He is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think. (Ephesians 3:20)

For many years in our marriage we go through the right motions. We greet each other with hugs and verbalize our love. We regularly go on dinner dates, and each of us do special little things for the other. But once the years roll by or we come to the “empty nest” phase, we feel awkward and uncertain. We were committed to each other and committed to show kindness to one another, but now with little emotional involvement.

We think that this is as good as marriage gets.

Without adequate emotional skills or purposeful development, adults often enter marriage hopeful of deep, emotional closeness but unable to achieve it. If we aren’t careful, we can drift apart into our separate worlds. The husband can get absorbed in his career or hobbies, and she can escape into the world of the children, career, or just endless activity.

It’s not enough just to be “nice” in marriage. A marriage isn’t successful and intimate just because there are few conflicts. Many couples assume that because they don’t fight, their marriage is strong. If we aren’t purposefully working on increasing our emotional closeness, we will drift apart. Kindness and pleasantries must be accompanied by a determined closeness.

We fulfill the daily duties of marriage and family but lose touch with our feelings. As we learn to sense and communicate our feelings, we are able to express empathy and comfort each other. Then our kindness toward each other will grow richer and with added feelings. God will begin to restore our marriage to something beyond anything we ever asked for or dreamed about.

ACTION ASSIGNMENT
What can we do today to rekindle the loving feelings we once shared with our spouse?

PRAYER: Father, thank you for feelings. Give me sensitivity to my own feelings and those of my spouse. Let me not be content with kind pleasantries but pursue true emotional closeness. In Jesus’s name, amen.