Basic Components of Successful Marriage

To some people, marriage is a vow between couples that unites and binds them for lasting relationship. To others, marriage is a contract between two people that commit themselves for lifetime relationship. But in this day and age, we find couples unfaithful to the vow and breach the contract. Couples find themselve struggling to keep their marriage for lasting and lifetime relationship to one another. Many couples would ask, “Why their marriage is a failure?”

I’m no expert on this matter, but living and seeing how my grandparents worked on their wonderful and colorful marriage; I’ve learned that there are only four basic components of successful marriage. L.I.P.S. are the basic components to make marriage last a lifetime.

Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness. To love someone, one must learn to love everything about that person and that includes his/her flaws. Love teaches a person to be respectful, caring, faithful and honest. If we violate one of these traits to our spouses, then absolutely our love for them is not pure.

Intimacy has more to do with shared moments than sexual interactions. Intimate feelings may be connected or confused with sexual arousal. Intimacy is linked with feelings of closeness, safety, trust and transparency among partners in a collaborative relationship. For intimacy to be sustainable and nourishing it also requires trust, transparency and rituals of connection. It is possible to compete over intimacy but that is likely to be self-defeating. Intimacy requires empathy - the ability to stand in the other's shoes. Intimacy can also be identified as knowing someone in depth, knowing many different aspects of a person or knowing how they would respond in different situations, because of the many experiences you've shared with them.

Passion is a gift of the spirit combined with the totality of all the experiences we've lived through. It endows each of us with the power to live and communicate with unbridled enthusiasm. Passion is most evident when the mind, body and spirit work together to create, develop and articulate or make manifest our feelings, ideas and most sacred values.

According to Brian Norris, passion enables us to overcome obstacles (both real and imagined) and to see the world as a place of infinite potential. The passionate spirit looks at every occurrence and discovers the golden kernels of what can be, what should be and what will be. Passion has its own energy -- an energy that's observable and transferable. Best of all, you can't fake it. Almost anyone, with only a bit of intuitiveness, can spot the charlatan. We can smell the lying wolf. We can sense a lack of sincerity, authenticity and depth. We can inhale the bitter, infectious dryness of the imposter's soul.

Sexuality is how people experience and express themselves as sexual beings. It can encompass

sexual intercourse and sexual contact in all its forms, as well as medical concerns about the physiological or even psychological aspects of sexual behaviour; sociologically, it can cover the cultural, political, and legal aspects; and philosophically, it can span the moral, ethical, theological, spiritual or religious aspects. Couples must be bound to satisfy his/her significant others, no matter what.

Marriage will only be successful if couples would strive to make their LIPS sealed all the time.