Question:
Answer:
Spousal love includes feelings but is not limited to feelings and can endure even when feelings come and go (as feelings do). The feelings are affection and attraction, both of which are important to the spousal relationship but do not constitute love in and of themselves. The love between spouses is eros, joined to agape by the sacrament of matrimony. As Benedict XVI said of eros and agape in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est:
Eros and agape—ascending love and descending love—can never be completely separated. The more the two, in their different aspects, find a proper unity in the one reality of love, the more the true nature of love in general is realized. Even if eros is at first mainly covetous and ascending, a fascination for the great promise of happiness, in drawing near to the other, it is less and less concerned with itself, increasingly seeks the happiness of the other, is concerned more and more with the beloved, bestows itself and wants to “be there for” the other. The element of agape thus enters into this love, for otherwise eros is impoverished and even loses its own nature. On the other hand, man cannot live by oblative, descending love alone. He cannot always give, he must also receive. Anyone who wishes to give love must also receive love as a gift.