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I’ve been told that love fizzles out after five years of marriage. But Proverbs 5:19 says married love should last forever. What goes wrong?
I’m not sure where your “five year” information came from…I’ve seen marriages begin to go downhill within five days!
There are actually several questions wrapped up in yours, so I get to talk about lots of things. :o)
1. Is marriage really worth it?
2. Is happiness dependent on my choosing the right spouse?
3. What does it take for any marriage stay healthy?
4. How can I, as a single person, prepare myself for a marriage that won’t lose its passion?
The answers to these questions are somewhat interwoven, but the key is found in the first one…what makes marriage worthwhile?
The
most common - and the worst! - way to think about marriage is to see it
as being primarily about ME. I’m lonely, I don’t like the load
I’m carrying, I don’t like feeling left out, I don’t like missing out
on (what I’m told is) the greatest experience of human happiness.
Of
course, most of us go on to the next step: marriage is about another person I
can invest my life in. Or, step three, marriage is about the
children we’ll get to birth and raise. Maybe you’ve even taken
step four: marriage is for the good of our community and society.
But all of these miss one important point. Marriages are created by God because they are important to Him! “What God has joined together,”
we read in Matthew 19:6, “let not man separate.” Marriage was not
only His idea, it was one of His very best ideas. As I said in my
first letter, God made marriage to give us a picture of His plans for
Christ and His bride.
You ask in your question about love that
lasts forever. You’ve been told, I’m sure, that marriages are
supposed to go on “for as long as they both shall live,” not “for as
long as they both shall love.” A marriage is created by a vow,
and is only “uncreated” when one of the people dies. In other
words, it’s tied to life, not love. (Which is something our
modern culture hasn’t paid much attention to at all.)
So is it
wrong to want love to last as long as life? Absolutely not!
But marriage is something much more than a life-long love affair.
It’s a contract, before God and man, to commit to one other person NO
MATTER WHAT.
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