Sweeter As The Years Go By

It’s a beautiful thing to stand at the front of a church and watch a bride and groom lock eyes. Hope and excitement fill the air. Everyone can sense that they believe with all their hearts that their love will stay strong forever. And why not?

They have planned, dreamed, prayed, and promised. But marriage is not a still photograph; it’s more like a river.

A river moves and bends. Sometimes it rushes, sometimes it meanders, sometimes it floods and threatens the banks. The question for every couple isn’t if the river will change, but how they will travel those bends together.

The Bible gives us God’s first words about marriage in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”

One flesh isn’t just a poetic image; it’s the Creator’s design for deep union that lasts through all the shifting seasons of life. The writer of Ecclesiastes adds, “Two are better than one…if either of them falls down, one can help the other up” (4:9–10). That’s God’s vision: companionship that grows sweeter as the years go by.

But anyone who has been married more than a few months knows that life rarely stands still. After the honeymoon glow fades, couples discover that their relationship moves through seasons—each with its own joys and pressures. Understanding those seasons can keep us from thinking that normal change is a sign of failure. In fact, change is the context in which love matures.

The first season is what we might call the establishment phase.

Couples are setting up a home, building careers, maybe starting a family. These are worthwhile pursuits, but they can also crowd out intimacy. Long work hours, late-night feedings, tight budgets, and the sheer fatigue of making life work can make it hard to keep romance alive. What once came easily now requires intentional effort.

Ephesians 5 speaks directly to this need: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” That is sacrificial, daily love—love that does laundry, listens after a long day, and prays together when you’d rather sleep.

As years pass, most couples encounter the midlife phase.

Bodies change. Energy dips. Hair thins. Wrinkles arrive uninvited. The children grow up and leave home. Parents grow frail and need care. There’s a sobering realization that life is moving swiftly. Ecclesiastes reminds us, “There is a time for everything” (3:1).

Midlife can be a time for reassessment, and sometimes for crisis. Men may feel an ache for something deeper than career success. Women may feel that years of sacrifice have gone unnoticed. Without care, emotional distance can creep in until the person across the dinner table feels like a stranger.

Some even look outside the marriage for companionship. But God calls us to a better way. Instead of drifting apart, midlife can become a season of rediscovery—if we lean in with grace and honest conversation.

Eventually, if God grants years, couples enter the retirement phase. Robert Browning once wrote to his beloved Elizabeth, “Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be.”

That is more than pretty poetry. With children raised and schedules less frantic, there is new freedom to savor one another. But this season can also bring loss, illness, or loneliness. The couples who thrive are those who have kept sowing kindness and laughter all along, so that when the pace slows their companionship is rich.

So marriage is not static. It is a living covenant that must be tended. Yet many couples, somewhere along the way, begin to drift. Not in one dramatic moment but slowly, like a boat whose rope has slipped from the dock.

Why does this happen? Often it starts with changes in dependency. In the early glow of romance, one partner may be drawn to the other’s strength. Perhaps he seemed like a rescuer, she like a gentle safe place.

But as the years pass, the “strong” one may grow weary of carrying every burden, and the “weaker” one may chafe under what feels like control. What began as comfort can turn to tension unless the couple renegotiates how they share life.

Drift also comes when hurts accumulate. First Corinthians 13 tells us that love “keeps no record of wrongs,” but in practice we are quick bookkeepers. A missed phone call, an unkind word, an unmet expectation—little things at first—can harden into a private scorecard.

Soon every conversation is filtered through old grievances. What was once laughter turns to suspicion. Healing starts when we lay down the scorecard and forgive as Christ forgave us.

And sometimes, quite simply, circumstances are hard. A sudden job loss. A child’s rebellion. A chronic illness. A devastating accident. When couples promise “for better or for worse,” few imagine the “worse” will come to stay. Yet it does.