Remember why you fell in love in the first place.

When two people decide to get married, usually it is because they love spending time together and can’t imagine not being together.  There is an abiding friendship in their relationship that brings out the best in both of them.   I remember spending all day with my husband before we got married and then talking to him for hours on the phone.  What did we have to say, I’m not sure but we didn’t want the connection we felt to break.  While this is partly due to the newness of the relationship, it doesn’t have to end.  People usually are not static.  They don’t progress to a particular place and then stop changing and progressing.  The key to keeping that same kind of friendship alive after marriage is to nurture the idea that both of you are growing and changing individuals, your relationship needs to also grow and change with you.  

My husband was a master at helping me to grow and progress as a woman.  I had to be careful about what I wanted to do because he would jump on giving me all the support I could want, sometimes more than I wanted.   I once had a crazy idea to raise rabbits for meat.  My thinking was that my kids needed to have a more organic connection that the food we eat, comes from a living animal and that animal gave its life so we could eat.  I mentioned the idea once to him and the next thing I knew, he had made a set of 12 rabbit hutches in the back yard.  What ever I wanted to explore and do, he backed me completely.  Likewise, when he decided that he wanted to volunteer to coach high school football in our town, that became our family activity on Friday nights for about 8 years.  It was fun and exciting and I was so proud of the influence he had on the young men in our community.     

Dr. Gottman, the county’s foremost expert on relationships, said in his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, that Emotionally intelligent marriages, “have hit upon a dynamic that keeps their negative thoughts and feelings about each other (which all couples have) from overwhelming their positive ones.  Rather than creating a climate of disagreement and resistance, they embrace each other’s needs.”

I believe this embracing each other’s needs by being supportive and excited about what your spouse is excited about helps to keep the same kind of friendship you had in the beginning.  Rather than growing out of love, you grow into a deeper bond of friendship and love for each other.