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aball1035
Guest
As your marriage progresses, do you ever fall “out of love” after a time?
What keeps your marriage together?
What keeps your marriage together?
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Corinne3
Guest
Yep, you do. But, then it comes back.
Life ebbs and flows.
Real love is not a feeling, it is an action.
Life ebbs and flows.
Real love is not a feeling, it is an action.
J
JimG
Guest
Speaking for myself, I was married 27 years and we never fell out of love.
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mike52ad
Guest
At the beginning of a relationship love is an emotion. It is like a sparkler on the fourth of July, it burns hot and then fades, but love is still there, it morphs into what I call relationship love. This is the love that nurtures relationships because it is a choice. You have to choose to love your mate.
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monicatholic
Guest
husband and i are approaching 22 year anniversary.
no falling out of love for us. we’re more deeply in love than ever. because love is a choice., it’s an action. it’s a giving of oneself. the graces of the sacrament, obedience to God, and lots of humility and self-sacrifice have helped us to love each other more and more.
we understand and abide by God’s meaning for marriage. (best kept secret for happiness, that plan of God’s!)
it’s not always honeymoon time and it doesn’t have to be. but when we’re back in honeymoon time, it’s so wonderful.
no falling out of love for us. we’re more deeply in love than ever. because love is a choice., it’s an action. it’s a giving of oneself. the graces of the sacrament, obedience to God, and lots of humility and self-sacrifice have helped us to love each other more and more.
we understand and abide by God’s meaning for marriage. (best kept secret for happiness, that plan of God’s!)
it’s not always honeymoon time and it doesn’t have to be. but when we’re back in honeymoon time, it’s so wonderful.
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alforo
Guest
No. Been married 60 years. What keeps us together? The sacrament of matrimony.
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Ponyguy
Guest
Been married 41 years next week.
Yes, “love” ebbs and flows sort of like the weather and the tides, I guess. Some days, I imagine I could wring her scrawny neck, and later that day I could put a love mark on it.
What keeps it all together?
Probably one of the most important things is the promises that we made to each other along with our shared responsibility to each other and our children (and their children, too). And a lot of divine intervention from The Big Guy.
Remember, during the sacrament of Matrimony we (and you) promised each other before Almighty God to “Love, honor, respect, and obey (women argue that one a lot) your spouse through sand, mud, spit and blood until death do us part.”
That’s a pretty difficult promise upon which to renege.
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EasterJoy
Guest
I remember an older man celebrating 50 years of marriage being asked what his secret was. He said, “Every day, I look in the mirror and tell myself, ‘Well, you’re not exactly a prize, either!’” 
He was funny, but there is a lot of truth to what he said. You may not always have emotional highs, but you can always decide to be grateful. The daily decision in favor of gratitude is a big help to the daily decision to love.
That, and be willing to apologize when you’re wrong, even when your spouse is more wrong than you are. Not being too proud to apologize first helps alot. Not keeping score over who gave in first last time. There are a lot of little habits like that, just ways of being generous.
He was funny, but there is a lot of truth to what he said. You may not always have emotional highs, but you can always decide to be grateful. The daily decision in favor of gratitude is a big help to the daily decision to love.
That, and be willing to apologize when you’re wrong, even when your spouse is more wrong than you are. Not being too proud to apologize first helps alot. Not keeping score over who gave in first last time. There are a lot of little habits like that, just ways of being generous.
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Joan_M
Guest
We will celebrate 41 years of marriage in September. Did I ever fall out of love with him? No, but there were times when I didn’t feel the love! But those didn’t last long.
The continuing experience of the two of us together facing the world, dealing with the bad times as well as the good, entwines us. We become like two flowering plants that, planted side by side, have their twigs and branches laced together, making them both stronger.
The ups and downs of marriage and rearing children will bring you closer together as long as you remember why you are doing it. Always tell your spouse that you love him/her. We all need to hear that, no matter how young or how old we are.
