Songfacts®:

• The Civil Wars duo of vocalist Joy Williams and guitarist/songwriter John Paul White met in 2008 at a songwriting camp in Nashville when they were put in a room together and asked to write some songs. There was immediate musical chemistry, but it took several months before they got back together to write again. The pair penned this song during their second writing session.
• This lingering love ballad was the first song the duo ever wrote together. Williams told the UK newspaper, The Sun: "It's about that feeling when you've been in a relationship long enough and you feel things are starting to be taken for granted. It can happen overnight or it can happen over the course of a few years. It seemed like a universal subject. We did that song as a demo to pitch to other artists. I'm so glad we kept it for ourselves now."
• It was Williams who came up with band's name. White told Gibson.com: "She was just driving around, here on the streets of Nashville, and noticed all the Civil War references. She had already been thinking of something having to do with battles, or war. The Civil Wars popped into her head, and she called me, and we talked about it. It made sense, in that we all have battles within ourselves, and with others, about everything from the existence of God to fighting addictions. As songwriters, those things are in our wheelhouse. That's what we write about."
  
  Many were surprised to learn that White and Williams were not a couple, and were in fact married to other people. They oozed romantic tension in their songs and presentation, which worked well on their Barton Hollow album but proved unsustainable. They parted ways after making their second album, The Civil Wars, which was released in 2013.