One must prune and must pull weeds. It is work. But it is a labor of love that has its fruit in its season. A marriage or a relationship with children or siblings is no different. You may have warm fuzzy feelings about someone but that doesn ' t mean you love.
Some men have difficulty demonstrating love.
Men too often restrain themselves from showing affection. But unless and until a man begins to insert himself into models of love, behavior models, and develop patterns in his life which will strengthen his affection for his children or his spouse, he will withdraw and will slowly lose the natural feelings until one day there is nothing or, at best, there is this intellectual assent to love in which he understands and acknowledges that he is supposed to love someone because of the relationship and therefore because there is a relationship, he must love that person, even if there is no feeling. That is not love. But that is exactly what many folks have in their marriage. It doesn ' t have to be that way.