Regardless of whether you’re going on your first date or married for years, the Have The Relationship You Want ebook is your instruction manual for creating a deep and meaningful connection between you and your partner.

Get a sampling of what’s inside Have The Relationship You Want

1. Many divorces and unhappy marriages have roots stemming from infatuation and sex interest only.

2. Most youth are not sure what real love is due largely in part by lack of example.

3. Age and maturity give no immunity of infatuation.

4. Teen marriages have twice the risk of ending in divorce.

5. Living together and having a sexual relationship before marriage has shown to create tougher times to adjust after marriage.

6. One-sided love won’t work.

7. The following people are far most likely to have good marriage:
– Your parents are happy in their marriage
– You had a happy childhood
– There was a lack of conflict with mother
– There was a lack of conflict with father
– Home discipline was firm but not harsh
– You had a strong attachment to your mother
– You had a strong attachment to your father
– Your parents were frank with you about sex
– Your childhood punishment was infrequent and mild
– You have an expectant, positive attitude toward sex that is free from disgust or distaste.

Even if all of these factors are negative, you can still build a good marriage. But you will have to work harder and be more careful when choosing a partner and mate.

8. Good Marriages need to have these five types of love:
– Strong sex interest: strong erotic feelings for each other
– Respect and admiration: hold each other in high regard
– Friendship and fellowship: have many things in common
– Self-giving devotion: love in spite of each other’s faults
– Affection: a shoulder to cry on when our burdens are too heavy to bear alone.

Men and women alike are staying single much longer than before. Many enter into relationships that last a few months to maybe a year. Sometime after that year mark, they get an itch to return to single life before entering the next relationship. It’s a vicious cycle.

It may be an issue of personal beliefs concerning marriage, family have changed. As a society, we no longer adhere to the old beliefs that say we must settle down and begin a family soon after high school or college.

Now we know it’s ok to take an extra ten years or more after high school to be selfish and enjoy our youthful, single days. These are the days that we cherish. These are the days that we will look back on with little to no regrets.

When we do finally decide to settle down, after meeting that one special woman or man, we won’t feel an ounce of guilt associated with not having had enough fun in our younger days.

After we decide that settling down with that one special person, many of us have a hard time ditching the traits of single life. One of those being the ability to tell your closest friends EVERYTHING.

It can be difficult for some to get adjusted to being in a serious relationship. When you are just dating, it is not uncommon to talk to your friends – and to ‘kiss and tell.’ This is especially true for women. Whether it is the first date with a new man, the first kiss, the first passionate encounter or the first sexual encounter, women pick up the phone and describe, in detail, every second of the encounter to our best of friends.

All women are guilty!

Once you are in a serious relationship, this is one of those habits that needs to be tucked away with all those memories and habits of single days gone by.

You may wonder why? Why shouldn’t you have a special friend that that you can tell everything to?

Actually, you should. And that person should be your significant other, not your friends. Now that you have decided to be in that serious relationship, it becomes very, very important to keep all matters concerning your relationship between you and your partner.

One reason is very simply respect. Eventually you and your lover will develop the deepest bond. You will share things about yourselves which you assume will be kept confidential. It is not fair if you expect your partner to keep certain things between you two while you turn to your friends. You must respect the privacy of your lover.

Another reason is you will eventually encounter a few quarrels. It is in our common nature to seek out friends and discuss with them our private relationship spats to gain approval from them.

We all want to feel justified that we are in the right, and our partner is the wrong one. Sharing details may make you feel better for a bit, but that could end up being very short lived. First of all, your friends are only hearing one side of the story. Your friends are biased, of course they are going to stand behind you.

What happens then? You may feel the need to let your lover that all of your friends agree with you. Then you can mark yourself BUSTED!

Your partner now knows that you have been sharing your own dirty laundry with others. It is not fair to your partner and it will make matters worse. This will eventually lead to distrust. And everyone knows a lack of trust is an absolute downfall of every relationship in which it enters.

Whatever happens in your relationship should stay between you and your partner.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule – and that’s what you were hoping for, right.

If you are in an emotionally or physically abusive relationship, you need to seek help elsewhere and from family and friends.

Or

If you just have a problem that has been digging at you for far too long, sometimes it just makes sense to seek help from friends, as long as you urge them to keep it confidential.

But in a very normal sense of a relationship, your everyday issues should be worked out between you and your love, not you and your entire circle of friends.

If you must share details, only divulge positive information. If your partner brings you flowers, tell the world! If they lover forgot your birthday, there is no need to share the details – all of your friends will think your lover as a jerk, and that’s a tough mess to clean up once the smoke clears.

Have you ever shared private information only to have it end badly? Do you think talking to your friends should be considered a breach in trust?

WASHINGTON POST – Apr 25 – More than twice as many couples who married last year met through online dating services than at a club or social event, according to a new survey by Match.com.

The survey found that 17% of those who married in the past three years met online, making it the third-most-frequent method of introduction, behind meeting through friends, at work or school.

A Harris Interactive poll sponsored by eHarmony found that only 9% of couples married that year were introduced through such services. (The Harris study claims that 2% of recently married American couples met through eHarmony.)

Full story @ Washington Post

You’d be hard pressed to find one person who doesn’t know someone who met their partner online. Just a quick message to my friends on Facebook returned overwhelming response as to how many of them met their spouse online or knew someone who did.

