by Barry Williams

Created on: June 15, 2008   Last Updated: July 25, 2011

Of course marriage is hard. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Marriage demands lots of hard work and endurance for it to work. If you are not prepared to to work at establishing a lasting relationship then don't get married in the first place. Save yourself lots of grief, expense and a great deal of time.

True love does exist. Your other half does exist. Your soul mate does exist.Somewhere ,and not just in fairy tale books. Most of us however only have a vague idea of love. Most of us are content to have an opposite in gender who is prepared to accept that we exist other than just some useless piece of humanity. Most of us rely on our partner for comfort and reassurance that our existence has some meaning. True love may conquer all. For the rest of us we have to work hard if our marriage is to succeed and endue , to conquer anything.

First and foremost, marriage requires us to be faithful to our partner. Forsake all others as per the traditional marriage vow. All may be fine in the early years until either one or both marriage partners wonder if the grass is really greener on the other side. Perhaps Rufus the stud bull , a mere animal is having far more fun with fifty cows than just one. Perhaps Leo the Lion is having far more fun with a harem of lionesses than being stuck with just one. Was man really supposed to be faithful only to one woman and vice versa? In a nut shell, yes. No one said marriage was easy. It requires a lot of hard work to remain faithful. If you don't like hard work , then don't get married.

A marriage based on sex alone is doomed. Utterly and inevitably doomed. Sex however is important. It plays an integral part of any marriage but is only part of it. Far more important than sex is love and devotion to each other. Both partners have to work hard on love and devotion in order to build trust. Trust is the foundation on which to build a lasting marriage.

Trust in each other gives you the courage to embark on commitments such as a housing mortgage. In order to commit yourselves to thirty years of debt you must first be able to trust each other. You must learn to depend on each other and learn to think as one. In order to overcome the fear of failure and absorb the worry of ever repaying the debt you have to work at supporting each other with endless words of encouragement. Money problems will sorely test a marriage.

As individuals growing into adults, we adopted a style of life that suited our way of life. In marriage however there has to

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