Finding The Love Of Your Life by Dr. Neil Clark Warren is a wonderful resource for anyone contemplating marriage, or for parents to help prepare their children for marriage. You can rad my full book review by clicking here. Below are some of the quotes I found especially interesting in this book.
“The person you can become is far more important than the person you are today. … When you start with who you are today and commit yourself to moving steadily toward goals, the progress you experience will not only make you feel genuinely proud, but it will also make you significantly more attractive to members of the opposite sex. … This kind of emotional growth is best achieved when you start with a deep understanding that you are totally lovable just the way you are. If your pursuit of excellence grows out of an appreciation for the way you have been created, you’ll grow by leaps and bounds.”
“The crucial thing is not to seek after someone whose personality is like your father’s or mother’s, but to search for that person whose personality would make you genuinely happy through the years.”
“Research has consistently shown that religious commitment and marital success are highly related.”
“Research findings are highly consistent: the most stable marriages are those involving two people with many similarities. … For couples, similarities are like money in the bank, and differences are like debts they owe. Suppose you received two bank statements in the mail today, one showing the amount of money in your savings account, the other showing the amount you owe on your credit card. If you have a large savings account and little debt, you’re in a position of strength and you can weather economic storms. If a financial crisis arises, you have the means to handle it. You can make decisions and purchases without scrambling to figure out how you’ll manage. But the reverse is also true. With big debts and little savings, you’re on shaky financial ground. You have to work a lot harder to cover the bills, and you worry about job security and making ends meet. … If you want to make a marriage work with someone who is very different from you, you had better have a large number of similarities as permanent equity in your account. If you don’t, your relationship could be bankrupt at a frighteningly early stage. Why is this the case? Because every difference you have requires negotiation and adaptation. One of you has to give a lot, or both of you have to give some, and in either case there is the need for plenty of change.”
“If the qualities that attracted you to someone are different from your own, be cautious.”
“A great marriage requires two healthy people, and the time to get healthy is before you get married. … What I am particularly concerned about here is the emotional and mental health of the two people considering a lifelong partnership.”
“When we marry, it will be ideal if in relation to our parents (1) we are essentially free from them—emotionally independent individuals—so we do not have to make decisions and live our lives to please them; (2) we are clear about what is particularly true of our relationship with our mother and father, and what is true in relation to our spouse. When we confuse these relationships, we leave our spouse feeling violated and helpless; and (3) we have established a relationship with our parents in which they will not intrude in our marriage, will not dictate to us in any authoritative ways, and yet we can still maintain a closeness and connectedness to them.”
“The desire to touch, hold hands and hug is critical for long-term satisfaction. I agree. Building a great marriage is virtually impossible without the attraction and excitement that comes with passionate love. … I am deeply convinced that any two people who choose to marry need to maintain clear minds until the moment they say ‘I do.’ Because of this, I believe in sexual abstinence prior to marriage. Sexual intercourse before marriage is a clear act of commitment! Once you have become sexually involved with a potential mate, your ability to think clearly and objectively becomes impossible. … In one impulsive moment, two people cut short the process of ‘choosing’ one another, and they rob themselves of their own wisdom. Once they are sexually involved, they forfeit their combined ability to make a wise, unhindered decision.”
“(1) Passionate love between two people is a crucial ingredient if they are to have a long and satisfying relationship. (2) Passionate love always involves strong physical attraction. (3) Physical involvement must be managed with extreme care. (4) Every progression of physical activity establishes a new plateau—and it is extremely difficult to retreat once it has been reached. (5) When sexual expression is not kept in check, the emotional, cognitive and spiritual aspects of the relationship become slaves to the physical desires.”
“Too many failed marriages involve fantasy triumphing over fact.”
“When you are intimate with the person you love, you create unlimited possibilities for the growth of your relationship. Intimacy has the potential for lifting the two of you out of the lonely world of separateness and into the stratosphere of emotional oneness. Conversely, the number one enemy of any marriage is the lack of intimacy. If two people do not know each other deeply, they can never become what the Bible calls ‘one flesh.’”
“You have to know yourself if you’re going to be intimate with someone else.”
“When two people discover that they have a spiritual hunger or spiritual awareness in common, they are strongly drawn to one another. In fact, I have found that a lack of mutually held spiritual beliefs often signals an intimacy deficit that leaves couples dangerously unconnected. In fact, one research study showed that spirituality ranked among the six most common characteristics of strong families. The strongest families in this study reported experiencing ‘a sense of power and a purpose’ greater than themselves—a spiritual orientation.”
“The fatal flaw of our society is that the principles of business have increasingly infiltrated our intimate relationships. That’s why society has found it necessary to trivialize wedding vows, to pretend they are no longer binding or relevant. Marriage makes very little sense when viewed from a business perspective. Let me explain: Two fundamental principles in business are: (1) What you pay for something is based on what you get in return; (2) When a business arrangement is no longer a ‘good deal,’ you either alter the arrangement or terminate it. But marriage is radically different! It depends on unconditional commitment. When you get married, you pledge to love, honor and cherish another person for a lifetime. If your mate changes over time, you are not released from your pledge. … Relationships that are conditional allow almost no room for trust and intimacy.”
“There is only one time to think about commitment-—before you make it!”
I’m a big fan of the historical and biographical work of Stephen Mansfield. His books are thoroughly researched but they don’t read like scholarly works, but have a more storytelling feel to them. This is especially true in his book Lincoln’s Battle With God.
Craig T. Owens 