Love: how does it change over the years

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phil8888

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Hi, I’ve heard people talk about how love matures or something as time goes on for a couple. Does anyone know about this? Some say it starts off with puppy love, but then it becomes more “mature”, etc. What are your thoughts on this, and how have you experienced this in your own lives? Thanks.
 
Wow this is a biggie. Don’t know how to answer this one excactly. Maybe cause there isn’t an exact answer.

I don’t know that Love changes so much as we change. Our outlooks, our needs, our capacities, our cpabilites all evolve grow and dimish with time. Yet if we truly Love our Spouse, none of this matters. for we work to “grow together”. My Lady is 71 years old and suffers from Alzheimers, yet to me she is still the beautiful Woman that I married almost 17 years ago. Many thing have been lost, but not Love.

Perhaps how things most commonly change is in the level of contentment. Just being with each other. Not needing to “do” things. Also intimacy will likely evolve several times during a relationship as each goes though different phases and “life changes”.
Kids are born grow and move out and suddenly you look across the table at someone who you haven’t “seen” in years. Instead of a “mom” it’s a woman - the woman you knew and romanced all those years ago.

I dunno - Does Love Change, or does it Evolve or does Love remain the same and the way it’s expressed change…🤷

Peace
James
 
My husband and I dated for six years (age16-22), and have been married for 31 years.

I think that love becomes more comfortable with who the other person really is, as each person in the relationship becomes more comfortable with who they really are. As you get older, you realize that a lot of things aren’t going to happen. My husband and I will probably never travel to Egypt (I don’t walk well because of bad knees, and I’m scared of terrorism). We will never live in a Victorian home (my husband HATES home repairs and remodeling). We will never be gorgeous ballroom dancers (Pentecostal + Baptist = no dancing. And there’s that knee issue with me).

Heck, we will never, ever be out of debt! We assumed that by now, we would be comfortable financially and not living from paycheck to paycheck–that’s a laugh! Two words have blasted that goal to smithereens–“figure” and “skating.” Don’t do these two words if you want to have any money at all!

And I will never live in New York City, one of my cherished teenaged dreams. My husband will never be a spelunker, one of his cherished teenaged dreams. We’ll probably never take that Wild West vacation (no money, bad knees, etc.)

And I think both of us are beginning to realize that we will never, ever be as thin and gorgeous and in shape as we were in high school.

But we’re beginning to accept that just because these “young” dreams and goals are fantasy, we can find other dreams and goals to work toward. And we’re happy with that.

My husband and I do a lot of things together, but we also do a lot of things apart from each other. It’s wonderful–we have freedom to be individuals, yet we are one.
 
I think that the biggest thing for me is that over the course of time, Love allows you to feel more secure in many things. Where you may have worried about different things such as jobs, looks, where you will live, which road your life will take; as the years go by, Love shows that while these things matter, they are not always that important. Love is as simple as “who you have beside you” sometimes. It is realizing that even when things are tough, that if you both love and both put each other before one another that somehow, it can all work out. Not as you may have hoped, maybe just different, and perhaps even better than you would have thought.

Will be celebrating 23 years this August. 🙂
 
I agree with the other posters, it is a hard question! Things do change (married 16 years), but it’s not necessarily the love part of the relationship.

When you are first with someone, you think about him constantly want to be with him, want to talk to him, have that little thrill when you know you are going to see him, and so forth. It’s almost like a mild obsession. After you have been together for a period of time, you still think about him often, still want to be with him, but it loses its…urgency. It doesn’t have to be “right this minute” so to speak. You know him better, and so can sense things more easily and don’t have as much to learn about him, or maybe have that need to learn as much as possible as soon as possible.

I still love my husband deeply, and he is my best friend, the one I turn to, the one I trust, the one I feel comfortable with, the one who believes in me even when I don’t believe in myself. He knows all the good and bad about me and still loves me (thank God!!). We enjoy being together, do things together, but we don’t talk constantly like we might have when we were first dating 20 (!!) years ago. He is still the first person I want to talk to about things I hear or see or things that happen to me, but we don’t have to be in each other’s pocket so to speak every minute of the day.

Does that make any sense? Maybe it’s not the love that changes, but the tone of the relationship? Our needs are different now that we have been together for so long. Not sure if that helps at all!!
 
My wife and I were married 30 years ago, and before she passed away this spring, we were as much in love as ever, but a different kind of love, where the sex part has taken a back seat. There are many way of expressing love to each other, such as a squeeze of the hand, a hug, going out to eat, or sharing a glass of wine or whatever. I alway knew I loved her deeply, but I realize it more, now that she is gone from our home. I believe that she is still with me, laughing at some of bungling trys at cooking, doing the wash, etc. I think about her all the time and sometimes break out in tears at a picture or a thought of her. They tell me that that’s normal and that it will pass in time, but I don’t believe it. I believe I will be by myself the rest of my life, because nobody can compare to her, at least in my mind. So yes, our love did change over the years, but not really. I think you have different priorities as you grow older together.
 
davy39 said:
My wife and I were married 30 years ago, and before she passed away this spring, we were as much in love as ever, but a different kind of love, where the sex part has taken a back seat. There are many way of expressing love to each other, such as a squeeze of the hand, a hug, going out to eat, or sharing a glass of wine or whatever. I alway knew I loved her deeply, but I realize it more, now that she is gone from our home. I believe that she is still with me, laughing at some of bungling trys at cooking, doing the wash, etc. I think about her all the time and sometimes break out in tears at a picture or a thought of her. They tell me that that’s normal and that it will pass in time, but I don’t believe it. I believe I will be by myself the rest of my life, because nobody can compare to her, at least in my mind. So yes, our love did change over the years, but not really. I think you have different priorities as you grow older together.
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👍👍

I’m learning these things too as I help my wife through Alzheimer’s.

Peace
James
 
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