Three Ways to Grow in Love
How to cultivate the garden of your marriage
You know what it’s like to fall in love, but do you know what it takes to grow in love?
When two people “fall in love,” the brain releases the hormone oxytocin, affectionately called “the love drug.” In this initial stage of a relationship, a couple is intoxicated and can’t see anything wrong with one other. It’s cute, but in time, the high fades, and reality sinks in. They begin to realize that a thriving marriage takes work.
We both fell in love many years ago, but that isn’t what sustained us and or deepened our relationship. We’ve been intentional to grow our love over the course of 29 years of marriage. When it comes to the garden of marriage, it is both an art and a science, like horticulture. There are principles to growing plants, but the way they are expressed (and the health of the plant) is dependent on the practices of the gardener. There is a cultivation that takes place for our marriages to produce the right fruit. The seeds we plant today determine the marriage we’ll have tomorrow.
Galatians 6:7-9 says, “A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
We don’t always sow and reap in the same season. There are seeds we plant early on in our marriage that we may not reap until another season. But the kinds of seeds we plant will determine the kind of plant or fruit we experience. If we sow healthy seeds, we’re going to reap healthy fruit. If you begin with the end in mind, you can determine what it will take to ensure your marriage moves in that direction.
Three truths about sowing and reaping in marriage:
- Focus on the root, not the fruit.
Many couples want the image of marriage—the fruit of it—but they don’t understand that to get the fruit, you need a healthy root. A healthy root is a vibrant relational, spiritual, emotional, physical, and sexual intimacy. A strong root system is also revealed through a couple’s communication and character. If you have a healthy root it’s going to consistently produce healthy fruit.
One practical way we apply this truth is by praying together in the mornings. This helps us cultivate the root of a strong connection with God and one another. Over time, it compounds into a healthy spiritual connection in our marriage.
- Develop a growth mindset.
A couple with a fixed mindset gets stuck in the way things are. They tend to grow complacent. They fall into a pattern of doing things the same way at the same time, never stretching themselves to learn or experience new things.
Embracing a growth mindset as a couple opens you up to new discoveries about each other and teaches you how to love each other better. And it will create a desire to be the best version of yourself for your spouse. A few practices that can help you fertilize a growth mindset in your marriage are:
- Read a marriage book together.
- Take an assessment together.
- Join a small group with other couples.
- Attend a marriage retreat or do a Marriage Reboot.
- Hire a marriage coach.
- Weed the wrong things, feed the right things.
Our daughter has amazing knowledge and skills in horticulture. While walking around our neighborhood once, we mentioned a cool vine. She said, “That’s not a vine, that’s a weed. See the curlicues, those grab the other branches, bind them, and choke the life out of them.”
In order to have a healthy plant, you have to remove the weeds. Weeds creep in and choke the life out of your relationship. We need to aggressively look for weeds, and even if they look cute with curlicues—pull them! Then we have to feed the things that foster growth in our lives together.
In order for your marriage to be healthy, you must have a destructive and a constructive zeal—destructive in the weeding process but constructive in the feeding process. One way to start is by weeding out complaining, and feeding gratitude. Complaining cultivates a negative environment—it circles the drain of our married life and zaps all energy out of it. Complaining is the fruit of negativity and is a hard to destroy weed. But, it doesn’t do any good to just pull it out—we have to replace it with gratitude. Philippians 2:14 says, “Do everything without murmuring or complaining.” Often, we complain about petty things, and it crowds out the potential for helpful dialogue. It hinders us from producing the outcome we want to see in our relationship or spouse.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:8, the Apostle Paul says, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Science reveals the benefits of Paul’s advice—studies show that expressing gratitude for your spouse strengthens your marriage. Being thankful is associated with increased long-term happiness in marriage, and can have a healing effect when there are rifts in the relationship. Gratitude can help reframe negative experiences in a more positive light and is associated with more satisfying sex in marriage.
Is there one area that comes to mind that you’re complaining about? Start there. Start feeding gratitude, choose one small area, and establish a new habit.
The more we establish a culture for growth, the more we can tend and shape our marriage into the work of art it’s designed to be. So, if you want to grow in love, focus on the root, not the fruit, develop a growth mindset, weed the wrong things, and feed the right things.
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1Algoe, S. B. (2012). Find, remind, and bind: The functions of gratitude in everyday relationships. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(6), 455–469.
2Gordon, C. L., Arnette, R. A. ., & Smith, R. E. (2011). Have you thanked your spouse today?: Felt and expressed gratitude among married couples. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(3), 339–343.
3Emmons, R. A., & Stern, R. (2013). Gratitude as a Psychotherapeutic Intervention. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 69(8), 846–855.
4Lambert, N. M., Graham, S. M., Fincham, F. D., & Stillman, T. F. (2009). A changed perspective: How gratitude can affect sense of coherence through positive reframing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(6), 461–470.
5Brady, A. L. (2019). Examining the Association Between Gratitude and Sexual Communal Strength. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
About James & Lisa
James and Lisa Duvall share truths and lessons learned from their 29 years of marriage and over a decade of teaching, coaching, and speaking on marriage.
