Understanding Love

Love means having deep and warm feelings about oneself and others. It involves happiness and responsibilities.I'll bet you hear about "love" all the time. Most of us know about some kinds of love - we love our parents, we love our brothers and sisters, and we love our friends. We already know that we can love a lot of different people, and that loving one person doesn't mean that we love anyone else any less.

Love could be:

- Self love- love for oneself.

- Friendship love for friends.

- Filial - love for parents and relations.

- Romantic - love expressed by spouses and date partners.

- Complete - Involves commitment, intimacy and passion.

- Infatuation - love at first sight, very passionate but dies quickly.

But we've also heard of another kind of love - the kind of love that people in a romantic relationship may feel for each other. I want to talk about that kind, as well as the other kinds in the world. Sometimes we confuse love with other emotions - with possessiveness, or jealousy. We need to know how to distinguish these emotions from love, which means having deep and warm feelings about oneself and others.It involves happiness and responsibilities.

Important qualities in a loving relationship include:

- Tolerance

- Respect

- Trust

- Passion

- Honesty

- Care

Necessary skills that enhances love in a relationship include:

- Understanding

- Communication

- Sharing

- Helping

- Listening

- Planning together

Positive love involves:

• Commitment, Care, Companionship... Trust, Honesty, Tolerance... Respect, Forgiveness, Acceptance... Understanding, Responsibility, Reliability, Confidence

What a long list! Can you really find all those qualities in one relationship? And how do you make sure that you are using all of them? All you need do is to express some positive behaviours:

Behaviours that enhance loving relationships:

• Mutual respect

• Good communication

• Thoughtfulness

• Sharing

• Making future plans together

• Working towards mutual goals

• Tolerance

• Remembering important dates e.g. birthdays.

Compassion and love are strongly connected, but they aren't the same thing. But you're right; all the behaviours that show love also show compassion. To be compassionate is to sympathize with someone in trouble. People who volunteer for social services and those that care for people who need extra help are said to be compassionate. Compassion is bigger than love! A compassionate person cares about people around them, whether they know them personally or not.

The road to marriage success/marital happiness starts from the time when young people decide that they are ready for marriage. It is at this point that they need to know a lot about what they are getting into. Dr Aphys Fade have been helping would-be and married couples in their bid to have a successful, trouble free marriage and marital happiness. He equally helps people in troubled marriages to turn around their marriage