3 Ways to Keep Your Love Alive Through the Years

I'm sure you've heard that marriage grows richer over the years as your love for each other deepens.

But, maybe you don't feel the love. Or experience the depth.

Perhaps you just see how your spouse has changed over the years.

After 32 years of marriage, I've learned that love isn't something we always feel. It's not an emotion, it's an action. And it's something that God expects us to continue to extend to each other, whether we feel like it or not.

(I've also learned that when we start complaining that our spouses have changed, they often think we have changed as well).

While I was writing my books, When Couples Walk Together, When A Wife Inspires Her Husbandand 12 Ways To Get More With Your Husband, I interviewed nearly 100 married couples, wherever they are. from 10 to 50 years old to find out how they keep love alive. From these interviews, as well as my personal experience in my own marriage, I have compiled a list of three ingredients for continuing to love each other over the years, even when our spouse has changed and the feelings don't show up. up.

And the amazing thing about this list is that when we do our part to love no matter how we feel,God shows up and many times, in his grace, bring those feelings.

The kind of love God wants in our marriages

God designed marriage to work perfectly. And I imagine that before sin came on the scene, Adam and Eve had no problem loving each other. After all, they were all sinless and perfect.

Yet their sin created a whole new dynamic for every marriage (Genesis 3). Because of the presence of sin in our lives, the only kind of "love" that comes naturally is that feeling of infatuation we had when we first met our spouse.

When you and I first got married, we saw in our spouses what we wanted to see. "Love is blind", they say. And then over the years our eyes are opened to reality and we see a lot of things that we might not have wanted to see in the first place.

We saw that our spouse was a sinner. We saw that they were able to let us down and make us suffer. And they saw the same sin and the same abilities in us.

But agape love - God's kind of love - sees all and always loves. God knows everything about us, including our imperfections, and he still loves us.

He knows what lies in our minds and hearts, and He knows not only our past sins but also our future sins - and He always extends love. God loves us unconditionally and despite who we really are. And this is how he calls us to love one another, including our spouses.

Jesus said in John 13:34, “I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you,you must love one another." Jesus loved us by laying down his life for us. He showed sacrificial, persevering, and enduring love for us. And in doing so , He showed us how to love our spouses.

Depending on how Jesus loves us, here are three ways to love your spouse over the years:

Photo credit: ©Unsplash/Lina Trochez

1. Show sacrificial love

As humans, and therefore sinners, it's easy to put yourself first.

I am ashamed when I think of my Lord's example of washing the feet of his disciples and dying for the sins of mankind. I'm sure my selfishness is on display in my marriage more than I realize and my husband sees. And of course it is not the love of Calvary.

The love of Calvary - or the sacrificial love - dies to itself. The love of Calvary puts the other first. Calvary love says "Not my will, but yours", "Not my happiness, but yours", "Not my preferences, but yours", and "Not my fulfillment, but yours".

How can our spouses not be encouraged, inspired, and motivated to love us back when we show them this kind of sacrificial love? And as we do, our love for our spouse deepens.

Yes, God created marriage to be equally fulfilling for both partners. But we are sinners, and so at least one of us has to bend and become different from the other. At least one of us must choose to be more like Christ. To show sacrificial love to our spouse is to ask ourselves "What is it costing me?"

During the first years of our marriage, it is a joy to love our spouses. But over the years...