Is it love?

Often I and my married colleagues at work, share and dissect different moments of marriage. There are happy moments, sad moments, and upset ones too. Husbands can be difficult, demanding and overbearing too. Wives can be sarcastic, cold and conniving too. Often, the married couple wonders, particularly, if they have spent as long as 15 years with each other, if they are still in love. Is it love that's making them stick around or is marriage just a convenient relationship that benefits everybody around it.  The question was posed by a colleague, and it set me thinking.

I had to be honest with myself. In the last 16 years that I have known my husband of which 15 have been spent in matrimonial alliance, love certainly has mellowed. Still, every evening, I will ring to find where he is and what time is he reaching home? Ditto with him.  Is it love?

 In the last 15 years, I have started eating vegetables he likes, and he watches the kind of movies I watch (the slow types, arty ones). Is it love? This doesn't mean that its all very mushy! We have had several highs and lows. We taunt, comment, squabble and even fight like cats and dogs. Most of the times, when we do this, we are defending our blood relatives, whom we think the spouse is going to hurt, though the person may not be present at all. We have gone in silent zones after fighting with each other, but not more than a day. Somehow, the day we didn't talk didn't seem like a day well spent. Is it love?