Do you remember the crude pain, the rejection and feeling of betrayal when your heart was first broken?

What about that innocent feeling, almost like that of a baby, when you fell in love again? It was as if your life was starting afresh.

But sooner had you settled in your new found love then the arguments, the fights and challenges ( reminiscence of your old relationship) started showing up in your new relationship.

So you broke up again. Fell in love again and broke up again and fell in love again and again.  

My question is how can the same man fall in love with different women and break up with all of them claiming that each of these different people (who are unrelated in any way) are the problem and not themselves?  I disagree.

The problem is us. We keep falling in love with our mistakes.

Before you complain about your relationship, before you tell us how much you are suffering in your relationship, please first tell the world your criteria for selecting a partner. You may establish a trend in why your first and subsequent relationships failed.

It is not the people we break up with who are bad. They merely offered us what they are made off. But it was our duty to check if we wanted what they had to offer.

People can only offer you what they have. Some people are quarrelsome, others troublesome, and still others unfaithful, lazy, rebellious, recalcitrant, and unbelieving in God.

Others too are well cultured, measured, mature, faithful, loving, sincere and accommodating.

But note that nobody’s character is designed on their face. Tall people do not carry a set of attitude different from those who are not so tall. Neither do fair complexion people behave in a special way quite apart from those who are not.

Just as when you hiring for a job you interview your potential employees to ascertain their competence so too must you satisfy yourself that whoever you are hiring for the job of marrying you is fit to give you what you expect out of the marriage. Because marriage is the permanent job of entrusting a stranger with your life, children and everything you have ever worked for and represent.

As a result, we should fall in love with what is reasonably right. Not our emotions and fantasies.  

We should fall in love with a person’s sound moral character, their quality education and discipline, fear of the Lord, respect for themselves and others, ability to cherish themselves and others, and standing up for a balanced and informed personal, family, societal and work values.

We should love and fall in love with these. These qualities are beautiful without makeups; they look elegant without the trending fashions and can turn even the dead on.

These should be preferred to an empty-headed and cold-hearted blonde with pointed breast and generous buttocks mounted on tall legs, adorned with scanty clothes and bathed in sweet-scented perfumes.   

But assembling the right qualities for marriage requires the mind, not the heart. It requires studying a person to know them beyond their looks. It calls for prayer for God to reveal what is hidden behind the nice face, bank account and fame. It calls for understanding the essence of marriage which is arguably more than sex.

Sex is not the biggest part of relationship. We need a house to have sex in, we need to eat after sex, we need water to bath after sex, and there will be kids to take care of and family to finance after sex.

Marriage and relationships are not flimsy. It is hard work.  It requires the attitude of one who builds a home. It requires one who can stand difficult situations. That is what you should be looking for. Not a man with broad shoulders, well-trimmed facial hair, nice suits, house and a car.

Indeed falling in love requires more than a nice body.