Early romance mostly runs on its own. Everything is new, so attention comes easily and effort barely feels like effort. That version fades for every couple, not because anything went wrong, but because novelty is a limited resource and daily life eventually reasserts itself. What replaces it, if you let it, is something better and harder: romance you actually build rather than romance that simply happens to you.
The problem isn't that romance dies. It's that couples stop tending it.
Nobody decides to stop being romantic. It happens by accumulation: a few busy months become a busy year, date nights get replaced by errands, and one day you look up and realize most of your conversations have been logistics for a long time. The fix isn't a single grand gesture. It's a return to small, regular attention.
What actually works
Protected time, on a schedule, that doesn't get bumped for something that feels more urgent. Physical affection that isn't only a prelude to something else, a hand held, a hug that lasts longer than a second. Genuine curiosity, asking your spouse questions you don't already know the answer to, because people keep changing and it's easy to stop noticing. And specific, spoken appreciation, saying out loud what you actually value about this person, rather than assuming they already know.
Ecclesiastes 4, on why this takes two
"Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. If they fall, one will lift up the other." It's a practical passage before it's a romantic one, but the practicality is the romance: a marriage where you're actually showing up for each other, in the unglamorous daily sense, is the soil romantic feeling actually grows in. Couples who wait for the feeling before they show up have it backwards. The showing up usually comes first.
Seasons will vary
Small children, illness, financial stress, grief: some seasons make romance genuinely harder to prioritize, and that's not a verdict on the marriage. What matters across those seasons is that you keep returning to each other when the season lifts, rather than letting distance become the new normal simply because nobody decided otherwise.
Romance after the wedding isn't smaller than romance before it. It's a different, sturdier kind, built by two people who keep choosing to pay attention to each other, on purpose, for decades.
Written by Matt Perry, wedding officiant and Lead Pastor of Love Church San Diego.