“It is better to control yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not byangels or demons, heaven or hell.

Your ability to enter into a long-term, loving relationship is an important measure of your character and personality.

The foundational qualities for marriage and loving relationships are trust and respect.

Men and women can have many disagreements over the course of their married life together, but as long as the trust and respect between them endure, the marriage can go on indefinitely.

Many marriages end in divorce and many divorced people have get married once and stay married contentedly for the rest of their lives.

The two people are ideally balanced with each other, with each one possessing complementary qualities and characteristics that combine comfortably to form a perfect balance.

People often say that “opposites attract.” This is a misunderstanding. Opposites attract in only one area, and that is temperament.

You will always be attracted to people and most compatible with those who have the greatest number of fundamental values in common with yourself.

People will often point out that there are happy couples who vote for different parties or come from different religious backgrounds.

This intensity determines if a person is absolute and unbending or relaxed and flexible in his or her adherence to a particular belief about a particular part of life.

People can love and live together happily for many years even though they support different political parties, as long as political belief is not so important to either of them that it takes precedence over more important elements of their relationship such as children, family, and values.

Psychologists generally agree that the root cause of personality problems in adult life can be traced back to “love withheld” in infancy and childhood.

Without sufficient love and acceptance, individuals exhibit all kinds of personality and physical problems..

. Love requires self-denial and sacrifice. When you are truly in love with another person, that person’s happiness and well-being become more important than your own.

. Love requires self-denial and sacrifice. When you are truly in love with another person, that person’s happiness and well-being become more important than your own.

“Love doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not his own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil

Each person has different ideas, tastes, desires, hopes, dreams, and expectations.

Each person has had different experiences and developed different ways of seeing and dealing with the world around him or her.

This is normal and natural and something to be worked through by practicing self-discipline and self-control whenever these differences occur.

Self-discipline in a relationship requires that you be completely honest and open, that you be yourself and never try to be someone or something else.

Self-discipline and honesty require that you state clearly what you are thinking and feeling, without anger or irritation, and that you listen calmly and patiently to the feelings, thoughts, and opinions of the other person.

When women communicate, they use seven centers of their brains.

Men can process only one sensory input at a time, whereas women can process multiple sensory inputs.

He cannot read and listen or watch at the same time. Men can do many things extremely well, but they can do only one thing at a time. Men tend to be very focused.

They are multidimensional and can process several inputs simultaneously. They can talk and listen at the same time and be aware of what other people around them are doing and saying.

They are very sensitive to other people. When a man and a woman attend a social gathering, within ten minutes, the woman will have done an analysis and assessment of the situation of each of the other people in the room.

Because of the many differences between men and women, it takes tremendous discipline to build and maintain a long-term, loving, and happy relationship.

Perhaps the most important area of mutual compatibility has to do with the discipline of listening.

There are four simple disciplines of effective listening. They are mostly of importance to men, who are notoriously poor listeners, especially with the women in their lives.

Listen Attentively. The first discipline is to listen attentively , without interrupting. Listen as though the other person is about to reveal a great secret or the winning lottery number and you will hear it only once.

Affection is expressed by paying total attention to her when she speaks.

Since you always pay attention to what you most value, when you pay close attention to another person while she speaks, you tell that person that she is of great value to you.

Pause before Replying. The second discipline of listening is to pause before replying.

When you pause, you avoid the risk of
interrupting the other person if she is just reformulating her thoughts.

Another advantage of pausing, of allowing a silence in the conversation, is that it enables you to hear not only what was said, but also what was not said or what was said between the lines.

Ask for Clarification. The third discipline of effective listening is to question for clarification.

Feed It Back. The fourth discipline of effective listening is for you to feedback what the other person has said, and paraphrase it in your own words.

Love and marriage require total commitment on the part of both people. It takes tremendous discipline to go “all in” in a relationship.

One of the most important disciplines in a marriage or relationship is that of faithfulness. Because we live in a highly sexualized society, there are temptations and provocations around us all the time and virtually everywhere we go.

There are two ways to help you avoid the regular temptations that can damage or even destroy the most loving of relationships.

First, make a decision, in advance, that you will never, never be unfaithful to your spouse.

Second, discipline yourself to stay out of harm’s way. Refuse to go anywhere or do anything where temptation may exist.

everywhere you go and in everything you do, that your spouse is standing right next to you, watching and listening to what you say and do.

Every marriage is a “work in progress.” As time passes, the nature of your marriage will change, usually in positive and constructive ways.

To keep your relationship happy, harmonious, and growing, you must be willing to change in response to changing circumstances, especially having children and watching them grow up.

First, you can do more of some things. Second, you can do less of other things. Third, you can start something that you have never done before. And fourth, you can stop certain things altogether.

Is there anything that I am doing that you would like me to do more of?

. Is there anything that I am doing that you would like me to do less of?

Is there anything that you would like me to start doing that I am not doing today?

Is there anything that I am doing that you would like me to stop doing altogether?