When I counsel people or give live lectures, courses or workshops, one of the themes that I recurrently see is modern society's preoccupation with, and misconception of, love. "I won't marry [or stay married] without love."

The Hebrew word for love is ahava. The word aHAVa has a common root with the Talmudic word, HAV, which means to "give." Right away, we clearly see that "true love" is related intrinsically to "giving." Giving is the secret to building true love. Psychologically and spiritually, I'm investing and transferring a bit of my being into you when I give, if it is sincere and truly for the good of the recipient. With each act of giving to you, I add another unit of love for you in my heart. If, on the other hand, I take from you, or if my giving is self-serving (you'll give me some benefit back), I just increase self-love. True and lasting love is a product of ongoing and unconditional giving, for the benefit or pleasing of the recipient. (Michtav Mi'Eliyahu, Kuntrus HaChesed).

Love, being an emotion, is subjective and limited to the extent that you have emotional "fuel." It may be powerful fuel, but it only goes as far as your emotional "fuel supply" goes. If the needs, feelings, perceptions or reality of your spouse; the marriage; or the pressures and tribulations of "real life" ever exceed the measure of your "fuel," the "fuel supply" will not be adequate to deliver, owing to the limitations of 1. subjectivity and of 2. your emotional energies. The "fuel" of subjective emotion can, on one or more occasions, run out. What about when the needs of your partner or the demands or responsibilities of your marriage exceed your subjectivity or your emotional limitations? You have: dead love. In marriage, two people live with each other constantly and intimately. Love is a subjective and limited emotion, which is constantly tested and eroded by the pressures and tribulations of life. When you want love first, sooner or later you end up with nothing. First comes giving, then love. When each spouse gives to the other as each wants the other to give to him or her, love in both for one another will build.

What is wonderful about this is that one can choose to build and add love, with each act of giving. You can give a present, a compliment, a smile, encouragement, a helping hand, patience, write a poem. When you go through the psychological process of deciding to sensitively "tune in" to another person, and deliver something beneficial or pleasing to that person, the psychologically normal person will feel warmth, attachment and love towards the recipient. Even if you have a difference or argument; give, bring a present, do something helpful or nice, praise your spouse for something. When you exhibit the effort and giving, you will 1. break negative feelings within yourself for the other, 2. build love for the recipient, 3. send a strong message to your partner that the relationship is bigger and more important than the difference, argument or your side 4. contribute to a stronger, closer and more trusting relationship and 5. develop the unconditional love which Pirkei Avos says will last forever.

A baby is completely self-absorbed. This must be grown out of before one accepts the responsibilities which accompany entering a chupa (wedding canopy). Unless each partner is truly capable of giving on behalf of the good of the other, capable of dealing with and responding to the other person as the other truly is - and not merely in accordance with what you wish, feel, expect, need, imagine, or what would be self-serving or convenient - but based on what the other genuinely is - you won't be able to peacefully live with the other person for too long. No one gets married to be shortchanged or taken from. Even a patient person who is married to a taker can get depleted.

When people fall "out of love," everyone is stunned by how something that was once so nice and beautiful can degenerate to such a malevolent opposite extreme. The feeling that they had was not love; it was self-love. The orientation was taking, not giving. The relationship stimulated some selfish emotion and/or gratified some selfish want or need. Without genuine love-of-other; developed by unselfish, ongoing and unconditional giving, the couple enter into the relationship WITH A "ROUND TRIP TICKET." When mutual and constant giving comes first, you have a ONE-WAY TICKET to lifelong love between husband and wife. But love is not the whole story.