Lies and honesty

The world is too fragile for people to be untrue. There's too much at stake, and life's too short for lies. If someone cheats on you, tell that person that he is the worst kind of person in the world because he wasted your heart, and your time. Grown woman needs to be respected and be treated right. Honesty works better than lies, o man! And chin up to all broken-hearted ladies! xoxo

Only Girl in the World

‘Love’ is a word; which brings you in dream world, where you have unique feelings, affections and an unknown excitement. Some of the people say, it is not the matter of saying or expressing, but just of feeling; it is just a flavor, which you can only taste, not tell to anyone, while other describe that the more you express, less. Whatever is there, but most of the couples believe that having something great for someone is a starting of great relation. Are you also one, who finds any thing like the starting of love? You must come to chase the following; in order to know whether it is love or something else.

People don’t chase the philosophy; they know it’s hard. Probably, that’s why they just want to be in real world. What happens initially, as males see someone with coral lips, rosy cheeks or star like eyes or females find a handsome, stylish or muscleman, they start imagining. This is not bad; it’s true that both attract to each other. But dear, it’s only an attraction, not love. Love is something that occurs itself. You never need to think or imagine about that; suddenly, without any extra effort, someone will come out of crowd for you.

Real story: Mr.D is a tourism advisor and has an attractive personality. You all know that tourism is a profession, where you meet several different kinds of people. He shared with me that one day, a well-figured girl, around 25, came to him for professional purpose; they talked for a long time later. Here, a new and exciting relation started. They are continuing on dates today also, although, later they came to know that both are married. He says that he knows it’s bad, and she isn’t in love with him, still he is unable to say her ‘good buy’. She also doesn’t have any problem, and they both come close to each other, whenever they need.

The above is what often occurs with the people. But this example may help you to realize that it’s not what you understand. Attraction also has a strong existence, but it doesn’t create a relationship that has the right elements to grow up happily forever. There is something missing. Yes, it is the lack ness of something what you want to feel; the trust, you search.
Actually, attraction and love both are caused by the different hormones. Attraction is something, which may occur at first look generally called ‘love at first sight’ and may turn into love, later; but the feeling of love takes time. There is something unknown, which inspires you to faith in one.

This is not the matter of mind, but of heart. Of course, it occurs when all the colors of one’s rainbow match to another one’s. It has much higher feelings than attraction towards someone. So, love and attraction are much different to each other. Physical relationship may be the attraction’s first requirement, but love has no mean with the word “expectation”. There is a complete satisfaction in love, not only physical, but spiritual also.


After all, we are human with emotion wanting to love and to be loved. Follow your heart. XOXO 

doubts about

# Strike while the iron is cold. Know when to be reflective and invoke principles. When the house is burning is no time to teach fire safety principles.
# All good relationships are based upon mutual respect. If you do not feel respect for your partner, or believe your partner is losing respect for you, then consider ways of rebuilding it immediately.
# Communicate with your partner. Without communication, there is no relationship. Stay in touch by, for example, calling your partner even if it's just to say 'hi' and 'I love you'.
# Avoid flirting with others, especially previous partners or coworkers. Doing so may spur romantic feelings for another. There is nothing wrong with having friends of the opposite gender; just keep flirting out of the friendship.
# Avoid any activity that could cause your partner to experience doubt, suspicion or distrust - in this way, if something happens which looks incriminating, your partner will believe you if you claim you are innocent. Past behavior predicts future actions - building a solid foundation of trust and integrity will take you far.

# Be the first to tell your partner what is on your mind either positive or negative. Address what your plan is to remedy it. Playing guessing games may lead to misunderstanding and confusion.
# Always make sure to show your partner that you appreciate him/her. Whether it's calling them to check in, say I love you, or just spend your Saturday night together. The possibilities are endless
# Take care of yourself. Treating yourself with respect and love is as important as respecting and loving your partner. Conduct yourself with dignity, even if you're very familiar with one another.
# Know yourself and be honest with yourself and love yourself -- first! Only then can you truly appreciate and love someone else.

