10 Ingredients To A Lasting Marriage

1. Fairness: This is a key ingredient needed to make for a lasting marriage. When couple treats each other with fairness there is the tendency for better understanding.
2. Trust: This is by far the greatest thing you need to make you relationship last long. You must learn to believe whatever your spouse tells you; you must also learn to avoid unnecessary suspicion. Any marriage built on a foundation of distrust or mutual suspicion is bound to crumble.
3. Make your spouse your best friend: There should be no other person in the world that should be closer to you than your spouse. Your spouse should be your closest confidant. Be free to play with him/her, discuss your problems and trust each other with confidential information.
4. Love to stay together: You should love to stay together and actually enjoy each time you spend together. Take a walk together or go on a picnic together alone. Hold hands while you walk and even enjoy kissing and hugging each other.
5. Mutual respect: For your relationship to last you must cultivate the habit of respecting each other's feelings, values, ideas, opinions and emotion. You should avoid deliberately stepping on each other's toes.
6. Equal Power: There should be equal power; nobody should be the boss and nobody should be the servant. Once one person imposes himself or herself on the other as the one who gives orders, the other person becomes threatened and less secured and this could adversely affect the marriage.
7. Your marriage should be seen as a total commitment: If both of you see your marriage as a total commitment and put in your best to keep it going then you are sure of a lasting marriage.
8. Tolerance: You have to learn to tolerate the weak points of your partner. Overlooking some of the minor offences by your partner would make for a lasting marriage.
9. Enjoy your partner: Make up your mind to enjoy your relationship and enjoy anything your spouse does for you.
10. Value each other's qualities: Those good qualities that are in your spouse which you don't have should be valued and should not become a source of envy because you are supposed to complement each other. Appreciate the good qualities and even encourage your partner to keep them up.