Marriage Actually - An honest look at marriage

Marriage Fitness 2

by Bald Man on October 3rd, 2007

Alternative Title: “It’s Me, Not You”

Let’s continue our look into Marriage Fitness with this bit, which gets at the heart of Fertel’s approach:

Most books about marriage teach conflict-resolution and communication skills. But just as curing an illness doesn’t make you physically fit, solving your problems will not create love in your life. And neither will effective communication. Many couple communicate effectively, but love poorly.

The irony of the conflict-resolution and communication approaches to love is that the correlation is backwards. Solving problems doesn’t create love. Love solves problems. Effective communication doesn’t create love. Love creates effective communication. Love is the root of your marriage. (20-21)

Good stuff there, I think. While I’m sure that most of us married at least in part for those romantic notions of love - weak knees, butterflies in the stomach, etc. - anyone who has been married more than a few months also knows that the feeling of being “in love” isn’t enough to sustain a marriage on its own. Feelings seem to have a mind of their own, coming and going of their own accord. A marriage founded only on those feelings struggles to continue if the underlying feeling isn’t there.

I think Fertel would say that most approaches to marriage self-improvement work on restoring those “in love” feelings by dealing with conflicts that often diminish those feelings. That approach misses the point in his opinion. “[The] challenge is not to find the right person to love; it’s to love the person you find.” (39) In other words, the challenge is to build a foundation of active, chosen love for your marriage. If, then, the emotions are absent for a season, the marriage doesn’t find itself faltering without a foundation.

That’s what the rest of the book attempts to teach, simply ways you can build (or strengthen) that foundation through actively and consciously building love into your marriage.

NB - In my experience, the feeling of love tends to be much more steady when the decision to love is practiced.

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POSTED IN: Marriage Books