Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack

12 Ways to Revive Your Love for Your Spouse

• Jack Ito PhD, Psychologist, Author, and Relationship Coach • Season 3 • Episode 40

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On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

On today's episode, On today's episode, Coach Jack teaches how to feel more love for your spouse. 

After listening to today's episode, you may want to:

12 Ways to Revive Your Love for Your Spouse

(Podcast Transcript)

(0:00)

[Introduction to the podcast]

Announcer: On the Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack podcast, Christian psychologist, author, and relationship coach, Dr. Jack Ito, will help you to build and restore your marriage. By learning just a few relationship skills, you can help your spouse enjoy your relationship more, while getting more love and affection from your spouse. Listen to Coach Jack as he helps you with one more step toward a marriage both you and your spouse will love.

(0:29)

Coach Jack: Do your feelings of love for your spouse seem to be fading? What will happen if they continue to fade? Did you know that there are things that you can do to rejuvenate your love for your spouse?

Today, I want to let you know about twelve ways we lose loving feelings for our spouse, and twelve ways you can increase your loving feelings for your spouse. 

Making just little changes can make a big difference in your feelings and just could get you more love from your spouse as well. 

(0:57)

Why work on our own loving feelings?

For improving relationships, we always want to bring our own damage to a stop (or as stopped as we can make it), before dealing with any disconnecting or unattractive behaviors from our spouse.

The more feelings of love you can generate for your spouse, the less hostile or withdrawn you will be, the more you will stick with win-win boundaries, and the less reactive you will be. Our loving feelings should never lead us to accept damaging behavior, but instead motivate us to restore a loving relationship. 

It is not our spouse’s lack of love that makes us not care–it is our own lack of love that makes us not care.

In relationships, most effects have more than one cause.

It is also possible that your fading feelings are a result of more than one reason. No doubt your spouse’s behavior is part of that. I often work with clients who are learning to use boundaries to get their spouses to stop doing damaging things that make them difficult to love.

(2:02)

What I need to emphasize to my clients is that while you are using boundaries, you also need to be doing what you can to turn your own loving feelings on again. I understand not doing that when you are being treated badly, but when your spouse is working on becoming better, you also need to do the same.

It makes no sense to demand love from our spouse if we are not loving first.

So, how can we make ourselves love someone, even if they are not loving us? (By the way, that’s the way God tells us to do it).

Let me share something with you that should be obvious, but many people don’t seem to know…

Feelings come and feelings go, and then they can come again

(2:49)

Feelings of love, like all other feelings, come and go depending on environmental triggers and our thinking (our internal triggers). We can fall in love again, just like we can become angry again, tired again, sad again, happy again, or any other feeling. We just need to create the right triggers for that.

There is no reason to freak out if your loving feelings stop or if your spouse or kids say they don’t love you anymore. Just work on the triggers that will bring it back, and it will come back. I have helped many people get their spouses to fall in love with them again, even though their spouses did not believe it was possible. It is.

Love is a feeling which comes and goes and it is also behavior which reflects our concern for the other person’s welfare. When we don’t feel love, we often don’t behave lovingly. We need to use discipline to continue to do loving behavior, even when we don’t feel like it. Discipline helps us to bridge the bad times, the sad times, and the stressful times just as much in marriage as with parenting.

(4:03)

Some people think it’s more important to be genuine than to use discipline to love. But, …

Is being genuine more important than being loving?

The truly genuine person is primitive, learns nothing, and has no friends. Loving and getting along require self censorship and a good deal of effort. Don’t ever fall for the false teaching that you need to be genuine. God expects us to love Him and and others despite how we might feel about it. He also expects us to do other hard things whether we feel like it or not.

There is no way to have success except to use discipline to do things which you don’t feel like doing.

If you are familiar with my work, you have learned that success comes from taking the right steps in the right order. Which do you think comes first? Action or feelings?

(4:57)

Key principle: Action comes before feelings.

Trying to feel something is a good way not to feel it. Feelings are triggered by events and by thoughts (thoughts, by the way are also actions, since we can intentionally form them). Getting this order backwards keeps people stuck. 

Depressed people, for example, will stay stuck if they wait until they feel like becoming active because depression takes away the desire for action. However, if depressed people make themselves get active, the depression decreases.

Behavior change precedes feeling change, and not the other way around.

That’s also true for changing other people’s feeling toward you, by the way. If you wait for your spouse to love you more before you behave lovingly, that will keep you stuck. Your behavior change has to precede your spouse’s feeling change towards you.

Two teachings from the Bible reflect this:

(5:57)

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you (Luke 6:38).

and,

A man reaps what he sows (Galatians 6:7b).

The way you think and behave will result in the kinds of feelings you feel and how others feel about you. Thinking bad things about your spouse and loving your spouse are never going to go hand in hand.