What are we fighting about, honey?

Found a good article about relationship. What are we fighting for? Have you learn anything about how to handle it?

Talking about relationships is fraught with peril, mainly because it's not easy to change the way you relate to your lovers. No matter what I say here, for many people it won't do much good. Most relationships are built around a way of communicating, and changing that can be really tough, even when one or both partners can clearly see the dynamic going on. These thoughts are offered as personal observations; Lord knows if anyone will actually learn anything or, if they do, use what they learn in their relationship. But with that disclaimer, and a big gulp, away we go.

What makes for a successful relationship? As far as I can see, it's that you feel that the other person knows who you are, cares about you, enjoys your company, and listens to you even when it's difficult. And, of course, vice versa. Without this base, there's not much to go on or grow on.

Feelings are important. Listen to your feelings. But don't get attached to them. Feelings come and go... unless you grab on and start running with them. Then they can get much, much bigger. ("Oh, is that all that was the matter?")

You can't argue about feelings. If you can trust your lover to tell you how they honestly feel, and to listen to you when you tell them your feelings' truth, you can go pretty far.

Not everyone likes to talk about their feelings. But if you can do it when you need to, that's enough.

Where do you start when you're angry with your lover? Or scared, or insecure, or jealous? How can you talk about it without it blowing up?

First, what is the feeling that is demanding attention? What are you feeling? It all starts with this.

It's tempting to refer to all these sorts of emotions--anger, jealousy, fear, insecurity, loneliness--as "bad feelings." The problem with "bad feelings" is that it's easy to get confused about why they're bad. Sure, they may not be pleasant. But if they're honest, then they're vital. It is not wrong to feel these sorts of feelings. Don't squelch them when they come up; if you do, you bury part of yourself. And remember that if you let yourself feel these things, and if you can be real with your lover, and if it leads to you working things out... there is then nothing bad, at all! Where then is the "bad" feeling?

The next question is not "Why are you feeling that?" The reason is that feelings just happen. Emotions are not rational. Arguing about whether a feeling is genuine or legitimate is just a plain distraction from the situation: that something happened, and you had difficult feelings about it.

Another huge distraction is overgeneralizing. Going from "I felt this way when you did that" to "You always do that!" changes the discussion from a statement of personal truth into a battle over the cosmos. It's no longer about feelings. It's about reality, about arguing over who's right and who's wrong. Those arguments are distractions, once again. A feeling, by itself, doesn't make anyone right or wrong. It just is.

What went into that feeling? What prompted it, what other worries or concerns are in the background? Look under the surface.

The next challenge is, can you tell your partner this feeling? It's real easy to think, well, it's no big deal. I don't need to mention it. Little niggling resentments can grow very, very large if you habitually don't tell your lover how you feel. Be careful of a molehill growing into a mountain, because you wanted to be polite rather than being honest.

This isn't a license to be hurtful; telling someone how you feel is different from accusing them or blaming them because you feel that way. If you feel angry towards your lover, you can tell them about it without insulting them. If you lose so much respect for your partner that you can't resist insulting them or being sarcastic when having discussions like these, then your attempts to work things out will turn into withering crossfire. This may be your idea of fun, but I doubt it. Just say how you feel, here and now.

Does your partner listen? Before anything else happens, your partner needs to let you know that they heard you. If they ignore you, or dismiss what you're saying, or immediately start telling you how they feel, then there's not much communication happening.

Listening isn't the same as hearing successfully. You may tell your lover that you had a hard feeling when they did something, and they may hear that you think they're evil, when all you're saying is that you felt something. Check that your lover understood what you meant.

