A sustained exciting and satisfying marriage is within your reach.

“I just don’t love you anymore.” Do those words sound familiar? Well if you have been married for more than 5 years, then your spouse has probably thought them, and so have you. Please do not worry. It is not the end of your relationship, but it can be the beginning of a fulfilling and exciting life-journey for both of you – starting right now.

First you need to know the truth about your relationship. Sometime before you got married you felt the force of attraction towards your future spouse. It was an intense emotional feeling that created within you the desire to bond. You wanted to be around, talk to, and touch this person. If the attraction was mutual, then you courted.

While you were courting, you probably did your best to show your ‘good’ side and hide your bad habits. That is normal. If you were accustomed to picking your nose, smelling under your arms, scratching your butt, and any other such habits at home, then you would avoid such behavior while courting. Why? Because you wanted to keep attracting, rather than start repelling this potential mate.

After some time of observing each other’s attractive traits, you both concluded that the other was as close to perfection as you were ever going to find, so you got married. What you actually did is to set a very high standard of expectation in your spouse, which you may be challenged to sustain. If it is any consolation, you were also given high expectations.

It is important to understand that the mutual attraction that you felt was simply an emotional feeling. But you were taught that this emotional feeling was love by the popular love: songs, poetry, novels, movies and plays. It was not love. It was an intense emotional feeling and the intensity of emotional feelings normally fade with time.

Love has nothing to do with the emotional feelings of attraction. Love is a set of 4 promises that you make to each other. If they are made, then you have chosen to build your marriage upon the solid foundation of love. If you have chosen the illusory foundation of fading attraction, then it is inevitable that over time, both of you will think that the love has gone. But the love has not gone – it just was never there.

The good news is that love is within your reach today – if both of you want it. The first promise is to accept each-other exactly as you both are right now, with all of the attractive traits that you can see, and the unattractive traits that you know must be there – because no one is perfect.

The second promise is to accept each-other as you both age. You promise to accept each other regardless of what happens in the future, for better or worse, richer or poorer, health or sickness, for as long as you both shall live. This is the standard promise that you probably made at your wedding.

The third promise is to forgive each other. Neither of you are perfect; therefore, both of you will make mistakes and depend on each others’ forgiveness.

The final promise is to encourage each others’ passions and improvement.

If you want to start an exciting life-journey together, then follow these simple steps.

First, discuss the 4 promises with each other and decide whether you are ready to love each other.

Second, if you are both willing to make these promises, then write them in your own words, print them, recite them to each other, sign them, and frame them in a prominent location as the constitution for your marriage. If you can get a third responsible party to witness your promises, then that is even better.

Third, your promises are completed, or consummated with sexual intercourse. Every time that you engage in sexual intercourse, and say “I love you”, you are reinforcing your promises to each other. You are promising to never reject the other for a younger, shapelier, more attractive rival that may appear – and they will appear during your marriage. Tell each other “I love you” often, especially during sexual intercourse, because you both now know what it means.
Fourthly, recite your promises to each other at each wedding anniversary and whenever an issue is threatening your marriage.

Finally, encourage others to build their marriages on the solid foundation of love. My book “Attraction is a feeling. Love is a promise” describes this brief summary in greater detail.