There's a distinction between love and marriage that is both easy to miss and difficult to understand. On top of that, cultural trends and re-interpretations complicate the definition of both love and marriage.

Love in marriage grows through mutual understanding—the dialog, or conversation. Love is stunted through a lack of mutual understanding, which is seen as the monolog—or one-way conversation. One or both parties want to be heard, but no one is listening.

If marriage is only based on love or romance, then what happens if love grows cold? We say that we're not in love anymore. And if it is all up to us, then it's easy to conclude that if one of us fails, the relationship is broken. Both views are based on humanistic underpinnings without roots in the Word of God.

Our definitions of love are either diluted or entirely false. We start off on the wrong foot when we don’t understand the real meaning of love—that it means certain actions, not certain feelings. What love is, and what love isn’t, reflects both the character of God and the imperatives of his Word.