You are on a date night with your wife, observing the people around you.
“First date?” you ask. “For sure!” she says, noticing the telltale signs. The young lady carries a single rose. The young man is a little nervous. They are slightly overdressed for the restaurant. Eyes locked, their attention is rapt on one another. Cell phones never make an appearance.
Young love.
A mom and dad in their late thirties burst into the restaurant with three boisterous children guffawing at a joke. They divide and conquer: dad takes the two boys to the bathroom while mom settles herself and their daughter into the chair. Dad returns and, as the boys slide into their seats, an errant limb catches a water glass and sends it crashing to the floor. Mom and dad exchange raised eyebrows, shake their heads, and stifle laughter.
Middle-aged love.
An older couple shuffles in. He pulls out her chair. She takes his reading glasses from her purse and hands them to him. Their warm eyes sparkle as they meet. He orders for them both as they hold hands across the table.
Old love.
Psychologists (including those at the Gottman Institute) have shown through brain imaging what we intuitively know: there are at least three distinct phases of love. These are not rigid or universal stages, but they can help explain why marriage requires more than the intensity of initial attraction.
Phase one is the well-known honeymoon phase, when romantic desire and attraction are especially strong. This euphoric phase may last anywhere from a few months to a couple of years. The brain’s reward system floods with dopamine and norepinephrine, creating intense focus, high energy, and preoccupation with one’s beloved. When in one another’s presence, heart rates rise. The brain suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, making it easier to minimize or overlook a partner’s flaws and weaknesses.
Phase two is the power struggle, where couples navigate the work of building trust and the challenge of disillusionment. As conflict inevitably enters the picture, the rose-colored glasses come off. Couples begin to discover whether they can remain honest, patient, forgiving, and faithful when life becomes difficult
Phase three is mature love and secure attachment. Couples who learn to navigate conflict with humility and perseverance can develop a stable, long-term bond marked by emotional safety, affection, trust, and deep loyalty. The intensity of early romance may change, but it can be replaced by something richer: a love that has been tested and strengthened through shared life.
Physiologically, some interesting things take place. When in the presence of one another, heart rates drop. Neurological studies show that areas of the brain associated with complex cognitive processing and empathy expand.
Angel and I are in the process of launching our children. We were blessed to be with our daughter’s engagement a week and a half ago. Soren will be married this December, and Camille’s wedding will likely take place in January 2028. It’s a season of reflection.
We are aware that the transition to an empty nest can place new pressures on marriage. Divorce rates spike, with nearly 40% of divorces occurring in couples over 50 years old. Some couples experience a loss of shared purpose, while years of unresolved conflict, neglect, or bitterness may become harder to ignore.
We are deeply grateful that these have been the happiest years of our marriage (praise be to God). Yet we are also more aware than ever of the dynamic challenge of staying in love. The longer we are married, the more dimensions of love we discover and the more we see what love must become if a marriage is not merely to survive, but thrive.
Our culture often fixates on a thin two-dimensional, dopamine-driven version of romantic love. But lasting marriage requires something three-dimensional: friendship, covenant faithfulness, romance, forgiveness, shared purpose, and joyful self-giving.
In The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis popularized the understanding that the four primary words for love in Koinē Greek (the language the New Testament was written in) provided different facets of love: philia (deep friendship), storgē (familial love), eros (romantic), and agape (sacrificial and unconditional).
Few are aware that there are also four primary words for love in Hebrew (the primary language of the Old Testament): ahavah (a broad term for love that can describe romantic love, God’s love for people, and even the desire for a favorite food), chesed (steadfast covenantal love), dōd (romantic love), rachamim (deep compassion and tender mercy, often familial).
To grow in our relationship with God is to grow in our experience of his multifaceted love for us. Jesus calls his disciples friends (“…I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” (Jn 15:15)). He calls us his family (“And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:49-50). Jesus is the pursuing lover in the Song of Songs who stands at the door and knocks (Song of Songs 5:2; Rev. 3:20). And Jesus’s love is supremely sacrificial (“As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love” (Jn. 15:9).
To build a marital love that lasts, we must deepen our friendship, strengthen our covenant, cultivate romance, and grow in joyful sacrifice toward one another. We’ve sat with too many couples who, after having children, come to see themselves merely as partners in parenting. In some cases, their deepest relational bonds have shifted almost entirely toward their children. We’ve watched as couples neglect their friendship and romance with one another. We have seen spouses act selflessly toward their children while failing to extend the same patience, service, and tenderness to each other.
I pray that your love will thrive through every season of marriage. Look again at the couples in the restaurant. Each season has its own beauty. But if you and your spouse remain faithful and teachable, you can build toward the rich and steady beauty of graying love.
There is something in the older couple’s tenderness that reflects the mysterious, sacrificial love of Christ for his bride — a love God intends marriage to display:
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. (Eph. 5:22-33).