If your lover becomes defensive, that's understandable. It's hard not to. But it won't get you far. The question is not, were they right or wrong to do what they did? The question is, what to do about the fact that you felt what you felt? Defensiveness is a diversion. The challenge is to avoid putting your lover on the defensive; the challenge is letting them know that you care about them, that you want to work things out, even while you are dealing with intense emotions. Good faith is essential; if you don't want to work things out, or if they don't, then none of this will work.

Emotions can amplify themselves. Taking a feeling personally--dwelling on your lover's motivations, or letting a momentary irritation rise into a daylong vendetta--may give you an exciting emotional ride. But it doesn't help you work things out with your lover. The more you work yourself up into a towering panic or a quivering dread, the harder it'll be for you to talk things over without your lover reacting intensely as well.

What a worthless point? It's numbling obvious that you won't freak out if you don't freak out? Perhaps. I know that sometimes emotions are literally overpowering, in which case my advice isn't much good. But I also know that many people spend years in a simmering state of discontent, going over and over the same ground. It's easy to go from a feeling that comes up, arising from something that happens, into a long litany of past grievances. The more grudges you hold, the easier it'll be to turn your present feeling into a righteous battle over wrongs past and present. Stay here and now, if you can, both when you're talking to yourself and when you're with your lover.

Once your lover's heard you, then what? Then, perhaps, nothing. Maybe you just wanted to tell them to let them know what was up with you, and you don't particularly feel they needed to or should have done anything differently. Not every feeling demands a solution; if you leap too quickly from saying what's up to deciding what to do about it, you can miss the intimacy that comes with telling difficult truth. Sometimes tough feelings just happen, and all you need is support. Talking about the feeling is a complete goal in itself; it's not the prelude to anything.

If that's not the end of the story, then what is? Maybe your lover can't do much more than support you and tell you they care for you. If you're feeling insecure, well, that isn't always something your lover can fix. They may try, but ultimately many emotions come from within.

Though, of course, not all. If your lover broke an agreement between you, or acted in a way that you had told them you would feel badly about, then an emotional response is pretty understandable. Agreements are troublesome things; vital for giving the outlines of a relationship, distracting in that you can disagree over exactly what agreements were made. Again, good faith is key. What is the spirit of the law you're trying to letter? If you lose sight of that, the rules will be empty and hollow.

If your lover breaks your agreements, over and over again, then there are two questions: why are they doing this? and, why are you reentering the agreement with them? Trust is essential for a strong relationship. Trust comes from two things: knowing that agreements made will be kept, and knowing that you will both be there for each other, in good times and in difficult times. When that goes, it's not easy to recapture.

You do not have to put up with anything. If your partner doesn't have much concern for how you feel--if you don't enjoy being with them because of how they behave--then it will be very difficult for you to stay with them. Of course, good faith is needed; if you haven't let them know how you feel, then it's partly your responsibility that they continued to act as they did. And if your feelings have changed, you'd better have let them know about it, or else there's not much way they could be expected to act differently.

理智做 选择

何必那么辛苦。。。

有人对我说， 拍拖是考验他是否适合你。 而结婚是共同有个目标。

做不到，何必在一起?

女人，还是要理智做选择。

take me to the happy ending

Let's talk this over
It's not like we're dead
Was it something I did?
Was it something you said?
Don't leave me hanging
In a city so dead
Held up so high
On such a breakable thread

You were everything everything that I wanted
Believing we were meant to be, supposed to be and not to worry
All of the memories, so close to me
All this time the things we did
Good or bad I swallow it
Can't you see can't you feel
Don't care what other says
Because they don't know me
As long as we still have each other
You love me and I love you
Our love goes strong

Infidelity: why men cheat

It's been called everything from having an "improper relationship" to having an "undercover lover" to having a "freak on the side." But whatever name it's given, it means one thing -- cheating. And relationship experts say men are doing it now more than ever.

What's going on here? Why the recent surge in male infidelity? Relationship counselors say it can be attributed to many factors, but perhaps the overriding reason men are cheating at an alarming rate is because it's easier than ever before.

