There was a time when your legs got weak just seeing your spouse across the room. When you kissed, the room swayed and your heart beat faster. But now the magic is gone. You don't know what happened, you did not want it to happen and you don't know what caused it. You cannot bear the thought to stay in a loveless marriage any longer.
This is the story of lots of couples that did not tend to their marriage garden. They just carry on day in and day out without doing any special effort of any kind. Not the romance, not the intimacy, not the communication and this is the result. One or both come and say he/she wants a divorce as they are not in love anymore.
BUT I have good news. You don't need a divorce, you need to get a better understanding of how love works.
- Love is not an emotion.
- Love is not on one day and off the other day
- Love is a decision
- Love is a commitment
- Love is permanent
What happened then? You confused your emotions about love with love itself. Most of us make that mistake one time or another. Feeling in love is not the same as being in love. You haven't fallen out of love with your spouse, you've fallen out of feeling in love with your spouse. This is a fixable problem.
The emotions of love are like a fire. A fire in the fireplace makes the home warm and nice to come home to, but you can awake in the middle of night ice cold and discover that the fire went out without any coals left to rekindle it. But it doesn't mean you sell the house, it means that you have to build another fire.
How would you go about to build a new fire of loving emotions?, the same way you built the first one.
You start to clean the soot out of the chimney by apologizing for the harm you did by neglecting each other.
Next you open the damper and start to do some serious forgiving, put the past behind you.
This first two steps will give you the fresh start that you both so desperately need.
Next, you imagine you have just been introduced by a mutual friend and pile a dozen sheets of newspaper of romantic dates and pile them high.
Above the newspaper balls put the grate of tender consideration. Each week make a change in your behavior. Either stop doing something you know irritates your spouse or start doing something you know he/she will appreciate.
Across that grate, begin to lay the small, dry kindling of phone calls to ask "how is your day going?" sending text messages to let each other know that your care.
On top of all that lay several seasoned logs of long slow love making, drawing on the desire to please of your wedding night, coupled with the experience of your years. Look for new exciting things to do in your lovemaking.
Last but not the least, light the whole thing with prayer, asking God to renew your feelings of love for each other and to fan those tiny flames that are starting to lick upward into a roaring, popping, crackling fire.
So how do you keep your emotional fire from going out again?
Keep feeding the fire.
Source: Tough talk to a stubborn spouse, Dr. Stephen Schwambach, Harvest House Publishers
Images: freepik.com & pixabay.com
