要舍得为爱付出时间

我知道我们能够爱得深切，爱得温柔，并且爱得持久。我见过这样的爱，而且我自己也体验过这样的爱。我发现，要赢得这种持久的爱情必须遵循下面这条法则：舍得为爱付出时间。如果夫妻俩人能把腾出时间厮守在一起看作头等重要的大事，美满的婚姻就由此开始了。

During my 25 years as a marital therapist, I have seen hundreds of people disappointed over unfulfilling relationships. I have seen passion turn to poison. I have grieved with patients for the love they lost or never found.

"We seemed to love so much, but now it's gone," one woman lamented to me. "Why do I feel so lonely every night even when he is right there beside me? Why can't marriage be more than this?"

It can. I was once invited to the 60th-anniversary celebration of a remarkable couple. I asked the husband, Peter, if he ever felt lonely and wondered where the love between him and Lita had gone. Peter laughed and said, "If you wonder where your love went, you forgot that you are the one who makes it. Love is not out there; it's in here between Lita and me."

I know we can love deeply, tenderly and lastingly. I have seen such love, and I have felt such love myself. Here are the law I have discovered for such lasting and loving relationships---put time where love is.

A fulfilling marriage begins when two people make time together their No.1 priority. If we hope to find love, we must first find time for loving.

Unfortunately, current psychology rests on the model of the independent ego. To make a lasting marriage we have to overcome self-centeredness. We must go beyond what psychologist Abraham Maslow called "self-actualization" to "us-actualization". We have to learn to put time where love is.

Many couples have experienced a tragic moment that taught them to value their time together. One husband related how he sat trapped in his car after a crash. His wife was outside, crying and banging on the window. "I thought I was going to die before we had enough time together." He told me. "Right then I promised to make the time to love my wife. Our time is our own now, and those hours are sacred."