Starting From the Bottom

Commitment 4: We will commit to building a relationship of love.

Here is a quote to let soak deeply into your heart and mind:

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishing.” – Anais Nin

Paul Tripp starts this Chapter with this quote at the top of the page. I don’t know if you are like me, but it kind of knotted and twisted my stomach. It resided in me because we have only been married for four years, and we have so much road ahead of us. It brought on a desire to want refreshment and constant renewing in our marriage, while it made me take a honest look at the past four years of our marriage. A few things in our marriage came to mind when I asked myself, “What have we become blind to since we got married?”

All of us have a preconceived notion of what we think love is. We have built its definition upon an array of beliefs and ideas throughout our life experiences. We believe in love and believe it to be good. Maybe love with our spouses has been defined by physical attraction, spiritual maturity, emotional connection, or cultural similarities. Whatever the case may be, that “love tank” we started out with, seemed full to the natural eye. But when life begins to happen, and we start to see the same things over and over, all of a sudden we stop noticing. We don’t recognize the sounds, sights, tastes, touch, or smells we one did, because we have simply “gotten use to it.”

A Love Drought

Eventually the things that once felt fresh and new, eventually can become repetitive and monotonous. Maybe the love you thought you had has now become dry. Maybe real love was never truly known and understood before and now that it has run dry, it has become more apparent than ever. Tripp calls this, “Love Drought.”

Are you wondering whether that is where your marriage is at or not? Well here are some of the symptoms a marriage experiencing Love Drought according to “What Did You Expect?”:

Disunity – Is the unity of your marriage growing?
Misunderstanding – Do you live together in the joy of street-level understanding?
Separation – Is your marriage more a picture of cohabitation than it is of a relationship?
Physical Dysfunction – Is your sexual relationship a picture of patient, self-sacrificing love?
Conflict – In your marriage, do you hate conflict and do you work in whatever way you can to create peace?

As you go through these symptoms, take heart! There is always good news! The purpose of this book is to not leave you in despair. This book and questions are to cause your heart to bubble with hope again. It is to highlight things in your marriage that have become ignored, overlooked, and silenced. The purpose to hopefully engage your eyes to take a look at things you haven’t noticed and encourage your heart to want to re-shape and renew it to make your marriage better. There is always hope. And if you have continued to realize your marriage might not be as good or normal as what you thought, continue to take heart. That is exactly why Jesus gives us the good news of the gospel. His life, his death, and his resurrection is the story of true love. The kind of love that can experience trials and even death, but always has the hope to rise and become a deeper and greater love.

Final Encouragements

Take time to go through those five questions above to better understand if your marriage is in a love drought or not. It is better to identify the drought rather than continuing to ignore it and allowing the love in your marriage to truly die. Hold tight to the answers as we will continue next with what to do next and how to restore true love back into your marriage.

AUTHOR OF THE MARRIAGE SERIES: Taylor Wild

Note: We do not hold degrees in psychology, nor are we doctors, but people who have a heart to share wisdom.

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