Love is not an emotion. It is a practice built brick-by-brick, choice-by-choice.

This week, one of my teachers spoke this line, which I've heard in other variations before. My spouse and I have our fourth wedding anniversary and celebrate 13 years together today (yes, it took me nearly nine years to agree to get married again). So, the phrase wiggled into my thoughts as it hadn't before.

We choose. We build.
That's so much more difficult than falling in (or falling out).

I'll write here the thing we're taught never to admit: The biggest difference in this relationship than in any other I've been in is me.

My spouse is a great human. He helps me relax, be lighter, and generally take myself less seriously. He believes in me in a way men in the past did not. I could go on for a page about the qualities that make him uniquely right for me.

Except that's not what the deeper truth is.

The deeper truth, for me, is that I am the variable not the constant in the grand experiment of love in my life. 
This time, I chose to practice my love as if it were something that could be strengthened with work and atrophies without it.

That choice made all the difference. 

Lourenia (Renia) Carsillo
Chief Strategist & Founder
Realign Consulting