While men many times have the false impression that they cheat simply to have uncommitted sex, experts say the reasons run much deeper. The following, according to experts, are the real reasons men cheat:

Women Stand For It:

Men wouldn't cheat if women didn't let them. Women marry men who have cheated on them during courtship, even though relationship experts warn that a man who cheats on his fiancee, or even his girlfriend, will probably cheat on his wife. But the reality is that the world is filled with scores of lonely women looking for love. Men are well aware that the loneliness some women feel is so strong that they are willing to settle for a cheater, and write off his scurrilous ways as a simple case of "boys will be boys." At day's end, these women would rather lie down next to a cheater than no man at all.

Frustration Over Present Relationship:

It all sounded good at first -- sharing his life, his hopes, his dreams in an exciting relationship with one special lady. But soon after the newness wore off, his romantic visions of a wonderful future shifts to the realities of a problem-filled daily existence. The dishwasher's broken, the car needs a new transmission, work is a pain and the bill collectors are calling. Before long, most of their conversations consist of taking care of mundane tasks. He begins to feel like his partner is more critical of him, more argumentative, and does not give him the attention that he deserves.

So he eventually cheats, viewing it as a way to obtain the emotion that is no longer present in his current relationship. With his undercover lover, there is no stress, no pressure. They both work hard to satisfy each other mentally and physically. They share their shortcomings, and in time develop an emotional bond.

Thrill-seeking:

This man is bored and likes the novelty of being with another woman. So rather than put energy into rekindling the relationship he has with his partner, developing a hobby or engaging in something else that will give him an adrenaline rush, he looks for excitement in all the wrong places -- first and foremost, in-between the sheets. He usually has a series of affairs with different women, moving from one to another one when the novelty wears off.

Ego Boost:

The cheating game is filled with men looking for reassurance of their manhood from a woman other than the one he's involved with. He feels a lack of self-worth and self-esteem, and cheating provides a mental vacation, an escape from the responsibilities of his daily life. He has convinced himself that his cheating heart can cure his wallowing psyche.

Lacks Will Power:

Although men are generally thought of as the cheaters, infidelity is a two-way street, with more and more women partaking in -- and initiating -- the deed. Increasingly, women who don't want to be involved in a serious relationship are seeking out married men. And some men go along with a woman's advances because they don't want to be called "whipped" if they don't.

A Spiritual Emptiness:

Few religions condone a man having an intimate relationship with more than one woman. In fact, most refer to it as die ultimate sin. Forsaking all others is at the core of any spiritually based relationship. Therefore, experts say that a man who chooses to partake in one of the few acts that is strictly forbidden in most religious teachings hints at his lack of spirituality. With a religious foundation, a man will understand that perhaps the only thing strong enough to quell temptations raging inside of him is a strong spiritual base.

Climate Of Instant Gratification:

His personal values have become confused with society's "just-do-it" mentality. He thinks and acts in 30-second sound bites, with no thought about the repercussions of his actions. He sees no reason to rein in his feelings and desires. If he thinks a woman is attractive, he'll go after her, never letting a little thing like his present relationship stand in his way.

Seeking Revenge:

He's angry at something his partner said or did, and is looking to even the score, even if that means breaking the rules. In his mind, he feels cheating is a justified way to make the scales balanced again. For angry men, cheating provides a challenge. Although he figures his partner will never find out about it, simply knowing how much it would hurt her if she did is enough to satisfy most seething men.

Left Guard Down:

He has become sloopy in setting boundaries with female friends. Many times this situation occurs at work, when a friendship with a co-worker spills over into a sexual relationship. Many times, a woman's simple smile or bat of the eye can spur this transition. Before a man realms what's happening his impulses take over and he begins to equate his masculinity with his ability to satisfy a woman who has given a slight indication that she is interested.

