My husband and I often say, “I like you” to each other. For us it’s often a more complementary thing to hear than “I love you.”

Why?

Because we both recognize that love and like are very different things. I can love someone, and show that I do without necessarily needing to like being around them. Love is a choice, an action, something you decide to do. When we promised to love each other until death do us part, we made a commitment to love, even when we didn’t like.

Love is my husband getting up every morning at 5 am and spending 10-12 hours a day at a punishing job in order to make sure his family is taken care of. Love is coming home every night even when I made it miserable for him to be there by whining and complaining that I didn’t feel like he loved me anymore. [oh yes I did.] Love is keeping your promises even when you don’t find your spouse particularly pleasant or attractive anymore. Love is me making sure that he has food to eat, and clean clothes to wear so he doesn’t have to do it himself. Love is initiating sex when I know he wants to, even if I’m not particularly in the mood at first. Love is not saying something hurtful, even if you feel it’s deserved.

Like is a feeling. Like is what you feel when you just enjoy listening to someone talk. Like is when you find a person’s presence enjoyable and their personality captivating. And desire would be that thing that makes your knees go weak when he smiles at you, or causes him to stare obsessively at your lips while you are talking. Obviously the lines between these things are soft and endlessly blurring and overlapping, all contributing to the fabric of a marriage.

But love itself remains something you choose to do, not something you feel. Love can carry on in spite of dislike. The choice to go on loving is what will take a marriage through a difficult time and hold it together long enough to give like and desire a chance to grow again.

photos by troismarteaux and Linds