"Love is Thoughtful"

Love thinks. It is not a mindless feeling riding on the waves of emotion. Loving thoughts precede loving actions. When we fell in love with our spouse, we couldn’t stop thinking about them. This often changes after we get married for many reasons — we become busy with careers, new friends, kids and so on. Our attention is reduced and if we are not careful, we become thoughtless and fail to make our marriage a priority. It is reason behind what The Art of Marriage calls “the drift towards isolation”. My analogy is that of a pendulum — we swing from one extreme of over-fixation to the other of being inattentive. Thoughtlessness can become a silent enemy in marriage.

How can we overcome this? Most marriage experts agree that infatuation must fade before we can begin to build real, lasting love. Good communication skills, including how we think and talk about each other’s needs, are fundamental. It helps us seize rather than miss opportunities to demonstrate our love.

God created men and women of equal value, yet He also created us differently. Research supports ‘brain-wired’ gender differences and makes a few generalizations. Men tend to struggle more with thoughtlessness because their minds focus on one thing while overlooking other items that need attention. They think and speak straight forward messages with fewer subtleties requiring interpretation. Women however are more capable of multiple thoughts simultaneously and also think relationally. This means they tend to speak and perceive things ‘between the lines’.

A wife may feel her husband is thoughtless if she always has to spell something out. Meanwhile he becomes aggravated that he can’t read her mind and misses a chance to show his love. Does any of this sound familiar?

It is important for couples to understand these differences so they can grow closer instead of drift apart. Love requires thoughtfulness on both sides to build bridges through patience, kindness and selflessness. Love teaches us to meet in the middle by respecting and appreciating how our spouse uniquely thinks. Love overcomes our frustrations.

A wise husband listens to his wife and is considerate of her unspoken message. A caring wife learns to communicate honestly and not over rely on him to pick up hidden or alternative meanings. The thoughtful nature of love teaches us to think before we speak so that our words are filtered through a grid of truth and kindness. What we think, the words we choose and how we act greatly impacts our marriage. So today’s encouragement is this: Ask God to help you be more thoughtful in your relationship.

Blessings to you and for your marriage.

Fred