By MARRIED LOVE IS WAY BETTER THAN NEW LOVE
Nurturing Marriage
New love is flaunted on sit-com’s, in popular books and movies, and among the celebrities we read about in magazines. Be careful to not get caught up longing for “new love,” when deep and lasting love is sitting right next to you on the couch.
For those who feel like “new love” is flirting with them, we have some news for you: married love is WAY better than new love! Yes, married love is what “happily ever afters,” are made of.
New love. We all know what it feels like. Butterflies. Day dreams. A slight obsession with some new person. Feelings that take us back to our high school days.
New love = novelty.
A novelty that is exciting, inviting, and flirtatious.
Another term for new love is limerence. Limerence was defined by Dorothy Tennov as, “An involuntary interpersonal state that involves an acute longing for emotional reciprocation, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and emotional dependence on another person.” (here)
We see a dangerous pattern everywhere around us. It goes like this: marriage supposedly gets old, the novelty of our once, “new love,” wears off, and we get tired of our spouses. The grass is always greener on the other side. The flirtation of new love invites us to revisit old feelings we once had, to start a new adventure with a new person, to find greater happiness outside of marriage.
Please don’t fall into the trap of thinking it can’t get any better than “new love.”
Those “new love” feelings don’t last forever. They were never intended to last forever. That is why it is called, “new love.”
Rather, “new love” is intended to MATURE into something much, much BETTER.
Boyd K. Packer, a great religious leader, put it this way,
“Ideally, mating begins with romance. Though customs may vary, it flourishes with all the storybook feelings of excitement and anticipation, even sometimes rejection. There are moonlight and roses, love letters, love songs, poetry, the holding of hands, and other expressions of affection between a young man and a young woman. The world disappears around the couple, and they experience feelings of joy.
And if you suppose that the full-blown rapture of young romantic love is the sum total of the possibilities which spring from the fountains of life, you have not yet lived to see the devotion and the comfort of longtime married love. Married couples are tried by temptation, misunderstandings, financial problems, family crises, and illness, and all the while love grows stronger. Mature love has a bliss not even imagined by newlyweds.” (Boyd K. Packer)
New love was meant to lead to deep and lasting love (i.e. MARRIED LOVE). The kind of love that can only be found in marriage – a love that remains loyal through thick and thin. A love that still creates butterflies, day dreams, and an obsession with your one-and-only, but in a deeper and more meaningful way!
Deep love = mature love.
This kind of real love brings greater happiness, pleasure, and fulfillment than we probably even comprehend. It is a time-tested, true through-and-through, kind of love. Yes, married love is a deeper, more real, more fulfilling kind of love. It’s certainly not boring love. It’s the kind of love that fairy tales are made of.
So, if you find yourself watching a romantic comedy, reading a book, or flirting with the desire for “new love,” think again.
New love had its time and place. It brought you and your spouse together. As you grew in your relationship, your love grew. As you got to know each others’ thoughts, dreams, fears, strengths, and weaknesses, some of the novelty of “new love” may have worn off, but that certainly doesn’t mean the flame has died down. It simply means your love is maturing in meaningful ways. That is how marriage was meant to be. That is the beauty of married love. Truly coming to know another person; sharing yourself, and your life, wholly with another person.
Yes, new love worked it’s magic and invited deep, real, and true love to blossom.
So you see, new love is not true love. Married love is. Yes, married love is the stuff “happily ever afters,” are made of.
Read 50 Ways to Show Love and 15 Tricks to Help You Learn to Talk to Your Spouse Again to help you nurture your marriage and develop mature love today.
