- f you’re a short man, don’t date a woman who is taller than you.
- Don’t marry a person for their money. They’ll tie a noose around your neck.
- Don’t marry out of necessity or pressure. After all, you’re the one who is going to live with them for the rest of your life.
- Don’t fall in love with a person simply for sex, good looks or attractiveness. Fall in love with a person who will be there for you when you need them. A partner. A friend and a companion.
- Observe a person for at least a year before you agree to marry them. A simple background check can reveal if the person has a clean bill of health or has a past criminal record.
- Only fall in love with a person because you’re in love with them and you can’t do without them.
- Relationships are about sharing. Share with your partner, everything that you would desire for yourself.
- If your partner has some bad habits like alcoholism or drug addiction, don’t even think for a moment that you will change them by marrying them.
- Marry the person who is teachable and knows how to handle money. It’s better to marry a person who has a vision than a person who has money.
- Marry the person who can face you and rebuke you when you’re wrong.
- Relationships are built on trust. Make sure the person you go into a relationship with cannot cheat on you or steal from you.
- Relationships are not “bells and roses”. Think long-term before you go into a relationship.
- “Happily Ever After” doesn’t exist. Every waking day, you must make a conscious decision to love your partner for good or for worse. Some days it’s sheer heaven, some days it’s sheer hell.
- Don’t get into a relationship as a way to escape from something you’re running away from, or as a way to compensate for something you lack or hate within yourself.
- The most important factor in a relationship is not sex, attractive looks, or shared goals. It is respect. Respect for your partner and for yourself are mutual. Respect yourself and your partner. Never talk ill to or about your partner. If you don’t respect your partner, you’re not worthy of her/him.
- People who have been through a divorce and/or have been with their partners for the longest period, almost always talked about communication or the lack of it, being the key factor for their break-up or the reason for their being together, even when it hurt to communicate.
- People who have been through much tribulation and suffering together tend to be together for the longest period of time, being sometimes only separated by death.
- Respect your partner for what they stand for even if they have different views, hobbies, interests, and perspectives of life. Just because you have different views doesn’t mean you’re always right.
- Develop a habit of listening keenly to your partner when they’re talking. There’s no way of communicating with them unless you hear them out first.
- Never talk ill or gossip about your partner or complain about them to your friends. If you have a problem with your partner, the best way to solve it is to discuss the problem with your partner. Talking ill or bad about your partner erodes love and trust and you’ll be surprised how difficult it will be to look them in the eyes with the same confidence next time you meet.
- You and your spouse are mutual partners in the relationship. As such, they have an equal say in the relationship, you are a team, and if one person in the team is not happy, then the team is not succeeding.
- There are no secrets in a healthy relationship. If you’re really in this together and you respect one another, everything should be fair game. Does someone have a crush on you? Discuss it. Laugh about it. Had a weird sexual fantasy that sounds ridiculous? Be open about it. Nothing should be off-limits.
- Be open. Talk openly about everything, especially the stuff that hurts. If something bothers you in the relationship, you must be willing to talk about it openly. Talking about an issue openly builds trust and intimacy and increases the love bond. It may hurt at first, but it is still necessary to discuss it. No one else can fix your relationship for you. Nor should anyone else.
- Only make promises you can keep. Broken promises erode trust, which took a long time to build. Rebuilding trust after it has been broken can take a long time, which may be costly in terms of maintaining a proven track record over time. A good track record can be difficult to rebuild without a genuine apology and owning up to your previous mistakes and embarking on ways to correct them.
- Learn to discern your partner’s problems, worries, anxieties or fears. Determine to carry each other’s cross. Watch out for suspicious behavioral changes in your partner and promptly address them by standing with them in difficult times, interrogating them and extending help.
- Learn to forgive. This is the most effective way to heal yourself. With love prevailing, nothing is impossible to forgive. Fights in a relationship are inevitable, but they should never be carried too far, to the point of ruining your progress. In most relationship fights, one person thinks something is completely perfect while the other one thinks it’s totally wrong. In such circumstances, it’s extremely hard to distinguish who is right and who is wrong. Insecurity and fears in a relationship should never be encouraged, otherwise, they remain a threat to a healthy relationship.