Is your love for your spouse really growing?

A few days ago, my wife, Carol, and I were on a long distance phone call with someone. This was about 10pm in our bedroom. We sat on two chairs, which were placed opposite each other, using the same phone. As the phone conversation was going on, we found ourselves holding each other’s hands. Throughout the phone conversation that might have taken about 40 minutes, we kissed each other softly about three or four times. We were both tired and needed rest, but we were still able to create time to soft kiss each other, tongue to tongue, while we were listening to what the other person was saying at the other end.

Please,please, we do not do this all the time. You should, therefore, not think that each time you are speaking to Carol and I on the phone we are busy kissing. This got me thinking about how many couples lavish each other with kisses many years after their wedding. I wedded Carol when she was 29 and I was 31. The kisses have not ceased since that beautiful Saturday in the month of December 1986 that we wedded.

I seriously think that someone reading this article can learn this from us and make it a part of their marriage. We keep learning. In my article in this column on Sunday, February 2, 2025, I wrote about how I learnt something from the marriage of Catherine and William Booth nearly 40 years after my marriage. So, something that has made my marriage to work is because Carol and I keep learning from others, who know more than us.

It took me some years to know that love grows. And I think that many do not know that love grows. Love is like a tender plant that at the time it is simultaneously planted in the hearts of a man and woman and they eventually get married, these two similar plants should be tenderly handled and organically fertilised.

My father-in-law, Bishop Michael Marioghae, taught that love is like a fire that should be constantly fanned to produce enough flame if not, the fire can quench. I have found out that the love in a lot of marriages instead of being on fire has become cold. It now turns to what a marriage counsellor colleague of mine calls “functional marriage.”

In a functional marriage, the couple keeps functioning as husband and wife, but without hot love.But that passion, that fire of love that can make them romantically hold hands or kiss as Carol and I did and do may not be there.

Since Carol and I knew that love grows, we intentionally make sure that our love keeps growing. Since we know that God is love and that the ability to love each other was put in our human spirit by God (Rom 5:5), we deliberately work on our human spirits to generate the love that was put there by God and allow this love to dictate our feelings for each other and not for our feelings to dictate to our human spirit. And when I discovered in 1Thessalonians Chapter 3 and other places in the Bible that love can grow, Carol and I decided that our love must grow no matter the matter.

I know that there are some people out there who have been culturally rewired or demonically rewired or “Jezebellically” rewired to the extent that they cannot know the symbiotic flow of love. I am not writing for such people. They can never understand until the Spirit of God rewiresthemto be normal again. I am writing for normal people and I know that you are a normal person, hence you are reading this write-up. Love you!
You and your spouse should examine your love life and allow it grow and glow. Love you!