Twelve ways we fall out of love with our spouse (or anyone):

1. Giving our spouse our leftover time and energy

Do you use all of your good energy for everything but your spouse? If so, you will have little emotional or physical energy for your spouse and your feelings will suffer. Fatigue is the number one reason for loss of loving feelings. Our mind prioritizes the need for rest over the need for companionship, love, and sex, so it shuts down those feelings when it wants us to rest.

(7:10)

The remedy is to use your best energy for whatever is the most important for you. And, you must cut out from your life whatever is taking energy away that you need for your relationship, even if it means quitting your job. Many people have severely damaged their relationships by prioritizing work or kids.

If you are so tired you have to force yourself to spend time with your spouse, you need to decrease your load right away. Dating, one on one time, and sexual time are not optional extras. They are requirements. Never think you can put them off to work on other things. You have to put off other things to work on your relationship.

Another way we decrease our love for our spouse is by having…

(8:00)

2. Too much togetherness with others

Having friends is good, spending so much time with friends that you don’t need any companionship from your spouse is bad. At that point your marriage becomes a job or a convenience, your feelings wither, and it sets up a chain reaction of negative interactions. 

Too much time on social media is like too much time with friends. If your social need is two hours per day, don’t spend more than an hour of that, total, with anyone other than your spouse. Otherwise, you will have no emotional need for your spouse and you will lose your loving feelings.

3. Not expressing and showing positively how much we care.

When we take care of someone, we care more about them. What we do informs our brain about how we should feel. Neglect someone and your brain will inform you not to care about them. Our brain is constantly reconciling our feelings with our behavior and with our thinking. Control the parts you can, and the other parts will get in line.

(9:07)

Offering to help and doing things for your spouse without being asked are two of many ways we can show that we care. Empathetically listening to your spouse’s concerns is another.

4. Not telling our spouse, “I love you.”

If we say I love you only in response to someone saying it to us, it does not create that feeling as much in us as if we initiate it. That’s because there is some reason to say it other than because we feel it. Saying and doing things when there is no obligation to creates the most internal feeling change. 

Again, don’t wait until you feel like you love your spouse to say it. instead, pretend that you already feel it. The more you pretend something, the more you actually will be doing it. If I pretend to be friendly, I can only do so by actually being friendly. And, it will have the same impact on others liking me and me liking them. This is why social skills practice actually makes people more social.

(10:13)

How often should we say I love you? The answer is just a little less than the other person likes to hear it–same as for every relationship building behavior. How do you know how often that is? By reading your spouse’s facial expression when you say it.

While we are at it, let me give you a tip about timing: Wait for a good time to say things, but never wait for a perfect time. A good time is when someone is relaxed and receptive. Waiting for a perfect time will make you wait too long.

5. Questioning whether we love our spouse any more

(10:51)

Questioning anything you want to accomplish or be will make it harder to accomplish or be what you want. I wonder if I can keep this job? I wonder if I can drive safely? I wonder if I can keep loving my spouse? I wonder if I can stay healthy? and so forth is not healthy wondering. We have to have discipline not only over our behavior, but our minds as well. Doubting your own love or your spouse’s love is never going to help you to keep either.

Instead, reassure yourself that you love your spouse and that your spouse loves you, even if you don’t feel it it right now. Then, get to work in promoting both. 

Seeds of doubt grow only failure; seeds of confidence grow success.

Which motivates you to take more positive action? Doubts or confidence?

6. Not doing thoughtful, nice things

We used to do them, didn’t we? Our spouses did them too. They made us smile and feel like good lovers. They made our spouses feel important, too.

(11:58)

What were those little things you used to do? Did you buy little presents for him? Tickle her? Send him cards just because? Send text messages just to say, “I miss you”? Bring back the feelings in yourself by bringing back the behavior. Do the kinds of things you would do if you were single and in love with your boyfriend or girlfriend.

Romance is partly a state of mind that we create in ourselves.

Doing little things for your spouse is like using candles in your bath. It is totally unnecessary, but makes it so much better.

7. No longer affectionately touching or kissing.

There was a time when all we wanted to do was to touch or kiss our spouse. Holding hands was a special thing, and we didn’t need extra space on the bed when we slept at night. When did touching become routine? 

(12:54)

If you are feeling like your spouse’s touch doesn’t mean much any more, start touching your spouse like you really mean it. Go a little slower, be a little more deliberate, and focus on communicating affection with your touch. If you don’t turn your spouse on, you will at least turn yourself on.

If you are feeling like your spouse’s touch doesn’t mean so much any more, start touching your spouse like you really mean it.

More than with words, we communicate our love by how we touch, how we gaze, and the softness of our voice.

Look, talk, and touch as if you were in love with your spouse and it will help your feelings to come back. 

8. Having sex less and less.

Body feelings and mind feelings are linked together. What can be emotionally and physically more wonderful? But, if that’s true, then why do many couples have less and less sex? One reason is because they make sex a routine like folding the laundry.

