Romance: Love = Happy Marriage

Maybe the seeds of romance were planted early in our lives as we read or watched fairy tales and experienced the hero and the heroine falling in love and then living “happily ever after.” Over the years these children’s stories and animated movies were replaced with grown-up books and movies that told us the same message: If you really love someone, you will have a happy marriage. It’s no great mystery why many of us have believed (or still believe) that love is enough. Nancy and I fell for this hook, line, and sinker early on in our marriage.

Looking back, I should have figured it out. In everything else in my life, I needed to put in the work in order to accomplish the goals I set for myself. It took work to play a sport well. Practice was seldom fun, but the rewards came on game day. To graduate from college I had to attend the classes and do the work. The reward came in the form of a diploma after four years of hard work. When Nancy and I were first married, I was so in love with Nancy, I knew we would be happy. But when I figured out that love alone was not enough, I was confused. Nancy and I learned that in order to be happy in our marriage—to have an Awesome Marriage—we both had to work at it. It took us a while to accept that truth because it went against every “love story” movie we ever saw. If we hadn’t discovered the need to work at our marriage, we would have missed out on so many of the blessings God had for us in our marriage. This is what we learned:    

Love + Intentional Focus on Our Marriage = Awesome Marriage (Happy Marriage)

Are you still sitting around waiting for “happy ever after”? Here’s an idea: Do something today to express your love to your spouse. Then do something tomorrow and the next day and so on. Don’t stop and wait for your spouse to respond in kind. Keep on doing it. They will eventually respond, and when they do, you will be on your way to “happily ever after.”