Think back to when you first fell in love with your spouse. I’m sure the feeling of love was so strong, it was only natural for your actions to follow that feeling. A feeling that motivated you to spend every possible minute with that person, write love letters, buy gifts, and give yourself completely to him or her. Nobody ever wants that feeling to go away. We want to stay “high” on love, and keep those butterflies in our stomach. But unfortunately, life happens. Kids, finances, work, illness, family, and disagreements can all become a wedge in a relationship, causing our emotions to change. Sometimes you can come to a point in your marriage, where nothing inside of you desires to show love to your spouse anymore. That’s when love becomes more than just a feeling, it becomes a choice.

There are several different reasons a person may not feel like loving their spouse. It could be because they feel hurt, disrespected, or unloved. If they feel the marriage has grown apart, their spouse changed in a bad way, or they’ve lost all hope that the marriage can survive. For me personally, I’ve dealt with this for a few of these reasons.

Early on in our marriage, I remember many days crying out to God while my husband was at work. I would say, “Lord please help me get my feelings back for Richie.” My husband knew I was struggling and he did everything he could to win me back over, but nothing worked. At the time,  I didn’t want to kiss him, hug him, or even have sex with him. Sometimes just walking close to his body felt awkward. I had grown cold and decided that if I didn’t feel like doing something, I wasn’t going to. The more I chose not to love, the worse our marriage got.

Now I know that my view on marriage and definition of love was way wrong! God’s word says, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loves the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25). We know that kind of love is unconditional. That means CHRIST loves us although we sin, don’t always trust in Him, and put other things before Him. When we truly learn to love our spouse this way, we will show love even when we don’t “feel”like it. We have to learn to control our emotions or they will control our actions.

Think about your relationship with God. You love God, but you may not always feel like praying, reading your Bible, or going to church. Now you have two choices: 1) Be obedient and do those things anyway. Or 2) Stop doing those things because you don’t feel like it. Which choice do you think will bring you closer to God and be more rewarding? #1 of course! Now this same concept works in marriage. I know because I eventually made the right choice. After all that praying for God to change my feelings, I finally got an answer. It wasn’t the one I expected. God said, “While you been waiting on me, I’ve been waiting on you!” Yep you read that right. God was waiting on me to step out in obedience and faith, and show my husband love as if I still had those butterflies in my stomach. Now the good news is this: once I started “acting” out in love, the feelings came back. They may not always remain, feelings can come and go, but the agape love I have for Richie will always endure.

By no means am I saying it’s easy to always be so loving, especially when you feel they don’t deserve it. But it honors God, and it will keep your marriage alive and mature. If you want to get a lot out of your marriage, you got to be willing to put a lot in it. Always keep in mind what God’s word says about how to love and treat others, and then do that. Even if your spouse don’t appreciate it at first, God will.

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