What lights a relationship on fire?  What keeps it going after fifteen years?

What sets butterflies to flight in your stomach when your eyes make contact?

What keeps your bodies magnetized so that the pull towards each other never weakens?

The obvious answer is mutual attraction, but what is that exactly? How do we stay mutually attracted?  What’s the answer to “How to keep a marriage magnetized?”

People are not permanent magnets. We do not just naturally hold onto our charge in a relationship. We must keep electricity running through us so we can keep our magnetism pulling us together.

 An electromagnet is made from a coil of wire that acts as a magnet when an electric current passes through it but stops being a magnet when the current stops.

At first it seems like our relationship is more like permanent magnets than electromagnets. We are pulled together without even trying. The attraction just seems to happen and we accept it as fact, but there is a vital element available in a new attraction that wears off over time without an intentional electric current shooting through your coils.

If you want your coils to stay attracted to his or her coils for years to come, the essential electric thought you must keep flowing through your mind so that your bodies will attract is this:

I’M SO LUCKY TO HAVE YOU & YOU ARE SO LUCKY TO HAVE ME.

The more time you spend counting the ways your spouse is awesome and how lucky you are to have them, the more humbly grateful you will feel for your relationship. Equally important is the time you spend realizing how awesome you are and how lucky they are to have you, because this gives you confidence.

HUMILITY + CONFIDENCE = CHEMISTRY

We are attracted to people that we admire, who surprise us, but we also need confidence to receive that awesome person’s love in return.

There is nothing like thinking your spouse is spectacular and YOU get to be married to them… and then having them think that about you.

Believing yourselves to be lucky to have each other builds in just enough “seize the moment” motivation to keep the attraction alive.  Luck brings gratitude in it’s back pocket.

This keeps that little flicker of tension and wonder between you.

Do not let jealousy, or the attentions of someone else, be the electricity that remagnetizes you. It’s easy to let passion fade and take our partners for granted… until someone else notices how great they are and we are suddenly lit up with jealousy.

*****

Imagine that your spouse is your high school crush… the overwhelming joy that came when their arm touched your arm, when they asked what the homework was in Trig and you couldn’t believe your luck, when they smiled at you across a room and you’d never felt more alive…

Sown into those moments was gratitude and massive admiration of that Crush… plus a focus on every single minute detail of your interactions.  You wanted more.

Why do we take for granted that the person we crushed on at some point in our lives, now wakes up beside us?

*****

See that person you married, sitting at their computer scrolling through Facebook? Imagine that you’ve had a crush on them for months and suddenly they are in your house… but this time, you are not some shy, scared high schooler… sure, you are scared because we are always a little frightened to go after what we really want… but now, you know you are crush-worthy too and kissing you is hot.  After you read this sentence, you walk over and put your hand on their neck like you can’t believe you GET to. You look them in the eyes like an 80’s hearthrob just long enough to let them know you want them… and then you lean over and kiss, full on the mouth. And this kiss is pure, unbelievable luck: two awesome people finding each other and never letting go… every single day.

This is magnetic.