Keep Courtship Alive

“And they lived happily ever after.” Such is the ending to many great and classic literary masterpieces regarding love. And love, more easily than any of our other emotions, has always excited our interest and imagination. It is no wonder then why these legends continue to capture our attention because of their focus on the desperate longing of two people kept apart only to be brought together in the bonds of matrimony in the end.

Though, despite true love’s first kiss, so little is known of the choice couple after the wedding. Were they able to preserve their love and experience actual fulfillment? Were their post-marital days as blissful and satisfying as their premarital?

Present divorce rates have come to be too high for us to believe that merely falling in love and getting married assure a couple’s happily ever after. So why are so many marriages failing? And is it possible to reverse this trend?

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, I have come to know that marital satisfaction and love can live on in their highest forms as long as both partners work together to do one thing:

Keep courtship alive. 

Courtship is the pulse in marriage. Without one, love grows cold and dies. It is too easy to let familiarity kill the courtship spirit whose victims are always the lover in the husband and the sweetheart in the wife.

Before marriage, we all present our Friday night personalities – fun, spontaneous, active - only from then on to tame the same qualities into a Monday morning persona - dull, repetitive, tiresome. Many marriages terminate for this very reason because one or both of the partners take the other for granted, with each person becoming involved in his or her own interests rather than in the needs of the relationship as if all the energy exerted before marriage ceases to exist under the false presumption that happiness now flows automatically from their union.

Marriage, like any other relationship, needs regular attention. Like a hungry animal, it needs to be fed constantly. We must monitor its pulse often if it is not to die. Our attitude must ever be one of giving rather than taking, of loving not sparing, in appreciating more than cheapening.

When love grows cold, it is because it has been starved out while its enemy - familiarity - sits full and heavy between two lovers now grown apart. The wrong animal has been fed.

So many partners, devoid of courtship and favor, drift aimlessly apart upon the Sea of Monotony, left alone with only the memories of happier times, when a husband’s smile would exile a doubt or a wife’s embrace restore confidence.

William George Jordan once stated: “Love cannot live long on its past; it is its present that counts as a real force, and, like all other habits it intensifies by exercise. It is not fair to have all the roses before marriage, and only their memory and thorns afterwards.”

For some it may not be that their love for each other is less; they may even love each other more in a deeper, truer and stronger way and hold a great wealth of affection, but they do not keep it in circulation which, if blocked, results in flatline for the relationship.

Still, for others they may feel they’re too old to do special things for each other and express appreciation. Does one no longer require food simply because they are 65? Does giving up work mean love is also complete?

So how do we keep courtship alive? Here are a few suggestions:

Remember the highs in your marriage and what brought you both together. Tell your spouse why you chose to be with him or her over everyone else. Be creative and write romantic cards. Schedule time alone. Be spontaneous in your delivery of affections. Come home with flowers one day for no other reason than to express your love. Go on a weekly date. Talk about your relationship daily – face to face – with all social media devices and applications turned OFF! Write letters of encouragement and read them aloud to each other. Finally, give honest compliments and remember that the praising of one’s character carries greater weight than a respect for one’s appearance.

Winston Churchill once said that he could live for two months on a good compliment. I am confident that if the same time-frame were applied to marriage then its own life expectancy would be considerably extended when such praise is given multiple times daily!

Thus, by keeping courtship alive after marriage, it is very possible that two people, committed to their love, can in reality live after the manner of all fairy tale couples - happily ever after.