by Lesley Rigg

Created on: September 12, 2008   Last Updated: November 24, 2011

People often talk about loving people but not being "in love with them". There is a marked difference between loving someone and being "in love" with them. The emotional turmoil when you first meet someone, and that honeymoon period that has your heart flipping and beating that little bit further is something that is for most of us, temporary and transient.

Loving someone is a far more solid and lasting outcome of having been "in love" with someone. With love comes a respect that an understanding that your partner will not always look their best, will have occasional bad hair days that need support and understanding and occasionally gentle teasing.

If that is the situation then, of course, people can continue to be married to one another as long as the loving, respect and harmony is retained within the relationship and both parties feel that they are getting something from it.

However, loving someone also should engender a basic and underlying understanding and respect for the person you are with needs, beliefs and desires, and if that has gone then if it cannot be resurrected with work and communication then perhaps the marriage should not continue. There is nothing worse than being in a relationship where you are not appreciated or often noticed in many cases.

In fact the best way of preserving a little of that feeling that you got when you were "in love" with one another is to be a little surprising and to give each other a little time and appreciation on a regular basis.

Meeting your partner for dates where you have both come from somewhere other than home, in which you dress up to meet them and have made an effort to talk to each other can increase that heady feeling that everyone so misses when it becomes cocoa by the fire every night.

Arranging the odd weekend away without the kids or pets is also another way of ensuring that a little of the spark is retained in your relationship as well as continually reminding yourself about the good things in your partner that attracted you in the first place.

More importantly tell them that those things are attractive to you. Ego boost and insurance that they will try to keep those elements in their look or character. People who remain together over a number of years. It wasn't magic, it was determination and hard work that kept them in that situation.

Those people who continually seek to have that continual emotional flick-flack of heart-beats and steamy looks over the photocopier are effectively denying that in a grown-up relationship where they are emotionally mature that sort of thing is not a constant. It is obviously to be encouraged within your relationship and learning to flirt with your own partner, to be light-hearted and fun with them as well as responsible and serious should keep your cravings for that headiness at bay and under control.

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