When The Romance Is Gone Series

Sonja Ely, of Dallas, Oregon, was watching her 5-year-old granddaughter Christy play with her dolls. At one point, Christy “staged” a wedding, first playing the role of the bride's mother who assigned specific duties, then suddenly becoming the bride with her “teddy bear” groom.

She picked him up and said to the “minister” presiding over the wedding, “Now you can read us our rights.” Without missing a beat, Christy became the minister who said, “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say may be held against you, you have the right to have an attorney present. You may kiss the bride” (Sonja R. Ely, Dallas, Oregon, “Rolling Down the Aisle,” Christian Reader; www.PreachingToday.com).

That little girl understood better than most that romantic weddings can soon degenerate into the realistic workings of marriage.

Arthur Brooks, a researcher writing for The Atlantic, says, “Passionate love, which relies on attraction, does not typically last beyond the novelty of the relationship (Arthur C. Brooks, “The Type of Love that Makes People Happiest,” The Atlantic, 2-11-21; www.PreachingToday.com).

So what do you do when the passion wears off? What do you do when the romance is gone? Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Corinthians 7, where God tells you what to do.

1 Corinthians 7:10-11 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife (ESV).

This is what Jesus told his followers in the Gospels. In Matthew 19 and Mark 10, Jesus said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery” (Mark 10:11-12). Paul just mimics Jesus when he prohibits divorce. So when the romance is gone…

STAY MARRIED.

Remain committed to your mate, and remove divorce from your vocabulary. Reject the idea of divorce even if your spouse is an unbeliever.

1 Corinthians 7:12-13 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him (ESV).

Now, Jesus did not address this situation in the Gospels, but the principle still holds—STAY MARRIED! Stay married even if your spouse is an unbeliever.

Some couples are already married when one of them becomes a Christian. That puts them in a spiritually mixed marriage, where one of them is committed to Christ and the other is committed to the ways of this world. That puts them at odds with each other. It creates the potential for a lot of conflict. Even so, God says don’t divorce. Stay married. Remain committed to your spouse.

In the novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, an older man named Dr. Iannis tells his daughter about his love for his late wife. He says that at first love “erupts like a volcano” but then it subsides. “And when it subsides,” he continues, “you have to make a decision. Do you want real love or just being ‘in love?’”

Then he gives this definition for true marital love: “[Real] love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away… Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches, we found we were one tree and not two” (David Brooks, The Second Mountain, Random House, 2020, page 45; www.PreachingToday.com).

When the romance fades, you have a decision to make. Choose real love over being “in love.” Remain committed to your spouse until the two of you become one underneath the surface.

In his book Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas writes:

If we are serious about pursuing spiritual growth through marriage, we must convince ourselves to refrain from asking the spiritually dangerous question: “Did I marry the right person?”

A far better alternative to questioning one's choice is to learn how to live with one's choice. A character in the Anne Tyler novel A Patchwork Planet comes to realize this too late. The book's 32-year-old narrator has gone through a divorce and now works at an occupation that has him relating almost exclusively with elderly people. As he observes their long-standing marriages, he comes to a profound understanding:

I was beginning to suspect that it made no difference whether they'd married the right person. Finally, you're just with who you're with. You've signed on with her, put in half a century with her, grown to know her as well as you know yourself or even better, and she's become the right person. Or the only person, might be more to the point (Gary Thomas, Sacred Marriage Zondervan, 2000, p. 124; www.PreachingToday.com).