(13:59)

The remedy is to put the same intentionality into your sex that you do into your touching and kissing. Have focus, be in the moment. Stop enjoying your life in retrospect–enjoy it in the moment.

Make your spouse feel like you enjoy him or her physically. Even if you are not as sexual as your spouse, put the effort into your sex life that you would like your spouse to put into something that you care about. Make sex about giving and not just receiving. We reap what we sow, so giving more stimulates more loving feelings in us.

When you say something during sex, don’t think about what you would like to hear. Think about what your spouse would like to hear. Men and women are turned on by different things. The better of a sexual partner you are, the more you will enjoy sex, and that will also help with your loving feelings.

(14:54)

9. No longer having fun dates or doing activities together.

Are you still having fun? Have you fallen into a maintenance routine of always going to the same restaurant? Did you stop date nights after you had a child? Part of what helped us to enjoy our early dating was the newness of our relationship, as well as a newness of what we did together.

To have more fun, start doing again what you used to do before you stopped having fun.

No matter your age or physical ability, the world is full of things to do and places to go where you can enjoy being with each other. If you are finding it hard to imagine having a good time with your spouse, then it’s time to start doing different things with your spouse. Learn how to do cooperative date planning with your spouse. Don’t wait for your spouse to initiate this.

10. Less and less talking about intimate subjects.

(15:51)

In marriage we share parts of ourselves that we would not trust the rest of the world with. Intimate talk means sharing things that are personal and meaningful. Intimate talk is letting our spouse hear about parts of our emotions and thinking that others don’t hear.

Don’t be quick to share all your thoughts and feelings with everyone else. Save some aspect of yourself for your spouse. 

11. Not planning for future things that you can both look forward to.

The motivation to stay together depends on being able to imagine a good future together. As a future together starts to look more bleak, loving feelings start to evaporate. Our mind prepares us to avoid the negative future that we imagine, by shutting down our loving feelings.

Make sure that you talk about the special times you want to have with your spouse in the future and how you are looking forward to sharing the rest of your life together.

Control your mind and never think the grass might be greener with someone else.

(16:53)

If your grass is not green, then it is time to take better care of it! A shared dream and vision for the future is more important than the reality of it ever coming true. Don’t get so caught up in the realities of daily life that you don’t take time to dream and share your ideas about your future together.

When you imagine your spouse as part of a happy future for yourself, it helps to keep your love alive.

12. Avoiding your spouse

You may notice when your spouse avoids you, but not when you are avoiding your spouse. Although it may seem like an easy way to deal with problems, when we avoid someone we also shut down our emotions toward them. Over time, this can become a habit that leads to total loss of loving feelings.

Beware of the opposite mistake–not getting and giving needed space. Just as a friend is glad to see you sometimes and not all the time, so we need to have space from our spouses. Not taking that can burn out our loving feelings, as it can with anyone else.

(17:57)

It is our job, as well as our pleasure, to love our spouse

Every relationship has job requirements. There are things you must do to keep friends, maintain good relationships with your kids, your customers, God, your coworkers, and your spouse. If you don’t do those job requirements, your relationship will become distant. One of those requirements is to love.

Loving our spouse is typically the first promise we make in our marriage vows.

Feelings may naturally happen when we first meet someone, but as the relationship matures, we need to intentionally do things that promote our spouse’s love for us as well as our love for our spouse. If you can’t do all twelve of the love building items I mentioned, do the ones you can.

Don’t let the fact that you can’t do some things stop you from doing the things that you can.

(18:53)

We always have to start with what we can do. When we do what we can, it creates even more things we can do, because of our growth and achievement. Every step you take will help you do all of the steps that you couldn’t do before. 

Notice that none of the methods of keeping your own love alive require your spouse to work with you. It fits with God’s teaching to love others even if they don’t love us, doesn’t it?

So, why doesn’t everyone just boost their love of others? Well, it’s mainly because of the wrong priorities, fatigue, or fear. 

Loving always requires facing the risk that we may be rejected. Marriage is not for cowards. 

Loving your spouse or your enemy is not something your spouse or your enemy is responsible for. It is something that we all are responsible for. Keep the promise you made when you married–to love your spouse.

But, …

What if your love is not returned?

(19:58)

If you really are doing a good job loving your spouse and your love is not returned, then you will start to burn out on loving and that will also make you lose your loving feelings. The key in this situation is not to wait until your feelings have completely gone. Once you have burned out, you will no longer care. Before you get to that point, I recommend you let me help you to get your spouse to fall in love with you. I have been helping people to do that for almost thirty years now. Just imagine how good your marriage could be with you and your spouse loving each other again.

(20:36)

[Podcast wrap-up]

Announcer: Thank you for listening to Reconciling Marriages with Coach Jack. Visit coachjackito.com to learn more skills for reconnecting with your spouse and restoring your marriage.