First we need to understand what makes love happen, and then what it takes to make it grow and continue. For most of my life, I never understood even the most basic things about love. The Bible says that Faith, Hope and Love are to be the sustaining forces in our lives, but the greatest of these is love. After many years of prayer about the subject of love, suddenly, the light bulb came on and the simplicity of it was overwhelming. For the last 7 years, I have practiced what I learned and the results are incredible, which is why I want to share this.
Love is a choice. You can choose to love anyone, but you love someone because of how they make you feel when you are with them. Consequently, the goal of love is to always lift up the other person, which makes them feel wonderful, and to never, criticize, judge or condemn the other person, because that destroys love. When you truly love someone, you always want the highest and best for that person. You will also find that when you do even the smallest thing for that person, regardless of the sacrifice, that it fills you with joy. It is not necessarily the thing that you did for the other person that means so much to them, but more the fact that you thought of them and put their needs or desires ahead of your own. The interesting thing about this is that when you lift up the other person, they will usually lift you up in response. When you are constantly lifting up each other, love grows and it just gets better and better.
It is important to know the other person´s love language and to love them in their love language, not yours. This is what makes them feel loved the most. There are basically five love languages, ie. 1. physical touch 2. Quality time 3. Gift giving 4. Acts of Service 5. Words of Endearment. Fortunately, my wife and I have the same love language. It is physical touch, and we are always touching each other, which says ¨I love you¨. The secondary love language of my wife is gift giving. When I give her a gift, regardless of how small it is, she is absolutely thrilled and her resulting smiles give me such joy. She loves to do crossword puzzles, so now and then, I purchase a special newspaper that contains crosswords and I will hide it under her pillow. You should see her excitement when she finds it. Such a small thing - a 50cent newspaper - can have such an incredible affect. We have just celebrated our 7th anniversary, and I can honestly say that each year just gets better and better.
I decided to edit this post because there is an important aspect that I left out. God created roll relationships for a marriage. He made the husband to be head of the home and the final authority in all things. That does not mean that the wife is in any way inferior. It just means that you can only have one head. A wise and prudent husband will always listen to his wife and consider what she has to say on any issue. I have found that in most cases, she is usually right, or is making a very valid point. However, many marriages get into trouble because this role relationship gets reversed, or because the wife wants to be in control. This will ruin any marriage. The Bible says that the head of the woman is the man and that the head of man is Christ. (1Cor.11:3 Eph. 5:22,23) For a woman to have control over the man in a marriage is wrong. It is actually witchcraft, because she is taking the place of Christ.