Marriage fire needs plenty of fuel to keep burning

When I talk to couples, one of the analogies folks grab onto pretty easily is what I call "The Campfire Analogy."

Let's imagine that our new marriages are like really big campfires we start out in the woods. We throw on a lot of fuel at first. Maybe our campfires become more like bonfires. But they sure are great, what with the big logs blazing away and the flames shooting up in the air.

Courtship is like that, isn't it? We give it all we've got. We feed it as much fuel as we can. We like it hot.

Now, the problem with bonfires is that you can't get too close to them or really use them to sleep by or cook. And they use up all the firewood and it gets harder and harder to keep them going. So, inevitably, we let our blazes settle down to comfortable, sustainable campfires.

We may sometime miss the intensity of our bonfires, but we also like the coziness and utility of our campfires. This is sort of what happens once our new relationships settle in after six months or so.

We get comfortable with each other and appreciate who we are in our more normal day-to-day living. We live our lives with each other rather than put our entire lives on hold for each other.

So here's the first danger. Some couples let their campfires get so small that they almost go out. They are still there, but they don't really provide much heat or warmth to our lives.

A second danger has to do with the forces in life outside our control. A huge thunderstorm comes along and almost puts our campfires out.

Or the creek nearby floods and threatens to drown our entire campsites, campfires included. Or maybe we have a harder and harder time finding any decent fuel for our fires.

Life is like that. People get sick or injured, tornadoes level whole communities; industries and economies collapse. Such strains can be devastating for marriages.

Even if we avoid all of the above potential challenges, the reality is we also often begin to build other campfires in the woods.

Bear with me while we stretch our analogy here a bit.

These other campfires -- let's call them children, jobs, friends, elderly parents, returning to school -- require fuel, time and attention to keep them going. All of this inevitably takes away from what we have to keep our marital fires going.

It is not surprising that, if we aren't careful, before we know it our first campfires can wind up as not much more than embers.

There's one last piece to our story. Sometimes we also make choices that threaten our marital campfires. Extra-marital affairs, for example, are like dumping a big, cold bucket of water on our campfires.

The same can be true for verbal and physical abuse, or substance abuse. They can be enough to put our fires out for good.

The point of this analogy is probably pretty clear. We have to continue to add fuel to, tend to and protect our marital fires to keep them from going out. This is true not just for new or young marriages, but throughout the life of our marriages.