The continuing experience of the two of us together facing the world, dealing with the bad times as well as the good, entwines us. We become like two flowering plants that, planted side by side, have their twigs and branches laced together, making them both stronger.
The ups and downs of marriage and rearing children will bring you closer together as long as you remember why you are doing it. Always tell your spouse that you love him/her. We all need to hear that, no matter how young or how old we are.
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puzzleannie
Guest
yes frequently, it is normal
being “in love” is an artificial state of being, and marriage is about reality
when you are no longer fueled by the emotion (and ill-judgement) of “being in love” you must find your resources by tapping into real love. That is when the fun begins. If you spend your efforts on trying to maintain the fantasy, you never experience the reality. Marriage after the first few months is about loving, i.e. take up your cross and follow Me.
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Seatuck
Guest
Just a nit pick. Obey is not part of the Catholic Marriage vows.
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AlanFromWichita
Guest
Julie and I just celebrated our 23rd wedding anniversary yesterday.
So far I agree with the previous posters.
We never really “fall out of love” because we are one. There are times when we each need our time alone, and sometimes it seems like working together is a chore. As others have said, it isn’t sparklers every day.
On a related topic, we got some of the best advice before I got married from a coworker of mine who had been married 8 years. He told me the secret of a lasting marriage: a promise. Before we got married, we took his advice and agreed that NO MATTER WHAT, divorce simply isn’t an option. I think that making and keeping such a promise (really every marriage is supposed to imply that promise, but I mean make it explicitly to each other) helps in problem-solving. It’s like if I’m trying to work out a problem, there is always the “exit door” staring me in the face – it is distracting because it looks falsely like one can simply walk through it and escape or solve the problem.
Such things have passed by, though, over the years. They are part of us so we don’t usually reflect on them anymore.
Back to the original point, the longer we have been married, the more I feel continuously loved. Even when we disagree we know underneath that we have wonderful love for each other, and we know the misunderstanding will soon give way to peace. We spend a lot of time together, and I never get tired of being with her.
As other posters have mentioned, love isn’t so much a feeling but a decision or action or lifestyle. What I have found, though, is that as we grow together spiritually and in other ways, I feel this wonderful peace (absence of anxiety) such that I feel totally comfortable around her.
Alan
So far I agree with the previous posters.
We never really “fall out of love” because we are one. There are times when we each need our time alone, and sometimes it seems like working together is a chore. As others have said, it isn’t sparklers every day.
On a related topic, we got some of the best advice before I got married from a coworker of mine who had been married 8 years. He told me the secret of a lasting marriage: a promise. Before we got married, we took his advice and agreed that NO MATTER WHAT, divorce simply isn’t an option. I think that making and keeping such a promise (really every marriage is supposed to imply that promise, but I mean make it explicitly to each other) helps in problem-solving. It’s like if I’m trying to work out a problem, there is always the “exit door” staring me in the face – it is distracting because it looks falsely like one can simply walk through it and escape or solve the problem.
Such things have passed by, though, over the years. They are part of us so we don’t usually reflect on them anymore.
Back to the original point, the longer we have been married, the more I feel continuously loved. Even when we disagree we know underneath that we have wonderful love for each other, and we know the misunderstanding will soon give way to peace. We spend a lot of time together, and I never get tired of being with her.
As other posters have mentioned, love isn’t so much a feeling but a decision or action or lifestyle. What I have found, though, is that as we grow together spiritually and in other ways, I feel this wonderful peace (absence of anxiety) such that I feel totally comfortable around her.
Alan
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puzzleannie
Guest
quite right
the obedience comes I think in the promise to be open to life and by extension to accept all God intends for your marriage, and all the Church teaches about marriage and family. Including, as an elderly nun in our parish reminds couples, the fact that you and your spouse are together to help each other get to heaven, as in, to purify each other. Purify, as in purgatory. Every marriage has some purgatory in it and some glimpses of heaven.
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AlanFromWichita
Guest
I much agree with you. Also I like that you are making the distinction between “love” and “being in love.”
