As children we learn about love from our parents.  As toddlers we start to experience love from others.  Once in school, we might become madly in love with our kindergarten teacher or the child in the next seat.  When we move into puberty, hormones rage asour heads and our hearts fall for the cutest new rock star or the guy who tells you that you look nice.  The next step is sorting through those relationships to find the one that you want to grow old with.  Through middle age you marry, have children, work together, do your own thing, drift apart and love may fly out the window.  When you reach your 70s and your love is still the most important thing in your life, you have finally realized true love.

Love doesn’t just happen in the blink of an eye.  At first sight it might seem that it’s all perfect.  The experts don’t tell you what’s really involved in making a sound relationship.  For the most part you’re operating on emotion and nothing more.  In the heat of that emotion, some of the greatest battles occur.  Words fly without thinking and broken hearts result.

When you marry, you soon find that the person you married isn’t the person you thought they were.  You weren’t bargaining for the little things, like leaving the toilet seat up or a pile of laundry cluttering the floor in your bedroom.  You didn’t know that you’d be sharing your bed with a stranger.  Your ideas of perfection and the Pinterest lifestyle have flown out the window.  Reality sets in.

If you can’t see beyond your own feelings and needs, chances are your love isn’t going to make it through the next few years.  True love takes nurturing and work.  When you commit to one another, prepare yourself for that.  Love is not about self.  It’s about two lives coming together and actually becoming one mind, one heart, one soul.  As time goes by, the battles become smaller – mostly because you don’t have the energy to spend on such things anymore.  It’s just easier to agree.

Placing God at the head of your union is what solidifies it and allows it to last and get stronger with age.  You can find this and other advice about love in the best handbook for a solid, happy, marriage – the Bible.