Life is so rushed. We all run around trying to do life, pretending that we have the ability to balance it all perfectly. Work, home, family activities, friends, etc. and when push comes to shove its all too easy to let our relationships suffer. Especially a marital relationship. If we are not intentionally loving our spouse, intentionally blocking out time for them, investing ourselves in them, then our relationship can be in serious peril.

Over-involvement, work-a-holism & over scheduling are ruining relationships.

Now a days one on one, face to face time is a commodity. We live on our phones ( this is totally me ), we socialize, work, communicate & build communities all from the palm of our hands. THIS busy, rushed and over involved lifestyle is eating at our families and it has increasingly become one of the main reasons why marriages fall apart. Infidelity is a symptom of a marriage that was rotting at its core. Looking outside the marriage to have our needs met, means we are not spending enough time in our marriages; with the one person we swore to do life with.

Show me where you invest most of your time and there your heart will be.

I am convinced that we don’t wake up one day and decide that we are tired of our marriages, bored of our relationship and/or looking for someone else to fill the void in our lives. I truly believe this is a slowly occurring problem, that our relationship are in serious peril, not because of a momentary lapse of reasoning but because of daily neglect.

Every relationship needs a refresh, an update, a daily makeover if you will. I call it Intentional love. I believe intentional love is so important that even the greatest relationship can die without it. Think back to the time when you first started dating your partner; how did your relationship grow? Was it by daily neglect? or did you make purposeful, calculated decisions to invest time and self into this other person? I am pretty sure there were dates, texts, phone calls, cute little gestures of love. You actively invested in them and it paid off.

Clyde actively pursued me for 2 years, he proposed 3 times ( and I finally said yes). He was intentionally seeking my attention, he wanted to win my heart over. and he did. I still remember the second time he proposed to me -with a plastic ring he got out of a vending machine, on his knees and all. It was all great laughs.

Think back to the time when you and your spouse/partner were in that “courting” season of your relationship. What made ya’ll fall in love? What deepened your relationship? What connected ya’ll deeper? That intentional and passionate pursuit is what changes over time. We allow our daily routines to compromise, the integrity of our relationships. We slowly shift our priorities; the person who once was our main focus, tends to be left behind. We give them less of our time and attention; replacing our passion for them, with other things/responsibilities/or people.

In light of all this I have been seeking and praying for a deepened relationship with Clyde. We are not immune to all that I have mentioned above, if we aren’t careful our relationship could be in serious peril too. I want to intentionally love Clyde – not just for two weeks, but for the rest of our lives. I know it takes work and I am also very aware that if I want change I need to start changing me. Here is there first steps that I took -as a wife – to intentionally love my husband.

HOW TO PURPOSELY LOVE YOUR SPOUSE

Let me start off with a disclaimer. I am not relationship expert, I don’t have a physiology degree ( I actually came 12 credits short of one and decided that I wanted to be a meteorologist instead. true story). Anything that I share here is from the heart and from real life experiences that the hubs and I have had. Take what applies to you and make it your own.