Here are the basics in nurturing love. Practicing these small steps will make a huge difference in a marriage.
Love-Building
The first step in building love is opening your heart. Any tactic or technique you might learn to help you communicate with each other, or even to improve your sex life together, is just a gimmick if you don't open your heart to your spouse.
Hearts can be closed for many reasons--hurt, fear, lack of interest, hate, old scars, or even just the desire not to be bothered.
We may be totally unaware that our heart is closed.
Once I went to lunch at a new acquaintance's house shortly after I moved into town. The woman had been friendly with her invitation, bu throughout the lunch she never sat down. Never once in all the preparation and eating of the fantastic meal did she pull up a chair and converse with me. Her busyness hid a closed heart.
Check your own marriage. Would your spouse say that your heart is open to him or her? Do you think your heart is open to your spouse? Do you feel that your spouse is open to you? What makes you think that?
We don't have control over the actions of others. The only heart we can open is our own. And opening it is an important step in building love.
The second step in building love is to adjust your vision and really see your spouse.
We humans can live for years without actually seeing each other. The movie The Runaway Bride told the story of a woman who had been engaged many times to men who never really saw her or knew who she was. How was this possible?
We don't see each other because we don't take the time. We don't see each other because we are so full of ourselves that we see only our own reflection in the other person's face. We don't see each other because we see only the bad--the faults and errors--in the person and nothing else. We don't see each other for the same reasons we close our hearts.
Practice paying attention to your spouse. Look at her when she talks to you. Notice what he does while he talks. One wife told me that she could gauge her husband's level of frustration by how early and often in the conversation he ran his fingers through his hair.
The third step is listening. Strangely enough, listening begins with seeing, with eye contact. Then our ears pull in the words our spouse is saying...and more. Work to listen beyond information and all the way to feelings.
Recent research shows that the average person listens for only seventeen seconds before interrupting with his own ideas. Work to make that thirty seconds in your marriage. Then forty-five. Then one minute. Then three. Then maybe even ten. Your objective in listening is to discover your spouse's thoughts and feelings--to understand. And understanding is the meat of love.
