The last day or two I keep coming back to conversations I have had with my husband a few times over the past years. For him, love is a feeling. He pushed back at me every time I talked about how you have to choose to keep loving someone through the tough times if you want to keep the feelings alive. To me real, deep love is that day in and day out choosing someone over and over again. Choosing to communicate with them. Choosing to have the hard conversations. Choosing to walk through the tough times with them. It's an action, not a passive feeling.
Reflecting back, his actions match that mindset really clearly. When he stopped feeling love for me, he stopped investing in the relationship. Once he stopped investing in the relationship, he could allow resentment to build up and he could distance himself which basically eliminated any chance that feeling would ever come back.
Because I believed that love was a choice and an action, I consciously and unconsciously made that choice every single day of our marriage. And from that viewpoint, I didn't need feelings to always be there to give him the benefit of the doubt and look for the best in him.
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