***Great Love Cannot Be Rushed

By America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts. “You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.” This marvelous quote by Jonathan Carroll is from Outside the Dog Museum. Too often, when a person feels the early signs of a loving relationship they move too fast and scare away the one they are falling in love with. Or worse yet, they so desperately want to be in love and be loved that they miss important clues to the real feelings of the one they think they love. During our thousands of interviews with successfully married couples, we have repeatedly heard this advice—go slow in the beginning. As love and marriage experts for over 30 years, we can tell you that this advice cannot be ignored. You’ve heard the old expression, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” One thing for certain—neither was love. It develops over time. It requires patience. It requires self-examination. And it most certainly requires you to run slowly across fields until you find the proper footing, lest you fall down! Recently, someone sent us a copy of a beautiful essay entitled “Letters To My So " by Kent Nerburn. Our favorite passage is excerpted below: Here “is where many lovers go wrong. Having been so long without love, they understand love only as a need. The first blush of new love is filled to overflowing, but as their love cools, they revert to seeing their love as a need. They forget that the secret of love is that it is a gift, and that it can be made to grow only by giving it away.” The message here should be clear—love is a gift you give to someone, and if you are lucky, they give it back in return. You need to step back and make sure that you feel good about giving your love away. That requires being honest with yourself about what you are feeling and what you are giving away to another human being. Accepting true love takes courage. And trust. And time. To be truly in love is to dash across the field of lilies on a beautiful spring morning unafraid to fall down as you leap into the arms of the one you love and who loves you. As love and marriage experts, we suggest you go, be in love if you are ready to give away your gift of love to another human being. Creating a successful marriage is not always the easiest thing to do. Your visiting our blog suggests you are highly interested in making your marriage work! And truthfully, we have learned over 30 years of marriage research that there are proven effective ways to ensure a happy and healthy marriage. In fact, we took hundreds of tips from the thousands of happy couples we interviewed and put them into our award-winning and bestselling book, Building a Love that Lasts . Today, you can see how you stack up to the best marriages around the world. Take the Marriage Quiz to assess your chances of achieving a successful marriage of your own. you witness the signs, take action. Save your relationship if you can. Having a healthy and happy marriage is one of the great success stories of life. It is not too late to save your marriage. In love and marriage the simple things matter. Love well! By Drs. Charles and Elizabeth Schmitzr America’s #1 Love and Marriage Experts