Everyone wants to be loved and everyone wants love in their marriage and family. Most, if not all, couples when they get married want to love each other and want the marriage to last. No one wants to be hurt and especially become bitter, and yet, many couples who once loved each other can not even stand to be in the same room at the end of their relationship. However, it should not be that way and that is not the way that God wants it. It is not His will for a marriage to end. It is not the marriage that becomes broken and it is not the vows that are broken but it is the two people who are in the relationship that become broken.
For I hate divorce, says the Lord, Malachi 2:16a
Marriages end in divorce because there is a lack of love in the marriage. Both people are at fault in a marriage. It is almost impossible to “fight” with someone who loves you. So, even if one of the spouses is filled with love it will disarm the other one. However, where does that kind of love come from and how does one find it and keep it? The love that most people have when they begin their marriage quickly runs out and it becomes increasingly difficult to continue to “love” when you are running on empty. Each spouse needs a reservoir of love that never runs dry and especially when children come along.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us I John 4:10a
God is love and love is of God. We can not manufacture within ourselves something that we do not have. We were not born with love. We were born very self centered creatures. Most people love someone and marry them for what that other person can do for them and not necessarily what they can do for that other person whom they “love”. So, when the other spouse no longer meets their wants and/or desires then the love starts to dry up. It dries up because it really was not love in the first place. Love considers the other person more important than one’s own self. You can only do this consistently and for a lifetime if there is One who loves you that way. God’s love never runs out and He loves you with an eternal love. Jesus Christ considered you more important than Himself when He went to the cross and died for you. He put aside all of His God privileges so that He could become like one of us and take our punishment so that we could receive God’s love.
Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Phillipians 2:3-8
When someone experiences the love of God through coming into a relationship with Jesus Christ their life is changed. They are no longer the same person. They want to love. The love of Christ starts to control them and they no longer want to do or be who they were before coming to Christ.
For the love of Christ controls us, II Corinthians 5:14
It is no longer anger or bitterness or revenge or hatred or any of the other destructive attitudes and behaviors that control the one who has come to Christ. Jesus Christ took our sins, all of them, and nailed them to the cross. Some of His last words were, “It is finished”. The payment for our sins was made. Those who receive what Jesus Christ did for them experience His amazing love. God has forgiven them and because He has forgiven them they can now forgive others.
When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Colossians 2:13,14
Jesus Christ loved us when we were still sinners. None of us are good enough.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
Every person who gets married is a sinner at heart. No one can love the way we all need to be loved. Only God can give us the love that we need for each other, to love and forgive the way He has loved and forgiven us. He will fill you with His love when you come to Him.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. I John 4:11
How to Find and Keep Love 