Is Love A Feeling Or A Choice?

Q: Pastor David, I’ve been married for several years, and I’m realizing that the “in love” feelings come and go. The Bible commands us to love, but it also talks about love being sincere and from the heart. How should Christians understand love in marriage when the feelings fade—are we meant to rekindle emotion, or is love mainly an act of obedience?

A: Quick answer: It is both. True love – the kind of love the Bible calls us to – often has feelings but is based on choice. Or you could say that true love is a choice, but one that often produces feelings.

We often come to feel love for that or those which we choose to invest our time, attention, care, and focus upon.

According to Dr. Jeffrey Schloss, there is a brain hormone that mediates the feeling of being in love or being infatuated. One of these neurotransmitters is known as phenethylamine, and it floods our brain when we fall in love (it also comes in fairly high quantities in chocolate).

This chemical gives us feelings of exhilaration and thrill and well-being, and in high amounts can lead to a loss of appetite. This chemical works somewhat in a cycle, at least in a relationship. At the beginning of the relationship, it spikes up; after four or five years it begins to decline. Across cultures there is a spike in the rate of divorce at about 4.5 years of marriage.

This leads some scientists to say that we are made for monogamy, but only in the sense of one partner at a time, and then changing partners every five years or so. Yet Dr. Schloss says that we know this is not true. In the brain there are completely different pathways, with completely different chemical mediators. These begin to form at about the four-year point in a relationship, and they contribute to different feelings. Instead of feelings of thrill and “I can’t eat,” they are feelings of deep contentment and gratitude. One of the chemicals that mediates these feeling is oxytocin, which is the same chemical related to the bonding of a mother together with her infant.

Some suggest that relationships have two major phases: attraction and attachment. The attraction phase is powerful, and the kind of condition that makes one say, “I am lovesick.” Yet the key to a long-term fulfilling relationship is staying with it past the attractionphase into the attachment phase.

There are some counselors who devote almost their entire counseling practice trying to help what they call “love junkies”; people who are so addicted to the phenethylamine phase that they bounce from relationship rush to relationship rush without ever really coming into a greater, longer lasting relationship fulfillment.

One could say that we are engineered for the longer lasting attachment phase, and the attraction phase is meant to be a portal or doorway into the attachment phase, and not something unto itself. The good news is that as a relationship moves into the attachment phase, the attraction phase recycles, and long-married couples often experience the sense of falling in love all over again – several times through their marriage.

This is why it is sometimes – or often – unwise to rush ahead in a relationship when it is still in the “I am lovesick,” attraction and phenethylamine phase. Adam Clarke observed of the lovesick person: “But while we admit such a person’s sincerity, who can help questioning his judgment?”

(25a) The simple command to Christian husbands: love your wife.

Husbands, love your wives,

Husbands, love your wives: Paul’s words to Christian husbands safeguards his previous words to wives. Though wives are to submit to their husbands, it never excuses husbands acting as tyrants over their wives.
According to 2 Timothy 1:7, God has given us the spirit of power – but also of love. Power, in their Christian life, is always to be exercised in love. “It is not naked power, it is not the power of a dictator or a little tyrant, it is not the idea of a man who arrogates to himself certain rights, and tramples upon his wife’s feelings and so on, and sits in the home as a dictator… No husband is entitled to say that he is the head of the wife unless he loves his wife… So the reign of the husband is to be a reign and a rule of love; it is a leadership of love.” (Lloyd-Jones)
Love your wives: Paul used the ancient Greek word agape. The ancient Greeks had four different words we translate love. It is important to understand the difference between the words, and why the apostle Paul chose the Greek word agape here.
Eros was one word for love. It described, as we might guess from the word itself, erotic love. It refers to love driven by desire.
Storge was the second word for love. It refers to family love, the kind of love there is between a parent and child or between family members in general. It is love driven by blood.

iii. Philia is the third word for love. It speaks of a brotherly friendship and affection. It is the love of deep friendship and partnership. It might be described as the highest love of which man, without God’s help, is capable of. It is fondness, or love driven by common interests and affection.

Agape is the fourth word for love. Eros, storge, and philia each speak about love that is felt. These describe “instinctive” love, love that comes spontaneously from the heart. Paul assumes that eros (desire) and phileo(fondness) are present. Christians should not act as if these things do not matter in the marriage relationship. They do matter. But Paul’s real point is to address a higher kind of love, agape love. Agape describes a different kind of love. It is a love more of decision than of the spontaneous heart. It is as much a matter of the mind as the heart, because it chooses to love the undeserving.
“Agape has to do with the mind: it is not simply an emotion which rises unbidden in our hearts; it is a principle by which we deliberately live.” (Barclay) Agape really doesn’t have much to do with feelings – it has to do with decisions.
Strictly speaking, agape can’t be defined as “God’s love,” because men are said to agape sin and the world (John 3:19 and 1 John 2:15). Yet it can be defined as a sacrificial, giving, absorbing love. The word has little to do with emotion; it has much to do with self-denial for the sake of another.

It is a love that loves without changing.
It is a self-giving love that gives without demanding or expecting re-payment.
It is love so great that it can be given to the unlovable or unappealing.
It is love that loves even when it is rejected.

Agape love gives and loves because it wants to; it does not demand or expect repayment from the love given. It gives because it loves, it does not love in order to receive.

vii. We can read this passage and think that Paul is saying, “Husbands, be kind to your wives.” Or “husbands, be nice to your wives.” There is no doubt that for many marriages this would be a huge improvement. But that isn’t what Paul wrote about. What he really meant is, “Husbands, continually decide to practice self-denial for the sake of your wives.”
Q&A for February 12, 2026