Virtually all relationships begin with both partners feeling in love. However, over time, when needs are not met and conflicts arise, many couples fall in love. Suddenly, you wake up and realize you are in a loveless marriage.
What is a marriage without love?
A loveless marriage is a relationship where one or both partners do not feel in love. Instead of being romantic lovers, they often feel more like roommates or siblings. Being in a loveless marriage often breeds isolation, resentment and hopelessness.
However, don’t despair, the rest of the article will cover four ways to bring love back into your marriage!
Loveless Marriage – 4 Steps to Turn It Around
1-Understanding the Love Bucket Model
All spouses have various needs in marriage and we can either meet those needs or neglect them. I think of it as a bucket of love. We all have a bucket of love inside of us and our spouse is like a faucet that fills it up. When we’re first dating, our partner excels at filling it in. Before long, our love bucket is full and that makes us fall in love with them. However, over the years, either intentionally or unintentionally, our spouse turns off the faucet and only drips water into our bucket of love. At the same time, they start doing behaviors we don’t like, which creates a hole in the bottom of our bucket and the water starts leaking. With less water going in and more water coming out, our bucket gets lower and lower until it finally runs dry, which makes us fall in love with them. So one of the most important things I help partners discern in couples counseling is what are the top things that fill their love bucket and the top things that drain it. If we can identify these elements and apply them, love buckets can be refilled and couples can fall in love again and stay in love.
2-Fillers
The following list of fillers are common ones I’ve seen partners desire in marriage. Fillers are all the behaviors you desire to feel loved and satisfied. Fillers may be things your partner did in the beginning when you were dating, but stopped over the years. It may be things that they are still doing and you want them to continue. Or it might be things they’ve never done and you’ve given up. Bring this item back. Sky is the limit. What are the top three fillers you need to feel loved and fulfilled in your marriage? What are the top three behaviors below that would make you feel like you are not in a loveless marriage?
Quality time– This person feels loved and cherished when they receive your undivided attention.
Affection– This person feels loved and close by non-sexual touch.
Worship– This person feels loved and shut off from being appreciated and heard because you love them.
Emotional Intimacy– This person feels loved and close by sharing and listening to inner thoughts and feelings.
Recreational– This person feels loved and close by physical activity together, such as hiking, biking, swimming, etc.
Sex– This person feels loved and close by sexual activity together.
Support my interests– This person feels loved and is close by questions about important things in their life.
Natural attraction– This person feels loved and close when you optimize your appearance.
Thoughtful gestures– This person feels loved and close when you provide acts of kindness.
Write down the top three fillers you desire from your spouse, then give them a number on how well they’ve filled your love bucket with each item over the past seven days, with zero being the worst and ten being the best. better. For example, if one of your filters is affection and you think your partner succeeded in fulfilling that need last week, you would give them a five. If they were amazing at giving affection, you’d give them a ten. If they didn’t give affection, you would give them a zero. Please note that you are only evaluating what was under their control. For example, if your partner was in bed with a nasty cold part of the week, they couldn’t provide affection, and it was out of their control, so you won’t get points for that.
3- Strainers
Fillers fill our love bucket and drainers drain it. A drain is anything your spouse does that makes you feel negative about him. Drainers create a hole in the bottom of your love bucket, allowing water to drain out. So if your partner does an amazing job filling your love bucket, but at the same time does a lot of draining, the water won’t stay in your bucket. The drains will void the fillers. Consequently, it is not efficient to simply monitor fillers. We need to watch both fillers and drainers to successfully fill each other’s love bucket.
Here is a list of common drains and their explanations.
Parents– This person dislikes their partner’s parenting style.
Defensive– This person dislikes how their partner does not take responsibility for their role in conflicts.
Financially– This person dislikes the way their partner handles money.
Hard anger– This person dislikes how their partner becomes cruel with their anger.
Passive– This person dislikes how their partner is passive in certain areas of life.
Control– This person dislikes how their partner does not share decision-making power.
Addictions– This person dislikes how their partner’s addiction interferes with their relationship.
Uneven workload– This person dislikes the way they work overall more than their partner.
Sloppy– This person dislikes how their partner leaves their belongings all over the house.
Write down the top three things your partner does that make you feel bad about them, then give them a number for each. However, the score is the opposite. For drainers, zero is the best and negative ten is the worst. Zero means that your partner did not perform the draining behavior at all, so no water was drained from your bucket. A negative ten means they’ve been doing a lot of draining behavior over the past seven days, so a lot of water has been drained from your bucket.
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4- Love Bucket Goal
The goal in love buckets is to eventually get eight to ten on each fill and zero to negative two on each drainer. When you do this consistently, you will become irresistible to your partner and your loveless marriage will turn into a loving one! Your current behaviors in your marriage are burned into your brain. Therefore, it will take time for new neural pathways to develop, similar to a hiking trail. The dominant path is well worn and you follow it without thinking, which is your current marital behavior. However, creating a new path takes time for the grass to wear down before it becomes the new dominant path, which is your new marital behavior. Normally, when couples first create their list and get numbers, they do more draining behaviors than filler behaviors. In my experience working with couples, if both make a sincere effort to fill their partner’s love bucket, it usually takes six to twelve weeks before the filling behaviors become frequent and the more draining behaviors become rare.
Summary
Maximizing the fillers your partner desires while minimizing the drainers they don’t like is the fastest way to make them fall in love with you again. It is the way to fill their bucket of love and keep it full. When both partners commit to doing this, it becomes the answer to reversing a loveless marriage.
Further reading:
I stop loving
How to fall in love again
How long does it take to fall in love?
Quality time love language
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What else would you recommend to turn around a loveless marriage?
