What is this emotion we call love?  Is it the experience of looking someone in the eye and feeling all tingly inside?  Is love at first sight enough to get married and make the marriage last?

Those of you who have marriage in mind need to know what defines true love, the love that would develop and bind a lasting marriage.

Love or Infatuation?

Do not confuse love with infatuation.  Infatuation is that excited, can’t eat or sleep, ‘always thinking about you’ feeling that would not last forever.  However, these feelings occur so we could be attracted to someone and helps start the true love journey, but true love needs to be nurtured, otherwise when the infatuation fades, there’s nothing left to carry the relationship.

Build a Friendship

Do you get along well?  This is a most important factor to take into consideration in building your relationship.  Apart from the initial attraction, you need to build a friendship.  This will carry you far in your marriage and help you overcome some of the challenges that would certainly crop up along the way.  Building a friendship is one way to develop and nurture the love.

Commitment

One of the vows in the marriage ceremony is “till death do us part.”  You need to be committed to one another in times of good and bad, and there will be bad times.  Marriage isn’t always a bed of roses, remember, roses have thorns.  To be committed means finding ways to deal with problems when they occur and not giving up out of frustration. 

Where there is a will, there is a way.  There is always a way to overcome challenges and if you have no will to make your marriage last, then you have definitely lost your way.

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance (I Corinthians 13:7).