It’s growing more and more common and as experiences yield proper tips and suggestions to online dating habits, I think more and more people are willing to take that plunge.

This week, Match.com is celebrating 15 years of helping singles find love online with survey results confirming their position as a leader in the industry.

Match.com recently completed a study of 11,000 people over a five year period, which concluded that one in six marriages took place between people who met through an online dating site. That comes out to 17% of couples who married during this period.

The Chadwick Martin Bailey study on online dating trends looked at three areas: Marriage, Online Dating, and a General Survey.

“The world has changed,” said Greg Blatt, CEO of Match.com. “We get married older, we work longer hours, we move around more, we’re generally busier. These changes have put pressure on the way we traditionally have met our significant others. Luckily, with these changes has come an increasing openness to doing new things. Online dating has grown so much in part as a response to these societal changes, having become the third most important way we meet our significant others, even though it didn’t even exist 15 years ago.”

Match.com launched on April 21, 1995. The original membership was only $9.95/month. Currently a one-month membership to Match runs $34.99. According to Match, more than 20,000 singles register on their site in the U.S. every single day.

The Match Online Dating survey conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey shows a definite shift where more singles are meeting their spouses online than at bars, social clubs, and churches or places of worship.

The Match study also revealed that members have gone on twice as many dates as members of other online dating sites.

Match launched Match Mobile last year and recently added an Android application to their service offerings.

Today, everyone knows someone who has met a romantic interest online. Do you?

In fact, I met my love of over a year online – my mother and stepfather met online and have been married for 10 years. I know it can happen, because I’ve seen it and lived it!

To read details of their findings, visit Match.com

When I was growing up, it seemed like the perfect age for people to settle down was 25.  The older I got, the more that age and opinion changed.  While my opinion has changed, I still believe there is a magic number that people should shoot for as far as striving to achieve a certain level of maturity.  Maybe not so much to settle down, get married and have children – but to reach a level of maturity where they can take full responsibility for their own lives.

There are several people I know who are 30 plus years old, can’t balance a checkbook – can’t figure out why they are always overdrawn, have credit collectors calling day and night and are living paycheck to paycheck.

What do you think?  Is there a magic age by which people should be “ready” to settle down if the opportunity arises?

In a recent study, entitled "What’s Love Got to Do With It," nearly 2,500 couples were tracked. Couples that were either married or living together. From 2001 to 2007 factors associated with those who remained together compared with those who divorced or separated were identified.

Some findings included:

A husband who is nine or more years older than his wife is twice as likely to get divorced, as are husbands who get married before they turn 25.

One-fifth of couples who have kids before marriage — either from a previous relationship or in the same relationship — having separated compared to just nine percent of couples without children born before marriage.

Women who want children and are with partners who desire children less are also more likely to get a divorce.

Some 16 percent of men and women whose parents ever separated or divorced experienced marital separation themselves compared to 10 percent for those whose parents did not separate.

Partners who are on their second or third marriage are 90 percent more likely to separate than spouses who are both in their first marriage.

Up to 16 percent of respondents who indicated they were poor or where the husband — not the wife — was unemployed saying they had separated, compared with only nine percent of couples with healthy finances.

Couples where one partner, and not the other, smokes are also more likely to have a relationship that ends in failure.

Factors found to not bear great significance on separation risk included the number and age of children born to a married couple, the wife’s employment status and the number of years the couple had been employed.

The study was jointly written by Dr Rebecca Kippen and Professor Bruce Chapman from The Australian National University, and Dr Peng Yu from the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

One of the best sex and relationship columnists going, Dan Savage at Nerve responded to a gal the other day who was asking about engagement – talking engagement and moving in together.

You were discussing marriage at three months?

The fact that he would bring up marriage so early, and the fact that you didn’t laugh in his face, disqualifies you both from obtaining a marriage license. (Okay, it doesn’t — but it should.) Three months — eight months, sixteen months — is way too soon to be discussing marriage. Sure, you can allow yourself to be swept away by new love, you can crush out on each other, you can sheepishly admit that you’ve allowed yourself to daydream about marriage — so long as that admission is immediately followed by this statement: “But I realize it’s way too soon to even think about it seriously…” But you absolutely, positively should NOT be making plans to marry, small ceremonies or large, courthouse or St. Paul’s Cathedral, at eight f**king months; nor should you attempt to hold him — or anyone else — to a premature “commitment” to wed.

I’ll give – three months is awfully quick to be discussing marriage. Though I’ve been there, done that. I had a man want to put a ring on my finger in mere weeks – but I think that was more of a territorial thing than an “engagement” thing – but 16 months is far too long in my opinion.

I’ve always believed a year is a good timeframe to work with before becoming engaged or getting married. This allows the couple to process through all four seasons – you can see how your partner maneuvers through those seasons, observe the activities they enjoy during those times – how they handle the holidays – how they handle meeting your extended family and much more.

That’s not to say there are some relationships that can withstand an early engagement and commitment – because I know couples who married after a couple months of dating – and they’re still together 20+ years later.

As long as you’ve weathered some of the best and worst of times – seen each other at both worst and best, survived a long trip away together and have endured a crisis or two – then you might just have what it takes to endure marriage for the long haul.

It’s important that each person is honest about finances too. That being the biggest relationship killer – don’t ever expect love to be strong enough to survive a surprise credit score that hinges on the side of despair.