Love songs will never go out of fashion. But have you noticed that most love songs are limited to the very first stages of love?
They’re almost always about two specific topics: either the excitement of meeting someone new, or the sadness of breaking up. It’s rare to hear love songs that focus on love in the decades after the "I dos".
When novelty isn't as novel
Perhaps the excitement of meeting someone new seems more interesting than the settled daily living of established relationships. There’s an appearance of novelty to it, except that when every song on the radio is about the same kind of novelty, it doesn’t quite feel as novel anymore, does it?
It’s not just the radio. The powerful initial excitement of a new relationship really does bring a novel dimension to real life in the real world. But if you only ever experience that one kind of novelty, it quickly begins to wear thin.
The same kinds of first dates with the same conversations where you bring out your five best funny stories and impressive titbits. The getting to know each other’s history, getting to know each other’s preferences, and getting to know each other’s irritations, which leads to getting into the first fights, built on the same kinds of disappointments you’ve both had before, leading to another breakup. And repeat. And repeat...
Staying with the same person
It might seem counterintuitive, but I’m convinced that the only way to consistently experience true novelty in romance is to stick with one person for the rest of your life.
I’m not saying the initial newness will last forever. Of course it won’t. It wasn’t long before my wife had heard all my best stories and impressive facts multiple times (there weren’t many). And it wasn’t long before she got to see the unimpressive facts, too. If you stay with one person long enough, they’ll see you at your best and your worst.
But if you can stick with it and find a way through with humility, forgiveness, and grace, then you’ll begin to discover a new, deepening, and expanding kind of love that grows slowly over time, changing over seasons like a tree changing colours and budding all over again, every year becoming just a little bit stronger as it reaches for the sky.
The love of Christ
Isn’t this how Jesus loves us? And He invented marriage to reflect His own long-term commitment to His bride (Ephesians 5v25-33).
There is a constant newness and novelty that only comes after the "first best" stories are worn out and the first dates are over, and you then have to adjust to one another’s differences and work harder to build new stories together, but the effort stimulates and deepens you. It will expand and improve you both as your relationship breaks new ground, in new directions, through the ever-changing seasons of life.
Best of all, the challenges will root you more deeply in the love of Christ, and the joys will teach you more about "how wide and long and high and deep" His love really is (Ephesians 3v17-18).
Never-ending novelty
Love may begin with a flash of excitement, but it grows strong in the ordinary rise and fall of sunshine, rain, and passing days. Each stage of life together brings its own new joys, its own new challenges.
Each new experience reveals more about yourself, and the one you love.
No matter how well you get to know each other, there are always new depths to discover—each and every human being is a whole world of wonders, and even if you had a thousand lifetimes dedicated to the task, you’d never get to the end of discovering them fully. Looking back, I see so many ways my wife and I have grown together. We might be the same people living out the same promises, but there’s a never-ending novelty in staying together that we could never have had if we'd just repeated the same firsts over and over again with different faces.
Seth Lewis is pastor of Carrigtwohill Baptist Church on the south coast of Ireland. He and his wife Jessica have three children, a turtle, and a small garden. Seth is the author of Dream Small: the Secret Power of the Ordinary Christian Life and The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God. He also writes weekly at sethlewis.ie.
