Marriages are made in heaven they say, but eventually, every marriage has to come down to earth. The honeymoon "orbits" gradually decrease in passion and intensity, due to other priorities that demand our attention. More so, when the bundle of joy arrives!

Loving glances are gradually replaced by frowns, the stars in your eyes do not shine so brightly anymore, and your attempts at intimate conversation is punctuated by wails from the little intruder. You discover, as almost every married couple before you have discovered, that the feeling called "romantic love" has to be nurtured by a continuous process of meeting each other's emotional needs.

What is an emotional need? It is a deep desire within you that, when satisfied, gives you a feeling of extreme happiness and contentment. If this desire is unsatisfied, it leaves you with a feeling of unhappiness and frustration. It follows, therefore, that when a husband and wife meet each other's most important emotional needs, they will be so happy and contented with each other that, they will experience passionate love, and stay in love as long as these emotional needs are met.

But, each of us has different emotional needs, and even if both spouses have the same emotional needs, their priorities for each emotional need may be different. For instance, love and romance for most men are sex and recreation; for most women its affection and intimate conversation. Now, if such a husband and wife pair would spend a recreational evening together, show intense affection, with deep, intimate conversation, it would naturally lead to sexual fulfillment. The result? Passionate love, since the most important emotional needs of both are fully met!

You, and your spouse, fell in love with each other because you both met some of each other's most important emotional needs, and the only way to stay in love, long after the honeymoon is over, is to keep meeting these emotional needs.

So, the first step for you, and your spouse, is to identify what are your most important emotional needs - those that will make you the happiest and most contented. The easiest way is to sit down, take a sheet of paper, and jot down what you would like your spouse to do/not do, that would give you the greatest happiness. A list, of at least five of your most important emotional needs, in order of priority, would be adequate for a start. When you both are ready with it, exchange the sheets of paper.

Now, that you, and your spouse, know what you can do for each other that, will make you both the happiest and contented married couple, it only remains to learn how to become experts at meeting these emotional needs. The degree of expertise you both acquire at meeting each other's most important emotional needs will be measured by the intensity of the fire of love and passion in your marriage.

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