When imitating love doesn't work

Every advice book in the relationship section of the bookstore will tell you the same basic thing: treat your spouse better than they deserve. If you do this consistently, they will eventually start treating you better than they currently do.

Well, I have a simple question: what if they don’t?

What if you spend time with your wife, buy her gifts, and tell her sweet things, but she never does anything back for you? What if you praise your husband lavishly, make yourself pretty, and please him physically, but he never does anything back for you? What then?

You see, the in vogue wisdom is to use generous behavior as a strategy for self-gratification. But trying to pry rewards out of a spouse’s stingy heart with nice treatment isn’t love, it’s manipulation. Love gives because it wants to give, not because giving is a good investment strategy. In fact, love revels in making terrible investments.

And unless I’m horribly mistaken, God gave us the institution of marriage precisely so that we would have the opportunity to practice love when there isn’t a thing for us to gain by doing so.