How to Keep the Spark Alive in a Marriage
We fall in love. We see how great the person we’re with is and think, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with them.’ Or some variation. We get married with the dream that life is going to be great. This is even more true when we think that we are marrying the person God has given to us. As husband and wife, we walk down the aisle and into our happily ever after.
And then…
Perhaps you’re living the ‘and then’, or perhaps you’re wanting to avoid it. It takes ruling our mind to keep those loving feelings from the beginning and letting them grow and mature throughout our relationship. Yes, the chemical reactions will dwindle, but love is more than those beginning butterfly feelings and bursts of adrenaline that we get at the beginning. It’s the consistent support and presence of someone we care about and that cares about us.
How do we keep our love glasses on so that we don’t get lost in the sea of everything else and lose our affection for our spouse? Here are some key points to do just that.
- Love: Just as Jesus told us to love. Love is more than a feeling. It’s an action. What are the things that turned your affection toward your spouse in the first place? What is it that you did to show them you loved them?
a. Spend time with them
b. Listen to them
c. Do things for them
d. Bring them gifts
e. Tell them how wonderful you think they are
f. Take them to interesting places
g. Thank them for everything they did
h. Notice the small things (looks, acts, gestures)
i. Do the small things (hold doors, send a text during the day, smile at them)Remember what it is that you would do to show your affection to your spouse. What are the ones that really caused them to light up? Sometimes we do things that are nice but don’t speak to our spouse, so find the ones they really like. Not sure which they do like, ask!
- Caring: I believe that you care for your spouse, but have you shown it to them? Do you help carry their burdens?
This can be literally, helping do things that are taken off your spouse’s plate. Perhaps your spouse is shouldering a lot (work, house, family, church), and taking over some things would help them immensely. This could be a permanent change or a temporary one. Look around and see what your spouse’s stress level is, perhaps the worst part of their day, when they look the most frazzled, and see if there is something you can take off their plate. It could be small like using paper plates instead of having dishes. Or large, like taking over garbage dumps, or bath times for the kids. We can’t often fix things at work to cause less stress, but we can do something at home to help.
Caring can also mean doing the things we’re already doing but without complaining or with a positive attitude. We can do a lot of things for our spouse, but our attitude can ruin it. I have often told clients it’s not what they say, it’s how they’re saying it. “I filled the gas in the car.” That’s caring but if it’s said with an attitude, we can make our spouse feel like a burden, not that we did something caring for them. The activity is irrelevant, if our attitude comes up during it then we can ruin the positive action that we’ve done. Remember do all things as if we are serving Christ. I certainly wouldn’t want to help Jesus by filling up His gas tank and then seeming resentful about doing it.
Caring can also be figurative. We can listen. We can’t always change something. Work being the biggest thing, we can’t change anything in our spouse’s work. We can be a shoulder for them though as they talk about their frustrations and have a we against the world mentality. Within reason of course, we’re to love the world. But we need to vent sometimes so that it doesn’t run around in our brain or blow out toward someone else. This could be the way that you show that you care to your spouse, being a listening ear.
- Love languages: the 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman has really helped us to understand that not only are there different ways to love but there are different ways our spouse receives love. And these can change in different seasons of life.
Do you know your spouse’s love language? This is a good thing for you and your spouse to know and work on. I recommend reading the book and going to their website for more information, and to take the quiz but I’ll add a quick run down here.
Each person, unique in who God has made them to be and in the environment that they grew up in has a unique way that they receive love. These fit into 5 major categories. - Acts of service (meaning they like things done for them)
- Affirmations (acknowledging what a person has done and how you view them)
- Gifts (both bought or found)
- Quality time (spending time with them)
- Physical touch (hand holding, arm around the shoulder, etc)
Each one of these is specific to the person. Perhaps your spouse doesn’t like compliments about how something looks on them but they do like it when you acknowledge they cleaned the house. There may be certain touches they don’t like. Or going places and spending time but they don’t like the place that was picked. Let’s be specific to our unique spouse in what speaks to them.
- Affection: When we train our brain to look for the good in our spouse, the gold or hidden treasure, then we build our affection toward them. Focusing on the good increases it and helps us to weather when things aren’t as good. We will know that our spouse is kind, loving, and caring, (insert adjectives here) even when they’re having a bad day.
Instead of riding the emotional roller coaster of allowing a mood or attitude to taint our thoughts, we can say to ourselves that they are having a bad day or something is wrong because this isn’t their normal. Then we come at the problem from a different point of view. I’m not talking about excusing abuse of course, or not talking about things that may have hurt you. I’m talking about having resiliency when our spouse has a bad day. We can still go and talk to them about what hurt us, but we’ll have the emotional fortitude to be able to wait or not allow it to ruin our opinion of them. Everyone has a bad day, we don’t need to ride the wave of that bad day with them.
Of course, there is so much more we can do to keep the spark alive. But check yourself. Is there one area you can start working on right now? Making a small change with your mind and action can start the ripple effect of more and more change occurring.
I pray a shift over your marriage that the love, affection, and caring are multiplied exponentially. That your heart is filled with loving feelings for your spouse that flow out of you like living waters to them. That where you are thirsty you are filled by the love of God. That each change you make increases the changes in your relationship. That there is a never-ending fire that comforts and sustains you between you and your spouse, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Christian Counseling in Minnesota including: Minneapolis, Rochester, Duluth, St. Cloud, Mankato, St. Paul, Woodbury, Maple Grove, one, BuRNSEville, Roseville, Stillwater, Bemidji, Park Rapids.
