How to Stay in Love

How to Stay in Love
One way to stay in love, among many, is to grow in the same direction. Keep sharing your interests and ideas so you can share the same pool of ideas and inspiration.(Dmytro Zinkevych/Shutterstock)
Mike Donghia
10/26/2022
Updated:
10/26/2022
My wife and I have been married for 11 years.
That’s not long enough to be too confident in our success—after all, it’s just a few years longer than the average U.S. marriage of eight years.

But it’s long enough to have endured many different seasons of life, to have seen each other at our best and worst, and to have begun to take stock of what we have.

What has emerged in that time is a relationship with an individual that has no comparison to any other in my life. Not only have we remained in love, but in recent years, the intentionality we’ve applied to so many areas of our lives has spilled over into our relationship as well.

Of course, the full story of our love has yet to be written. We hope to remain in love for a lifetime.

In the spirit of self-reflection and trading notes with others along the journey, the rest of this post will explore a few ideas that I’ve had about what it takes to stay in love.

Grow in a similar direction. Have you ever met a friend who you haven’t seen in a long time, and they seem like a different person? That’s because all of us are constantly changing in response to our environments and the way we interpret our experiences.

If you want to stay on the same page as your spouse in terms of values and big-picture goals, the best approach is to simply talk about these things regularly. If you find yourself inspired or challenged by a new idea, see what your partner thinks. If you crave something new or different, put it out there.

It’s not essential that you always agree. Just talking about these things together ensures that you don’t wake up one day married to a stranger that you hardly know. Sharing this personal part of ourselves with each other naturally leads to drinking from a shared well of ideas.

Avoid emotional scars. There are certain actions that are nearly impossible to undo in a relationship. They’re like opening the proverbial can of worms—and nothing is ever quite the same.

At one extreme is cheating on your spouse. I believe that forgiveness is real and beautiful, but I also know that our actions can leave permanent scars. Short of cheating, there are other lines that once you cross become easier to cross again in the future—yelling, ignoring, shaming, and embarrassing, to name a few.

These are emotional weapons of mass destruction, and once they’ve been brought out, the threat of them being used again never really disappears. Trust is eroded in a way that’s hard to regain.

A research article in the journal Frontiers in Psychology concluded that trust is an absolutely essential ingredient in love and relationship intimacy; one that must be zealously defended if you hope to remain in love for many years.
Do the little things. Over many years of marriage, it’s natural and good that lovers grow comfortable with one another. The strong desire to please and impress at the beginning of a relationship gives way to security and familiarity. But along with that transition comes a greater risk of taking your partner’s happiness for granted.

To combat this slide toward complacency, I’ve found incredible value in focusing on simple, everyday expressions of love. We all like to dream about grand gestures of love—planning a romantic week of vacation on an exotic island or bravely sacrificing your safety to protect your spouse from danger—but it’s undoubtedly the ordinary moments of thoughtfulness and self-denial that weave together a lasting love.

Refuse to accept boredom. If you’ve ever watched a couple sitting together in a restaurant with evidently nothing to say to each other, you’ve witnessed the dull ache of boredom. Nobody chooses boredom; it’s the end result of a hundred choices not made, a thousand roads not pursued.
The only way I know to fight this general air of apathy in a relationship is to vigorously seek out novel experiences together. Starting a blog with my wife was one great adventure we chose to pursue, but we’ve also been very intentional about how we spend our evenings together to avoid the creep of boredom. You don’t need anyone’s permission to make your marriage more fun and interesting, just a little imagination.
Master the art of conversation. I can hardly imagine a lasting love that doesn’t have at its foundation a deep conversational life. Long, unrushed, rambling talks with your spouse are one of the best ways to learn who they really are. To know and be known by someone is the greatest feeling in the world and one of the best ways to strengthen the bonds of intimacy.
In my experience, being a good conversation partner isn’t so much about being smart or witty, but rather deeply curious and willing to be vulnerable. Every human is unimaginably interesting if you desire to know the truth about what makes them tick. But the key to unlocking the hidden chambers of your spouse’s motives and fears is to first invite them to see your own unguarded self.

Have Fun With It

My wife was home by herself one day when the chimney sweep came to give our open, wood-burning fireplace its annual cleaning. When I got home from work, she told me how friendly the guy was and how he made small talk with her the whole time he worked. One thing he kept stressing was that we should enjoy our fireplace and “just have fun with it.”

We thought it was oddly delightful how passionate our chimney sweep was about us having fun with our chimney. And since that day, “just have fun with it” has become a catchphrase we use to solicit a smile and remind each other to enjoy whatever activity we’re doing.

There seems to be no wiser piece of advice I can give about staying in love than to remind you to not take yourself or your marriage too seriously. Yes, be intentional—but don’t forget to “just have fun with it.”

Mike (and his wife, Mollie) blog at This Evergreen Home where they share their experience with living simply, intentionally, and relationally in this modern world. You can follow along by subscribing to their twice-weekly newsletter.
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