Alan
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EasterJoy
Guest
Pretty obviously, Puzzleannie has nailed it. Love is understood by the Church as something you are capable of deciding to do and therefore something that you can make a vow to do, not something you feel.
Every day that you feel “in love” with your spouse, by the way, be thankful for that. It is a gift from God, and a consolation that not everyone gets.
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EasterJoy
Guest
This is true of life in general. Married couples simply have particular exclusive help in navigating the way:
“Two are better than one: they get a good wage for their labor. If the one falls, the other will lift up his companion. Woe to the solitary man! For if he should fall, he has no one to lift him up. So also, if two sleep together, they keep each other warm. How can one alone keep warm? Where a lone man may be overcome, two together can resist. A three-ply cord is not easily broken.” Eccl. 4:9-12
Note that when “two together can resist”, their alliance is described as a three-ply cord. Whether in marriage or in family or in religious community, two people who rely on each other still need God. “Where two or three are gathered in My Name…”
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tafan
Guest
You can’t “fall out of love”. You and/or your spouse can decide to quit loving the other. Love is an act of will.
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taben
Guest
I think you can tired of your Parish, your Priest, of Mass and even of your spouse. But, when you are faithful to both your faith and marriage, the joy comes back. You also remember that in both situations, it is about MUCH, so MUCH more than how you feel at that moment.
Dig deep and try and recall the early excitement and desire. The tide will turn, maybe in a month, maybe in a year…but it will turn.
Anne
Dig deep and try and recall the early excitement and desire. The tide will turn, maybe in a month, maybe in a year…but it will turn.
Anne
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former_Catholic
Guest
Today “obey” is not part of the Catholic marriage vows, but 41 years ago “obey” was still part of Catholic marriage vows as I recall, and vows made at the time of one’s marriage stand for the length of the marriage.
I myself have been married for 32 years. In my experience, love isn’t something anybody ever “falls” into or out of. Love is something we have been put on this earth to learn and become.
Teenagers may feel that they fall into and out of love whenever the wind changes because they don’t know much more of love than experiencing sexual infatuation…
but grandparents become love itself.
As for sexual infatuation and sexual “hotness” as it is called…
when your son-in-law hugs you and tells you that you’re still “hot”, the response that will leave a houseful of relatives laughing so hard they end up sneezing lemonade through their noses is:
“well, just how did you think we ended up with 5 kids?”
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Sherry_G
Guest
Some people may be addicted to the “feeling” aspect of the new love experience and once that passes as it must, they are disappointed and miss that feeling so much they decide to bail and go find that “perfect” relationship they thought they had in the beginning. I recently saw such a woman on the Dr. Phil show. She had been unfaithful in her first and second marriages and was on her way to the altar with #3. Dr. Phil wanted her to agree to hold off and go thru some intense therapy, postponing any further relationships until at least 6 to 8 months later. Of course, there was no religious component involved and no one mentioned anything about sacred vows. Even so, Dr. Phil has a point to make in that some women are searching for someone to love them unconditionally due to early life disappointments with their primary relationship with their father. They may confuse the fire of sexual attraction with love.
Our sacramental vows are sacred and we form a covenant between the spouses and God Almighty that lasts a lifetime. However, assuming that we may have some emotional issues that are causing problems and a feeling of “falling out of love” seek a Catholic counselor if this situation persists for more than a reasonable amount of time. Love is a choice we make each and every day. Sometimes it is not easy, but it’s worth the effort. Helpmates on the journey to eternal life sometimes need some extra help. Get some help from a qualified and committed Catholic therapist if things don’t even out.
Our sacramental vows are sacred and we form a covenant between the spouses and God Almighty that lasts a lifetime. However, assuming that we may have some emotional issues that are causing problems and a feeling of “falling out of love” seek a Catholic counselor if this situation persists for more than a reasonable amount of time. Love is a choice we make each and every day. Sometimes it is not easy, but it’s worth the effort. Helpmates on the journey to eternal life sometimes need some extra help. Get some help from a qualified and committed Catholic therapist if things don’t even out.
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