Does True Love Take Work? The Marriage Myth That Trips Up Good Couples

You felt it in the early days. The butterflies. The way a text lit you up. The sense that this was easy, natural, meant to be.

Then somewhere along the way the easy faded. The conversations got shorter. The silences got longer. And a quiet question started showing up at 11pm: if this is real love, why does it feel so hard?

Here is the thing almost nobody told you before you said I do. True love takes work. Not because something is wrong with you or your marriage, but because that is how every living thing that lasts actually grows.

This was the first question we tackled in our Marriage Myth series on the Hope Relentless podcast, and it might be the most important one, because the answer changes what you expect, and what you expect changes everything.

Prefer to listen? This episode is on the Hope Relentless podcast wherever you get your shows. Podcast player to be embedded below the video.

The Myth: If It Is Real, It Should Just Be Easy

The myth goes like this. If we are truly in love, it should just work. We should feel the feelings, keep the butterflies, and coast on chemistry forever. And if the spark dims or a season gets hard, then maybe it was not real love after all.

That belief is quietly wrecking good marriages. Because the moment a couple hits the normal friction of two whole lives merging, they read it as a verdict instead of a doorway. They think, this is not working, when the truth is, we just reached the part nobody prepared us for.

Here is what is actually true. The early attraction is real. That spark, that pull, that connection that feels different from every other relationship, that is a gift. But the spark is the invitation, not the foundation. A thriving marriage is built on what you do after the butterflies settle down.

What We Actually Mean By Work

When Sarah-Gayle and I talk about marriage taking work, the word work can land wrong, so let me clear something up. I grew up around real labor, swinging a pick in the Arizona heat doing home remodeling, so when I hear work I sometimes picture a shovel and a hot sun. Sarah-Gayle laughs and says my definition of work is anything I have personally never done before.

But the work of marriage is a different kind of work. It is worthwhile. And it is honestly very rewarding. Think about any area of life where you see lasting strength, deep health, or real growth. A body that is strong. A skill that is mastered. A business that thrives. Behind every one of those, somebody was intentional. Somebody built patterns and habits on purpose. Try to find one industry where extended success happened by accident. You cannot.

Marriage is no different. Once you get past the initial butterflies, there is going to be intentionality, learning, growing, and a little stretching. That is not a sign your love is broken. That is the sign it is alive.

Notice the word toil right there in Scripture. Two becoming a strong one comes with a reward, and it comes with effort. The Bible never sold us the easy version either.

The Real Disservice Nobody Talks About

Here is what bothers Sarah-Gayle most about this myth. The greatest disservice we do to marriage is how little we prepare for it.

Think about getting your driver's license. You take a class. You study. You pass a test. You do all of that to safely operate a car. Now think about marriage, with everything it touches, your home, your finances, your kids, your legacy, the example you set for the next generation. The stakes are so much higher, and yet most of us walked in with almost no preparation at all.

Most of us were never sat down and told the truth. Nobody said, this is going to take intentionality, and not just for the first couple of years. When you say I do, you are saying I will keep investing in this for the rest of my life. If someone had told us that early, our expectations would have been set right. Then, in the hard seasons, instead of panicking that something is wrong, we could say, of course this is hard right now, because I have not been investing what this relationship needs.

That single shift, from this should be easy to this is worth building, is the difference between couples who drift apart and couples who keep choosing each other. It is also why we are so passionate about preparing well before marriage , and why we keep meeting couples who tell us they wish they had learned this years sooner.

The Work Is Not Grinding. It Is Building.

Let me be clear about what this work is and is not. The work is not white-knuckling a marriage you secretly resent. It is not keeping score, walking on eggshells, or grinding out another year. That is not the kind of effort that grows anything.

The work we are talking about is the good kind. It is learning to have a hard conversation without it turning hurtful. It is moving from me versus you to us versus the problem. It is making small deposits into your relationship before the account runs dry. We teach a simple lens for this: every interaction is either a deposit or a withdrawal, and over time, deposits minus withdrawals equals the health of your marriage.

A lot of that work is honestly a skill. Early in our marriage Sarah-Gayle jokes I should have been an attorney, because I would fight to be right and win the argument while losing the connection every single time. That was not a character flaw I could not overcome. It was a skill I had never learned. When we got the right tools, we had a pathway through the hard moments instead of just reacting to them.

If follow-through is where you struggle, that is not a sign your love is fake either. It usually means nobody ever handed you the skill. That is exactly what we walk couples through with the on the same team mindset and the four-step Communication Loop, so a hard talk actually ends in teamwork.

Why The Hard Seasons Do Not Mean You Failed

Some of our own hardest seasons came from a simple pattern. I would feel overwhelmed and exhausted, telling myself that no matter how hard I worked, I could not get a win. Sarah-Gayle, right next to me, felt unseen, unheard, and unprotected. From the outside we looked fine. Inside, we were both worn down.

