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It will always be challenging, true love always is. You should always be growing, true love
delivers growth. Most of all, the love you share should deliver true happiness and peace.

Ultimately, all that matters is your own true happiness and what you think of your relationship,
not what any questionnaire might reveal.

Friends and Lovers

First and foremost, your primary love partner should be your best friend. What follows is a
summary of thoughts to keep in mind when building a healthy loving relationship. Whilst it is
personalised from a man’s perspective, it is equally appropriate from a woman’s viewpoint.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one”. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Learn to see her without distortion; to value her as highly as you value yourself; to give without
expecting anything in return; to commit yourself fully to her welfare. Only then can love move
freely between you without apparent effort. It’s unconditional love between best friends.

When we are able to love in this selfless manner, we experience a release of energy. We cease
to be consumed by the details of our relationship, we spontaneously treat each other with love
and respect. Love becomes automatic.

Friendship among lovers is essential to unconditional love and is the primary ingredient for a
deep and lasting love relationship. Trust her with the deepest murmurings of your soul. She knows
the best and the worst of you and yet loves you through and through -- a friend as well as a
lover.

“Never close your lips to those to whom you have opened your heart”. ~ Charles Dickens

In order to experience the kind of relationship you want, accept the fact that, to understand
each other, you and your love partner must have clearly developed channels of
communication. Cultivate transparency by being a master in the art of self-disclosure. Know
that when the inclination to reveal yourself to the one you love is blocked, you close yourself to
her and experience emotional difficulties. Promise to never hide behind a facade.

Practice telling her exactly what pleases you, decreasing her reliance on guesswork. Express
preferences instead of demands. Believe that you can never know yourself except by disclosing
yourself to her.

In ways you may not fully understand, self-disclosure helps you to see things, feel things, imagine
things, hope for things that you could never have thought possible. The invitation to
transparency, then, is really an invitation to authenticity. It is also an invitation to allow yourself to
be vulnerable.

When you allow her to see you for who you really are right now, you become less afraid that you
will be rejected in the future. When she accepts and loves you unconditionally, you know you
will never have to hide in the relationship in the future.

To have inner peace it is necessary to be consistently loving in what you think, in what you say
and in what you do. Think thoughts of love. Speak words of love. Demonstrate unconditional
love for her in all that you do.