Couples forget to choose each other

Bill and Carol had been together for 24 years. Three kids, two careers and assorted life challenges and crises had been successfully weathered.

At age 50, they found themselves empty-nesters, financially secure, reasonably healthy and lost in their marriage.

Somehow as the years passed and life piled up, they had just misplaced that special connection they had felt almost from the beginning of their relationship. It had come so easy then - they really had fallen in love the way people do in novels and movies; but they had also become best friends.

From everything they read, such a "romantic best-friendship" was what marriage was all about. When they stood before family and friends and pledged "I take you" they meant it with all their hearts.

So years later as we unpacked the history of their life together in counseling, their problem became clear. It wasn't that they didn't love or like each other, or that they couldn't work through the differences and issues that all couples face. They had simply forgotten to keep "taking" or choosing each other.

No matter how secure we initially feel in our love for and commitment to each other, that security is a fragile feeling. We share in our marriages both the best and worst of whom we are. We let our partners watch us struggle, succeed and fail. We get sick or are disabled. We age. We lose our way in life for a while.

It is not easy to trust that another human being is going to "take us" through all these ups and downs. In marriage, though, that is just what we expect and risk.

And it is often what we don't hear enough. After that first few romance-infused period of years or perhaps months, a lot of folks start forgetting to say, in words or actions, "I take you."

All those little things - the cards, or calls, or gifts; the attentive listening and clear caring about what is going on in our partner's life; the hands held, the snuggling on the couch, the passionate love making - all too often slip away.

Though we may not be able to put it in words, we don't feel special, or loved, or "chosen" as before.

The insecurity we feel may get acted out in withdrawing; in directing our attention to jobs, or kids, or homemaking, or hobbies; in bitter recriminations and squabbling; sometimes even in extramarital affairs. It further erodes the basic connection we need for our marriage to work.

It doesn't have to be that way. If we will make the effort to renew in words and actions the vows we made to each other when we first pledged "I take you," we can do much to keep our marriage alive and well. We can even find that "I take you" means even more after five, or 10 or 25 years than it did when we first said it.

• The Rev. Ken Potts is a pastoral counselor and marriage and family therapist with Samaritan Interfaith Counseling Centers, Naperville and Downers Grove. His book, "Take One A Day," can be ordered at local bookstores or online.