Last week a well-known celebrity announced that she and her husband are separating. They have a young child. To pull language directly from her, she said that the split is amicable, they are best friends and will remain so, they make each other laugh a lot, and her husband is an amazing father.
Based on the quotes it sounds like a great relationship. And yet they are breaking up.
Why?
The couple didn’t share a specific reason for their separation but unless they are not being forthcoming with the whole story I suspect they are one of the many famous, and non-famous, couples who simply would say they “fell out of love.”
Please understand that I’m not judging this woman. I don’t know her or her marriage. But in recent years more and more people end their marriage, or their relationship, because they “fell out of love.”
So my question is, what does it really mean to fall in love and to fall out of love?
First I want to share some of the best marriage advice I received from long-married couples before I got married: Be best friends with your spouse—romantic feelings and desires come and go throughout a marriage but friendship lasts; laugh a lot, make Jesus the center of your marriage, and be intentional about staying connected as a couple.
Love vs. Lust
Many people equate feelings of attraction and sexual desire with love. When this is your definition of love it is easy to think you “fall in love” when the emotions are strong and you “fall out of love” when the feelings subside. But love has much more depth than merely sexual attraction. Love calls for commitment and serving the one you love.
God is Love
The Bible says that God is love (see 1 John 4:8). When you and your spouse seek God and put Him at the center of your relationship, you are setting true love as the foundational cornerstone of your marriage. That is the best first step to a relationship I can think of.
As I previously shared in the article God’s Love Can Transform Your Relationship, several years ago Billy Graham’s daughter Anne shared about how she, after many years of marriage, felt like she had fallen out of love with her husband. She desperately asked God what to do.
Anne felt that God told her to work on her relationship with Him and He would take care of her relationship with her husband. Anne then shared that when she sought God and focused on Him as her ultimate source of love, all of a sudden she had renewed passion and love for her husband. When we are filled to overflowing with true love from God, we have love to give out to our spouse.
Love is Commitment & Service
Just like most of our wedding vows say, we are committing to our spouse in good times and bad until we die. Jesus loved us more than we will ever be capable of loving our spouse and His example of love is full commitment. God says He will never leave us or forsake us (see Hebrews 13:5).
Jesus also showed that love is serving others and laying down your life for them. That may not mean a literal death but it is a dying to oneself as you seek to love and serve your spouse. As 1 Corinthians 13 says, “Love is not self-seeking.” Love means you look out for the best interest of the other person and serve them instead of being selfish.
Love is Friendship & Partnership
A famous columnist once wrote that “love is friendship that has caught fire.” In a marriage, being your spouse’s best friend and partner in life cannot be underestimated. Being intentional about keeping romance and sex alive in your marriage is hugely important and shouldn’t be neglected. Yet at the same time, over the course of a marriage, feelings of sexual desire and lust come and go. Having a strong underlying friendship and partnership is like building a house on a solid and sturdy concrete slab rather than on the sand.
When it comes down to it, love isn’t just a happy feeling that you fall into one day and fall out of the next.
In the Bible the word “love” is often a noun but it’s also used as a verb. Love is a powerful emotion but it’s also a choice that has to be followed by commitment and action.
This week I encourage you to come up with a few ways you can show love to your spouse through words and actions. Remember…
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
*photo credit: Brandon Christopher Warren via photopin cc
