According to the interwebs, the saying ‘love is a many-splendoured thing’ was popularised by the 1955 film of the same name, which itself is based on a novel written by Han Suyin. This beautiful, poetic phrase paints love as a multifaceted, magnificent, yet often challenging experience. Speaking from personal experience, love certainly is a many-splendoured thing!

The phrase is also commonly associated with the 1955 Oscar-winning song, written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. They describe love this way:

Love is a many-splendoured thing
It’s the April rose that only grows in the early spring
Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living
The golden crown that makes a man a king

I’d always thought William Shakespeare, the great playwright and poet, had penned love is a many-splendoured thing, but there you go. You really do learn something new every day, to quote another great, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Sentimental Songs and Sensational Sports

In 1995, Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Bryan Adams released his classic love track “Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?” It quickly became a multi-platinum, chart-topping worldwide single, and for good reason. In my younger years, I thought it was sappy and overly sentimental, but over time, it’s grown on me.

Perhaps it’s Paco De Lucia’s virtuosic Spanish guitar playing, or the excellent production values (the song was created by Bryan Adams, brilliant composer Michael Kamen, and legendary producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange), but it’s well worth a listen.

The chorus soars:

When you love a woman
You tell her that she’s really wanted
When you love a woman you tell her that she’s the one
‘Cause she needs somebody
To tell her that you’ll always be together
So tell me have you ever really
Really, really ever loved a woman?

As an almost 22-year (and counting) student of love and marriage, I have to agree.

My family and I have been enjoying the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. We’ve been cheering our Aussie athletes (Cooper Woods’ gold medal in Freestyle Skiing Men’s Moguls was thrilling). We’ve watched with bated breath the maniacal downhill skiers, but our family-favourite event is the Pair Skating (my wife and five daughters outnumber me on this one).

Yes, it’s flamboyant, but watching these couples seemingly effortlessly gliding across the ice with grace, strength, and incredible agility is a sight to behold. Canadian pair Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps transfixed us, and Aussie duo Holly Harris and Jason Chan have been spectacular too.

Dynamic Duo

For husbands and dads like me learning to love, thankfully, we don’t just rely on playwrights, poets or winter sports stars for marriage advice. Michael Foster is a pastor, author, and businessman from Clermont County in Ohio, USA. On a recent Substack post, he described a healthy marriage relationship as being like a dance:

The man leads, but the woman is never passive. She responds to his lead, and her movement shapes his next step. That is how a healthy marriage works. The man carries real responsibility to lead, the woman truly follows, yet the relationship is dynamic. Both have agency. For the dance to be beautiful, there has to be mutual awareness and a willingness to yield to one another in the right ways.

He continues:

In a good marriage, there is a functional hierarchy, but it does not feel stiff or mechanical. It feels like a dance. The structure is there, yet what you notice is the rhythm, the timing, the way each anticipates the other. When the relationship is ordered well, the clumsy things drop away. Manipulation, pedestalizing, and power games ruin the choreography, so they must go.

What comes forward instead is a man leading with steadiness and a woman moving with responsiveness, each adjusting in real time. They move across the floor together, not in competition but in step. When they dance well, you do not sit there analysing who is in charge. You see the harmony. You feel the beauty of the whole.

The dance of love indeed.

Lovework

Whether you’re married, starting out in a relationship, or single, continue learning the dance of love. Hopefully you were able to plan something for Valentine’s Day, but if not, it’s never too late. Click here if you need some ideas. If you’re feeling inspired, play “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” loud, and dance around the house. Whatever you do, have some fun together and do something!

Discover what makes your significant other tick. Show and tell them how much you love them, in spades. If you’re a dad, make sure your children know how much you love them, too. After all, love is a dance that we can all improve at.

Yours for the dance of love,
Nathaniel Marsh

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Image courtesy of Adobe.