People don’t fall out of love.
It’s not as if we love, love, love, love, and then one morning we wake up and realize that we don’t love this person anymore – like falling out of bed.
We don’t fall out of love. In truth, the responsibility we have in disaffection is much greater than the term “falling” implies.
In actuality, we do things – and fail to do things – that overtly kill love.
So when it comes to the death of love, it’s not a matter of falling as much as it’s a matter of doing – or failing to do.
And this is the 4th reason why marriages fail – we don’t keep the love alive. And unfortunately, all too often, we overtly do things that destroy it.
As we look at this 4th reason why marriages fail, I will have one suggestion that should be heeded by both men and women - if they want their love to stay alive. This suggestion is the topic of this week's Love Bytes blog.
In subsequent weeks, there will be two additional suggestions specifically geared toward men as well as two additional suggestions specifically tailored to women. If you want to keep your love alive, these suggestions are for you.
[Please note: these suggestions are based upon hundreds of studies about how to keep love alive - as well as what kills love. I guess you could call these Love Bytes blog posts the Cliff Notes version of all these hundreds of love studies.]
This week we will look at the suggestion for both men and women….
Imagine that you have been invited to dinner at a friend’s home, and because of heavy traffic, you end up half an hour late. Imagine that this friend greets you by saying: “Where the hell have you been? Dinner’s been ready for over 20 minutes! What did you think --- that we’d just sit here and wait all night for you to get here?”
If you are at all like me, you’d very quickly begin to wonder just what type of friend this is anyway. And yet, this is exactly the sort of thing that happens in a majority of marriages. We begin to treat our spouse with less dignity and good manners than we treat mere acquaintances at work.
General courtesy and common decency are some of the first things to go once people have said “I do.”
Why do so many people marry for love and then not love?!
Simply put:
-kind is more loving than nasty
-congenial is more loving than scornful
-gracious is more loving than hostile
-tender is more loving than hard-hearted
-amiable is more loving than disagreeable
-compassionate is more loving than insensitive
-considerate is more loving than thoughtless
-understanding is more loving than unfeeling
-good will is more loving than malice
-affection is more loving than bitterness.
If you want to keep the love alive, be loving.
Or conversely.....
If you want to keep the love alive, don’t be an asshole.
If you want to keep the love alive, don't be a bitch.
