They can start of so well.  But somewhere along the way, something changes.  Somewhere along the way, you stop being amazed and infatuated by the person and you start getting more annoyed with them.  Somewhere along the way, you find yourself thinking less about how much you love them and more about how much you need to FIX them!

Something happens... somewhere along the way.  Here is one of the things that might have happened.

• Imagine a Shop.  Say a clothes shop.  Their display window is awesome, they are showing the best of what they have to offer to trying and attract people in.  The shop front window is trying to say to people "We are here for you and we have a lot to offer!"

• Then imagine, you are so impressed you go in, but don't just want to buy some clothes, you want to buy the whole Shop!  That is when things change.  All of a sudden, you are landed with the shop's debts.  The Shop is no longer trying to attract you in, it just dumps all its NEEDS on you and expects you to help it.

We do something similar in relationships.  In the early stage, we put on our 'shop front' we try and give the person a reason to stay with us.  The more they seem committed, the more we start shaking empty buckets at them...

We have an 'empty bucket' for our emotional needs, our financial needs, our security, time, relational, physical, practical, spiritual needs and plenty more.

Until one day, all we seem to do is get annoyed with the one we love because they don't fill our buckets the way we want them to.  But the thing is,

...somewhere along the way, we stopped trying to win them and just starting expecting from them.

In the mess of relationships, before we get annoyed with the one we love because they aren't serving us properly, it might be worth asking ourselves the question...

Have I given them a reason to love me today?