We're So in Love....Now What?

Intuitively speaking, keeping love alive, when so much of the outside world threatens to overwhelm it, is one of the most difficult challenges we will ever face.

You might be thinking: How in the world can that be? If you're really in love with each other, keeping love alive between you shouldn't be a hard thing to do at all.

I wish I could say this is true, but unfortunately (at least in terms of the 25+ years I've spent as the subject matter expert for Personal Prophesy, the method of intuitive card reading I use), falling in love is relatively easy. Keeping love alive is, realistically, one of the hardest things we will ever do.

Consider for a moment those beautiful, wondrous first days of being "in love." Everything about the experience seems practically perfect. You find yourselves meshing in ways you never thought possible. Your hopes and dreams seem so compatible it's as if you were born to share the same heart. You feel such ecstasy and find such completeness in that loving, passionate embrace you share that you are convinced you have finally found "the one."

But the question is, will that "in love" feeling last? From my experience with the cards, probably not.

Being "in love" is that virginal, untried first step involved in loving. It's basically an overwhelming desire between two people to simply be together. But love - real love - changes and grows as we ourselves do all the time.

Every day that love requires tending and nurturing and only with time does it become strong and resilient. This is the love that develops into a steel-like bond between two people. It has the power to carry them into the future together and at times survives what may seem to be nearly insurmountable odds.

When we're in love, what we feel is presented in the cards as if it were a young, innocent child. That child needs a tremendous amount of protection and guidance as it matures and moves toward the future. Without that protection and guidance, this "child" -- this love -- simply flounders, having no idea where it should go.

In reality, far too many of us are so in love with the romantic way we feel for each other in the present that we rarely, if ever, stop to consider the hardships we may inevitably face as couples in the future. For instance, financial problems. The stress of raising children. Not to mention conflicts with relatives, career changes, illness or addictions, outside temptations - and the list goes on.

What we fail to realize is that the experience of falling "in love" is only a first step toward truly loving. It's what comes after, in the form of hardships and challenges the future brings and how we successfully overcome them, that actually gives depth and substance to the love we feel.

Unfortunately, many of us are so in love with "being in love" that we never give ourselves the chance to advance beyond that first step.

Take a good, hard look at the divorce rate these days. More than 50 percent of all marriages now end in divorce. Why? Simply because couples can't keep their love alive.

One thing or another manages somehow to draw these couples apart. Perhaps there are too many problems or it may be there is too much boredom. Sometimes even too much personal growth on the part of one spouse and not enough on the part of the other can be the cause. And yet, I can't imagine that a single person in this world ever marries expecting at some future time to get divorced.

Divorce is perceived in the cards as an unnatural breakdown in the process of loving. It means one - or both - of the partners involved has somehow allowed him or herself to lose focus in the relationship: they've lost faith and they're essentially looking beyond the commitment in that relationship in order to achieve personal happiness for themselves.

On the intuitive level, commitment is perceived as a conscious agreement between partners to be together. But the bond that exists between them is something that runs far deeper. When two people are not truly "bonded" to each other, which takes a considerable amount of time and effort by both partners to achieve, it doesn't matter how "committed" they may outwardly profess to be. Their relationship is essentially doomed, practically from its beginning. Without that strong, solid emotional bond between them, keeping love alive will be literally impossible.

How do we achieve such a bond? For one thing, we wake up every day and see our relationships as genuinely living, growing things and we care for them accordingly. We realize that being "in love" is mainly an initial experience of passion and attraction, and we strive to build a much more meaningful foundation of hope and trust on both with the passing of time.

We exercise a tremendous amount of understanding and forgiveness in our relationships, because we are aware that Today is not Yesterday in terms of those relationships. But, with the right care and handling, Today will certainly become a more enriched, far more fulfilling Tomorrow because we have been able to love unconditionally.

We do everything we can to stay "in love" by continuing to be the individuals we were at the start of these relationships. In other words, she still makes an effort to dress "for him" when they go out to dinner. He still serves breakfast in bed "for her" the way he used to do when they were engaged.

They continue to romance each other and be attentive to each other's needs, even when the dishes aren't done or the lawn hasn't been mowed. They essentially look for ways in the midst of everyday living to celebrate their love for one another, to literally keep their love for one another alive.

This may not be all the time, of course, but enough of the time. Often enough to let partners know that even when times are troubled or if circumstances aren't quite what we'd like them to be, we are still very much "in love" in spirit.

We can keep love alive in our relationships, but it's up to us and our partners to make it happen. Plainly speaking, there is nothing effortless about love. In fact, genuinely loving our partners can be one of the toughest commitments we ever make in life.

But the rewards to be reaped are enormous when we are sincerely committed to investing enough time and effort - enough of ourselves - into developing a deep, loving bond that can truly last a lifetime.