The good news is that I believe every woman who wants to can find a great partner. You’re just going to need to get rid of the idea that marriage will make you happy. It won’t. Once the initial high wears off, you’ll just be you, except with twice as much laundry. Because ultimately, marriage...

7 Principles of a Happy MarriageAlways listenBe thereCompromise is necessaryBuild up trustA kiss before sleep, a kiss after wakingNever keep scoreDo things together

What keeps the marriage going is your commitment to your spouse’s holiness.

What marriage offers – and what fidelity is meant to protect – is the possibility of moments when what we have chosen and what we desire are the same. Such a convergence obviously cannot be continuous. No relationship can continue very long at its highest emotional pitch. But fidelity prepares us for the return of...

Maybe a marriage, like a life, isn’t only about the Big Moments, whether they be bad or good. Maybe it’s all the small things–like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day– that stretch out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.

Wisdom is nothing more than the marriage of intelligence and compassion.And, as with all good unions, it takes much experience and time to reach its widest potential.Have you introduced your intellect to your compassion yet? Be careful; lately, intellect has taken to eating in front of the TV and compassion has taken in too many...

A man of worth is a man that sees the worth in others more than himself.

If he can’t handle you at your worst then he does not deserve you at your best. Real love means seeing beyond the words spoken out of pain, and instead seeing a person’s soul.

If you’re stressing over happiness, you’re doing it wrong!

If you truly loved someone you won’t become their enemy. You will become their guardian angel.

When relationships fail it is usually because someone chooses not to show up for the battle.

It is not lies or a lack of loyalty that ends a relationship. It is the agonizing truth that one person feels in their heart on a daily basis. It is realizing that you are coping and not living. It is the false belief that there is a verse, quote, phrase or talk that will...

Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee,And for thy maintenance; commits his bodyTo painful labor, both by sea and land;To watch the night in storms, the day in cold,Whilst thou li’st warm at home, secure and safe;And craves no other tribute at thy handsBut love,...

When you find a guy who calls you beautiful instead of hot, who calls you back when you hang up on him, who will stand in front of you when other’s cast stones, or will stay awake just to watch you sleep, who wants to show you off to the world when you are in...

LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I’ll none:...

The grandest ambition that any man can possibly have, is to so live, and so improve himself in heart and brain, as to be worthy of the love of some splendid woman; and the grandest ambition of any girl is to make herself worthy of the love and adoration of some magnificent man. That is...

I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.

Even the jerks earn some of our affection. We can be glad they’re gone and yet still mourn the good parts.

In my judgment, the woman is the equal of the man. She has all the rights I have and one more, and that is the right to be protected. That is my doctrine. You are married; try and make the woman you love happy. Whoever marries simply for himself will make a mistake; but whoever...

No matter how many losing seasons you might have had in the past with your marriage, the good thing is that all teams get a fresh start once September begins

The importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is… Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it’s not...

Say yes,’ he whispers. ‘Marry me.’I hesitate. I open my eyes. ‘You will get my fortune,’ I remark. ‘When I marry you, everything I have becomes yours. Just as George has everything that belongs to Isabel.’‘That’s why you can trust me to win it for you,’ he says simply. ‘When your interests and mine are...

His child. His child with Caroline. Their child. After the things he’d said to her this morning, this would likely be their only child. Would it be a little bespectacled boy who wore his clothes haphazardly and followed his papa around holding a magnifying glass in one hand and notebook in the other? Or would...

If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.

The point I was trying to make before you interrupted with your inventoryof my personality is that neither of us is going to be able to stay celibate for the next six months.”She dropped her eyes. If only he knew that she’d stayed that way all her life.We’ll be living in close quarters,” he went...

From open sea she’s chosen meand dashed the hopes of many.A life with her is worth the hopesmy love for her may bury.

My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?

When a man says to me, ‘Let us work together in the great cause you have undertaken, and let me be your companion and aid, for I admire you more than I have ever admired any other woman,’ then I shall say, ‘I am yours truly’; but he must ask me to be his equal,...

I harbor ill feelings toward a society, and a clergy, that allows marriage partners to split over the smallest incompatibility, where divorce comes in a multitude of flavors, like Baskin Robbins ice cream, where men and women can blame one another and everything except themselves for matrimony’s mess. They look for externals over which they...

Marriage is a million piece puzzle; a pristine and exciting pursuit at the beginning that gradually becomes a daunting task, usually more challenging than anticipated. It is only those truly committed to solving that puzzle who witness in the end the miraculous outcome of every tiny piece laid out and pressed together in an inspiring...

I don’t know why we stopped reading together, but gradually we were not doing it regularly, and then without realizing it was happening we were reading different books, and gradually we came not to care about the book the other one was reading, because it was not the book we were reading, and we became...

I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides the veil.

Together we agree that there are few tableaus more pathetic than a woman poring over a plethora of self-help books, while in a small café across town her husband is sharing a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and fettucini Alfredo with a beautiful woman, fondling her fishnet knee and making careful plans to escape his life.

I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

I feel angry but not homocidal; this may be unlooked-for progress.

You don’t want me to feel obligated? Well, I’m sorry, Lily. I am herebecause I feel obligated.” He brought her hand to his chest, pressing herpalm flat against his rapidly thumping pulse. “I’m obligated by my heart. It’sdecided you’re essential to my existence, you see. And it’s threatening to go out on labor strike if...

It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.

Love is an act of endless forgiveness; a tender look which becomes a habit.

I feel incendiary, a wildfire. My spirit licks at the gates of a very elaborate, customized, and distracting emotional Hades.

I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.

Flannel shirts should be outlawed for ex husbands; I realize this now. Flannel shirts are to women what crotchless panties are to men.

A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5’4’tall you shouldn’t be more than 5’3’tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That’s the only rule to follow if you...

Think of your husband as a house. You are allowed to give him a fresh coat of paint and change out the furniture now and then. But if you’re constantly trying to pour a new foundation or replace the roof, you’re in serious trouble.

I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.

I don’t need you by my side. But I want you there. Very much want you there. That, I think, saysmore. Means more.”He took the hand she held out to him. “We’ll go down. James should be here soon

Attitude determines Altitude.Winners never quit.No venture, No gain.

And so must learn to love with our mouths and voices, as well as with our eyes, flesh, heart, brains, and with everything we have, right down to our toenails. There is not anything about us that cannot love, and that is not called to love, and that is not destined to be turned, conformed,...

I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: “Oh My God Oh My God.

I love you as the mother of my child”: the kiss of death.Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self.