We start off so strong when we enter the courtship with that special someone. The newness of infatuation is stirring up butterflies and we can’t even get off the phone or end the date to say bye. We call each other dozens of times a day just to hear each others voices. Why is it that when we get into marriage when it all counts, that we let love break down?
Now we are allowing our issues that we’ve never dealt with from our childhood or youth to plague our relationship. Now we fight about socks on the floor or towels in the bathroom. We can’t get food to taste right, or even compliment each other like we used to. Your feet touching me in bed is now a full-blown argument. What happened to the love notes and the date nights? How did we get here?
Love breaks down when we allow life to become routine like a car on cruise control. When you’re cruising you forget that the speeds change with the different zones we drive through. You can easily become complacent and miss the fact that we need to adjust and make changes. We have to keep our hands on the wheel in the relationship so that we don’t allow ourselves to lose control because we fell asleep at the wheel.
Now we have moved into one house where we have new and larger budget responsibilities. Next we stop flirting and having intercourse as much as we did the first few years of marriage. Children are in the picture now and that brings more stress to the household and the budget. We haven’t taken a vacation with just the two of us since we’ve had children. We seem to live our lives around work instead of what we desire.
You see, it takes both of us to make sure that we get the counseling before and or during our marriage to make sure that we have the proper tools for marriage. Now I see why people advise premarital counseling. We think we’re so in love and we have no idea what we are in for. It’s not that love is hard, but life comes at you like the speed of light and sometimes it can totally blindside you. Like a tornado, it can blow you off course in a moment and it can take years to recover.
Love breaks down because we don’t know how to fight for love. We have to know how to listen and to speak to make sure our communication is clear. We have to say what we mean and mean what we say. If we have real conversations and keep each other first, then we won’t get lost in selfishness and start the blame game of it’s all your fault. I wish we would have known that we come first and not the children or work. We forgot to take care of us, and fight for each other instead of against each other. Love breaks down because we forget to love. Love is not a feeling it’s a choice.
Now how do we fix it? When love breaks down, most people run to divorce court to finish destroying their marriage and family unit. Instead, people should seek counseling and find the root of the problem so that they can get back to love. There really isn’t a problem if there is not infidelity or physical abuse. Those are divorce issues. If it’s other things, that just means that we’ve gotten off the main hi-way of love and become lost in the traffic jam or detours of life called distractions.
Start with forgiveness and taking full responsibility for your own heart, words, and actions. If we can just begin with I’m sorry and get rid of all selfishness and get back to catering to and serving each other like when you were pursuing each other, then love can be revived. Don’t let your pride and anger suck the life breath out of what could be a beautiful marriage. It takes conscious effort from both people to keep love at an altitude that is beyond the clouds. Yes, you can have it and you should, but you have to stay there and build it up together. “Everything is about relationship, build them well”.
