Do You Really Love Your Spouse?

Queens (and the Kings brave enough to read this).

Marriage papers record a decision you once made. Love measures the decision you make every morning.

Do you love your spouse, or are you clinging to a contract you signed while drunk on endorphins and societal pressure?

If sex were off the table for six months, would you stay or would you itch for an exit strategy?

When you picture the life you crave five years from now, is your spouse still in the shot, or do you blur them out like an unwanted photobomber?

If you met them today, with the new standards you’ve silently developed, would you swipe right, or keep scrolling?

Does your partner challenge your growth, or have they become the human weight you strap on your ankle every morning?

Ask yourself, without the joint mortgage, shared Netflix password, and the guilt your mother spoon-feeds you, would you willingly choose this person again?

Love fades when it stops being chosen.

It doesn’t die overnight; it erodes, grain by grain, under the weight of unspoken resentment and unpaid emotional debts. Obligation moves in quietly; pay the bills, raise the kids, keep the peace, and before you notice, passion is sleeping on the couch.

So, do you really love your spouse, or do you love the life raft you built together? Be honest. Authentic love demands risk: honest conversations, uncomfortable admissions, ruthless self-reflection. Obligation, on the other hand, only asks you to keep pretending.

Tonight, walk into the same room you’ve walked through a thousand times and see them again. Not as your co-parent, not as your roommate, not as an item on your calendar, see the human you once couldn’t keep your hands off. If that spark is still there, guard it like your last breath and start choosing them again, daily, loudly, intentionally. If the spark is gone, have the courage to admit it and decide whether you’ll rebuild the fire or set each other free.

Because nothing is crueler than calling duty “love” and sentencing two souls to life without parole.

Choose truth. Choose passion. Or choose to let go. But stop lying to yourselves. The clock is ticking, and obligation has already stolen enough years.