Remember how things were when you first met your spouse and started going out? Effortless passion just swept you along, and those feelings had you doing the most exciting and intense things for him or her. You went out together to do fun things. You laughed, you talked, you played. Almost everything you did was powered by the love you felt for one another. Then, as hormones waned, that original flame started to flicker, and before long, you'd stopped doing loving things for one another. When you look at your husband or wife, there's no heart-thumping, weak-at- the-knees reaction anymore. Just a deep fondness and familiarity, a 'yes, you're nice' feeling which is great if you're talking about the family cat, not the person you married!
It's never a conscious or deliberate act. Too often, we get caught up with the busyness of life and among the first things we forget to do is take care of our love for our spouse. And this is why so many relationships start to crack between four and ten years of marriage - simply because we've stopped doing things that create deep and lasting emotions. Go back to your behaviour with your spouse in your courting days and try to match it to how you relate to each other now. How drastically have things changed, and have they been for the better? If we're really honest with ourselves, we'll be able to identify areas of our relationship which we have neglected, or just plain taken for granted. And then we need to work at reversing the process.
Reference: Dessler,.A.Zhang.Z,.Yang, P(2008,October, 23)
