," he might say. "And it will not always be flattering."

This is why love demands humility—the ability to see one’s own flaws without self-pity or resentment. The ability to ask for forgiveness and, perhaps even harder, to grant it.

Therapists will tell you that the strongest couples are not the ones who never fight. They are the ones who fight well—who return to the table, again and again, with open hands and softer voices.

Aquinas believed that the ego must be subdued in order for love to survive.

Modern therapy calls this emotional regulation, non-defensive listening, and vulnerability.

But really, it is just humility.

The Grace of Staying

Aquinas was a man of faith. He believed that human love was sustained not by effort alone, but by grace.

Therapists don’t talk much about grace. But perhaps they should.

Because every relationship will eventually reach a point where effort is not enough. Where two people stand at the edge of something unbearable—a betrayal, a silence too deep to bridge, a moment of crushing disillusionment—and they must decide: Do we stay, or do we leave?

It is at this moment that Aquinas would remind them:
"Love is not just a feeling. It is a promise. And promises are not sustained by willpower alone."

Psychologists might say the same thing in different words. "A healthy relationship requires something beyond logic. It requires faith."

The faith that, even in the worst of times, the story is not yet over. That your partner is not just who they are today, but who they might yet become.

The grace of staying is not grit or duty or self-sacrifice.

It is hope.

The Unreasonable Beauty of Love

Aquinas never had to counsel a couple through a midlife crisis. Never had to explain why someone cheated, or why a once-burning desire had dulled to indifference.

But he knew that love was never meant to be easy.

And more than that—he knew that love is worth it anyway.

Couples therapy, at its best, is not about finding perfect love. It is about finding a love that is real, and possible, and good.

Aquinas might say:
"Love is not a fairytale. It is the hardest and most beautiful thing you will ever do."

Well, If this isn’t a compellingly nice sentiment, what is?

And so, to the weary lovers sitting in the therapist’s office, looking at each other across the chasm of their shared life, Aquinas would offer this final thought:

"Keep going. Love is a thing worth fighting for."

Final Thoughts

Aquinas may have lived 800 years ago, but his ideas remain unsettlingly modern.

What if love really is an act of the will? What if passion is fleeting, but devotion is the real prize?

And what if, in the end, the measure of a life well-lived is not how much love we received, but how much love we gave?

That might be the most radical idea of all.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.