Our breakthrough was realizing something we now teach all the time: the wounded will often do the same things the wicked do. Our patterns were coming out of our hurt, not out of some deep flaw in our love. When we saw that, we started handing each other the benefit of the doubt and grace, and we focused on just showing up.

That is the work. Not pretending the hard parts away, but learning to move through them as teammates. Hurting people hurt people, and healed people heal people. The same is true for marriages. A marriage that keeps showing up and keeps learning becomes a marriage that heals, and then becomes contagious to everyone watching, including your kids.

Read that again slowly. Bears. Believes. Hopes. Endures. Every one of those is an action, not a feeling that shows up on its own. Even the love chapter describes a love that does something on purpose.

So, Does True Love Take Work?

Yes. If you want it to last, it does. You are two whole lives coming together, and once you get past the initial spark, there is going to be intentionality, learning, growing, and stretching so the relationship can thrive for the long haul.

But hear the hope in this. The work is not punishment. It is the privilege of building something real with the person you love. The couples who understand this are the ones who keep growing, keep repairing faster, and keep choosing each other long after the butterflies have done their job. If you want that kind of growth that actually lasts , it starts by trading the myth for the truth, and then taking one intentional step toward your spouse this week.

Your Next Step This Week

Do not try to overhaul your marriage by Friday. Take one baby step toward your spouse. Pick a single small thing you can be intentional about this week, a real check-in before bed, a phone put down at dinner, a thank-you you have been forgetting to say. Then do it again the next day. That is how connection gets rebuilt, one intentional choice at a time. And if you have been carrying resentment, remember that real change starts with taking personal responsibility in your marriage for your own part, even when your spouse contributed more.

Cheering you on,
- Chad & Sarah-Gayle

There's always, always hope.

Read the full episode transcript

Hello, hello, and welcome to the Hope Relentless marriage podcast. Chad and Sarah-Gayle here, and we are honored that you are tuning in to listen. I want to remind you that you are making a difference in the world right now, because you are investing in your relationship. We know that our marriage impacts our day to day personally, and we also know that our marriages impact our families, families impact communities, and communities impact the world. So well done on changing the world. So, babe, can you share what is the first question we are going to talk about today?

Yes, I am happy to share. I feel like I should have a deep sharing voice when I say the question, and then I will go back to my normal voice when I answer it. The first question is, does true love take work? All right, well, glad you asked that question. Does true love take work? Yes, it does. I think the myth of this is that if we are in love with someone, it should just work. We should just feel how we feel, it should just be natural, and we should have the butterflies and goosebumps the entire time, because if we do not, then perhaps it was not true love.

And when it comes to the work that true love takes, I think it also matters what we mean by the word work. A lot of times when we say work, people think of, or at least I think of, working out in the hot sun of Arizona doing construction, with my little hammer trying to dig, and that is some work. So I think of that a lot of times. But the work of marriage is very worthwhile, and it is actually very rewarding.

It is funny, your definition of work is something you have never done before, so that is amazing if you have never had a shovel or a pick out in the Arizona desert. But yeah, I think this is something where, somewhere in our social expectations, we feel like true love should be natural and should be easy. And I think there are some dynamics to these myths that are true. When we first meet somebody there can be an attraction, a desire, a connection that is unique and different from how people interact with others, and those early stages do not feel like work. It feels natural.

But when we are talking about the health and the strength of a relationship for the long term, then there becomes a level of intentionality and a level of purpose that is required for that love to continue. So with this idea of does true love take work, I would ask, in what area of life do we have extended growth, extended health, and extended strength where there is not some area of intentionality or work involved? Find a different industry and think about how somebody would define success. There are likely individuals putting in effort, building patterns and habits, and that is why they have extended success. The same is true in love.

So this idea of does true love take work, the reality is, if you want it to last for a long time, you are two lives coming together, and once you get past some of the initial butterflies, there is going to be intentionality, there is going to be learning, there is going to be growing and stretching that takes place in order for that relationship to thrive in the long term.

And the last thing I will say on this is, I think one of the greatest disservices when it comes to marriage is the lack of preparation we put into it. To get your driver's license, for example, you go to driving school, you take a test, there are things you do to prepare to drive such a powerful machine as a car. And so in marriage, oh my goodness, all the more, in the sense of what the impact is and what the possibilities are, all the more reason to really invest in it and prepare yourself. That is speaking to premarital, but the disservice is that we are not told, at least I was not told and sat down and led to understand, that yes, it is going to take intentionality, it is going to take work, and not just for the first couple of years, but the rest of your life. As you say, yes, as you say I do, you are committing to investing in your marriage, working in your marriage, until the end of time.

So I think if we were told that early on, our expectations could be shifted a bit. Then when we are in the midst of it and it is hard, instead of thinking it just should not be this way, we would think, I expected that, because I have not been investing what I need to invest in my relationship. The last thing I will say is, healthy relationships are not the result of accidents. There is a level of purpose and intentionality. So if that is translated into work, then true love requires work.