So what happens after a man cheats? Experts say if his partner doesn't find out about transgressions, a man will most likely continue to do it. While there are numerous reasons why man cheats, one simple fact remains: Most men don't want to stop playing the cheating game, even though a cheater "must forever keep his lies straight," Baisden says, "because with one slip of the tongue, his world could come tumbling down around him."

When a cheater is finally unmasked and the stick of dynamite he's been secretly holding finally explodes, all trust in him is lost, and the message to the man's partner is painfully clear. Nothing is as personal as cheating.

Experts say many women may be milling to forgive once, but that's it. "The old adage, `Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.'

everything will be alright

In such times of great transition,
Don't get stuck in one position.
Be supple, be bold,
Be strong, don't fold.
Hold your nerve
Through the swerve,
Retain your verve,
And all will be well,
As far as I can tell.

If in doubt,
Or afraid you'll go without,
Say, 'all change is good', over and over
And before you know it, you'll recover
Your composure
And will stop fearing exposure
To the new, so much.
Use a light touch
In your push-and-pull,
And always remember empty and full
Alternate in a cycle like day and night,
Then everything will be alright.

what's love

"Love is passion, obsession, someone you can't live without. If you don't start with that, what are you going to end up with? Fall head over heels. I say find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. And how do you find him? Forget your head and listen to your heart. I'm not hearing any heart. Run the risk, if you get hurt, you'll come back."

Because if you haven't tried, you haven't lived. " - meetjoeblack –

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life..

You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like stupid thing that broke your heart into pieces, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.

But if there's one thing I've learnt, its that getting swept off our feet falling in love is just one part. one pretty small part, dare I say. What people forget to tell you is that when you fall in love and you get too close to a person, you change and you lose yourself. You lose things that were always essentially meant to be you and that you always held...things that made you different from everyone else. And you change into something else because of that one person, you drop things along the way, you gain things along the way, but in the end.. there's so much giving and taking you lose all shape and become shapeless and lumpy.

And one day you realize you're not you anymore.

And that’s when you realize its never worth it to lose yourself.

Until you find the right one who'll love you the same way back. Then it's worth the love.

What are we fighting about, baby?

Talking about relationships is fraught with peril, mainly because it's not easy to change the way you relate to your lovers. No matter what I say here, for many people it won't do much good. Most relationships are built around a way of communicating, and changing that can be really tough, even when one or both partners can clearly see the dynamic going on. These thoughts are offered as personal observations; Lord knows if anyone will actually learn anything or, if they do, use what they learn in their relationship. But with that disclaimer, and a big gulp, away we go.

What makes for a successful relationship? As far as I can see, it's that you feel that the other person knows who you are, cares about you, enjoys your company, and listens to you even when it's difficult. And, of course, vice versa. Without this base, there's not much to go on or grow on.

Feelings are important. Listen to your feelings. But don't get attached to them. Feelings come and go... unless you grab on and start running with them. Then they can get much, much bigger. ("Oh, is that all that was the matter?")

You can't argue about feelings. If you can trust your lover to tell you how they honestly feel, and to listen to you when you tell them your feelings' truth, you can go pretty far.

Not everyone likes to talk about their feelings. But if you can do it when you need to, that's enough.

Where do you start when you're angry with your lover? Or scared, or insecure, or jealous? How can you talk about it without it blowing up?

First, what is the feeling that is demanding attention? What are you feeling? It all starts with this.

It's tempting to refer to all these sorts of emotions--anger, jealousy, fear, insecurity, loneliness--as "bad feelings." The problem with "bad feelings" is that it's easy to get confused about why they're bad. Sure, they may not be pleasant. But if they're honest, then they're vital. It is not wrong to feel these sorts of feelings. Don't squelch them when they come up; if you do, you bury part of yourself. And remember that if you let yourself feel these things, and if you can be real with your lover, and if it leads to you working things out... there is then nothing bad, at all! Where then is the "bad" feeling?

