30 Lessons for Loving: Advice from the Wisest Americans on Love, Relationships, and Marriage

To make love last, let’s see how the three principles we covered in the last chapter apply to the situation. 1. Don’t think in terms of groups. 2. Limit the relationship to what you have in common. 3. Don’t attempt to perpetuate the relationship by contract.

Fragile couples tend, paradoxically, to be very hopeful about love. They associate happiness with conflict-free unions. They do not expect, once they have found the person they unwisely see as The One, ever to need to squabble, storm out of a room or feel unhappy for the afternoon. When trouble emerges, as it inevitably does, they do not greet it a

The question of whether we marry, and if so whom, is a serious one. In terms of happiness in life it is one of the most important decisions that we will ever make,

So one of the things I tell young couples is that they need to be open to the fact that they will work differently from each other and from the families they grew up in, and that they have to respect that, and listen to that. In dating, people break up over these things and they miss the opportunity to really get to know the other person. They dism