The next question is not "Why are you feeling that?" The reason is that feelings just happen. Emotions are not rational. Arguing about whether a feeling is genuine or legitimate is just a plain distraction from the situation: that something happened, and you had difficult feelings about it.

Another huge distraction is overgeneralizing. Going from "I felt this way when you did that" to "You always do that!" changes the discussion from a statement of personal truth into a battle over the cosmos. It's no longer about feelings. It's about reality, about arguing over who's right and who's wrong. Those arguments are distractions, once again. A feeling, by itself, doesn't make anyone right or wrong. It just is.

What went into that feeling? What prompted it, what other worries or concerns are in the background? Look under the surface.

The next challenge is, can you tell your partner this feeling? It's real easy to think, well, it's no big deal. I don't need to mention it. Little niggling resentments can grow very, very large if you habitually don't tell your lover how you feel. Be careful of a molehill growing into a mountain, because you wanted to be polite rather than being honest.

This isn't a license to be hurtful; telling someone how you feel is different from accusing them or blaming them because you feel that way. If you feel angry towards your lover, you can tell them about it without insulting them. If you lose so much respect for your partner that you can't resist insulting them or being sarcastic when having discussions like these, then your attempts to work things out will turn into withering crossfire. This may be your idea of fun, but I doubt it. Just say how you feel, here and now.

Does your partner listen? Before anything else happens, your partner needs to let you know that they heard you. If they ignore you, or dismiss what you're saying, or immediately start telling you how they feel, then there's not much communication happening.

Listening isn't the same as hearing successfully. You may tell your lover that you had a hard feeling when they did something, and they may hear that you think they're evil, when all you're saying is that you felt something. Check that your lover understood what you meant.

If your lover becomes defensive, that's understandable. It's hard not to. But it won't get you far. The question is not, were they right or wrong to do what they did? The question is, what to do about the fact that you felt what you felt? Defensiveness is a diversion. The challenge is to avoid putting your lover on the defensive; the challenge is letting them know that you care about them, that you want to work things out, even while you are dealing with intense emotions. Good faith is essential; if you don't want to work things out, or if they don't, then none of this will work.

Emotions can amplify themselves. Taking a feeling personally--dwelling on your lover's motivations, or letting a momentary irritation rise into a daylong vendetta--may give you an exciting emotional ride. But it doesn't help you work things out with your lover. The more you work yourself up into a towering panic or a quivering dread, the harder it'll be for you to talk things over without your lover reacting intensely as well.

What a worthless point? It's numbling obvious that you won't freak out if you don't freak out? Perhaps. I know that sometimes emotions are literally overpowering, in which case my advice isn't much good. But I also know that many people spend years in a simmering state of discontent, going over and over the same ground. It's easy to go from a feeling that comes up, arising from something that happens, into a long litany of past grievances. The more grudges you hold, the easier it'll be to turn your present feeling into a righteous battle over wrongs past and present. Stay here and now, if you can, both when you're talking to yourself and when you're with your lover.

Once your lover's heard you, then what? Then, perhaps, nothing. Maybe you just wanted to tell them to let them know what was up with you, and you don't particularly feel they needed to or should have done anything differently. Not every feeling demands a solution; if you leap too quickly from saying what's up to deciding what to do about it, you can miss the intimacy that comes with telling difficult truth. Sometimes tough feelings just happen, and all you need is support. Talking about the feeling is a complete goal in itself; it's not the prelude to anything.

If that's not the end of the story, then what is? Maybe your lover can't do much more than support you and tell you they care for you. If you're feeling insecure, well, that isn't always something your lover can fix. They may try, but ultimately many emotions come from within.

Though, of course, not all. If your lover broke an agreement between you, or acted in a way that you had told them you would feel badly about, then an emotional response is pretty understandable. Agreements are troublesome things; vital for giving the outlines of a relationship, distracting in that you can disagree over exactly what agreements were made. Again, good faith is key. What is the spirit of the law you're trying to letter? If you lose sight of that, the rules will be empty and hollow.

If your lover breaks your agreements, over and over again, then there are two questions: why are they doing this? and, why are you reentering the agreement with them? Trust is essential for a strong relationship. Trust comes from two things: knowing that agreements made will be kept, and knowing that you will both be there for each other, in good times and in difficult times. When that goes, it's not easy to recapture.

You do not have to put up with anything. If your partner doesn't have much concern for how you feel--if you don't enjoy being with them because of how they behave--then it will be very difficult for you to stay with them. Of course, good faith is needed; if you haven't let them know how you feel, then it's partly your responsibility that they continued to act as they did. And if your feelings have changed, you'd better have let them know about it, or else there's not much way they could be expected to act differently.

I'm not good at telepathy, and nor are most people I know. Anytime I hear "You should have known I was feeling this way," I wonder how helpful that is. The best way for me to know what my partner's feeling is to ask and find out. Nonverbal communication can only go so far, in my opinion.

This whole thing is really about trust. Avoiding the distractions, staying with your truth, not fighting or battling but talking and feeling. This is the way to a strong and lasting relationship. If you get into it for real, you will experience the whole sweep of emotions, sooner or later. Riding those waves with your lover is the path to a much deeper joy than the mere avoidance of "bad" feelings.

THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHT PERSON

EVERY relationship has a cycle. In the beginning, you fell in love with your spouse. You anticipated their call, wanted their touch, and liked their idiosyncrasies.

Falling in love with your spouse wasn't hard. In fact, it was a completely natural and spontaneous experience.

You didn't have to DO anything. That's why it's called "falling" in love... Because it's happening TO YOU.

People in love sometimes say, "I was swept of my feet." Think about the imagery of that expression. It implies that you were just standing there; doing nothing, and then something came along and happened TO YOU.

Falling is love is easy. It's a passive and spontaneous experience. But after a few years of marriage, the euphoria of love fades. It's the natural cycle of EVERY relationship. Slowly but surely, phone calls become a bother (if they come at all), touch is not always welcome (when it happens), and your spouse's idiosyncrasies, instead of being cute, drive you nuts.

The symptoms of this stage vary with every relationship, but if you think about your marriage, you will notice a dramatic difference between the initial stage when you were in love and a much duller or even angry subsequent stage.At this point, you and/or your spouse might start asking, "Did I marry the right person?" And as you and your spouse reflect on the euphoria of the love you once had, you may begin to desire that experience with someone else.

This is when marriages breakdown. People blame their spouse for their unhappiness and look outside their marriage forfulfillment. Extramarital fulfillment comes in all shapes and sizes. Infidelity is the most obvious. But sometimes people turn to work, church, a hobby, a friendship, excessive TV, or abusive substances. But the answer to this dilemma does NOT lie outside your marriage. It lies within it.

I'm not saying that you couldn't fall in love with someone else. You could.And TEMPORARILY you'd feel better. But you'd be in the same situation a few years later. Because (listen carefully to this):

THE KEY TO SUCCEEDING IN MARRIAGE IS NOT FINDING THE RIGHTPERSON; IT'S LEARNING TO LOVE THE PERSON YOU FOUND.

SUSTAINING love is not a passive or spontaneous experience. It'll NEVER just happen to you. You can't "find" LASTING love. You have to "make" it day in and day out. That's why we have the expression "the labor of love."

Because it takes time, effort, and energy. And most importantly, it takes WISDOM. You have to know WHAT TO DO to make your marriage work.Make no mistake about it. Love is NOT a mystery. There are specific things you can do (with or without your spouse) to succeed with your marriage.Just as there are physical laws of the universe (such as gravity), there are also laws for relationships. Just as the right diet and exercise program makes you physically stronger, certain habits in your relationship WILL make your marriage stronger. It's a direct cause and effect. If you know and apply the laws, the results are predictable...you can "make" love.

Love in marriage is indeed a "decision"... Not just a feeling.