Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Love Can Last

AuthorHouse

Contents

Introduction....................................................11 My Life's Lesson..............................................32 Compromise Is Key.............................................113 How to Choose a Partner.......................................154 Trust is the Glue of a Marital Foundation.....................215 Where Are All of the Good Men?................................276 Disagreements Size Up Your Relationship.......................337 Actions and Reactions.........................................418 Characteristics and Qualities.................................479 What Is love?.................................................5110 Staying Connected............................................5711 Kids: Friends or Foe?........................................6112 Change Is Inevitable.........................................6913 Fulfill Your Role in Your Relationship.......................7314 Other Women and Your Man.....................................7715 Valentine's Day..............................................8116 Sex and Marriage.............................................8517 Fantasy......................................................8918 You Decide...................................................95Conclusion......................................................101

Chapter One

A lot of people ask me how I got started as a relationship mentor. For that answer I will have to take you back over thirty years ago. When I was a sophomore in high school I got kicked out of school. To make a long story a little bit shorter, I decided to return to school and graduate instead of just getting a G.E.D. When I returned, I was then two years older than the rest of my classmates. I guess that I appeared to be older and wiser than others so people started coming to me with their problems at school. People came to me with problems about their school work, being bullied, their home lives, and their relationships. I guess it was then that I realized that I had a natural gift of listening to others. I was kind of happy that other students trusted and respected my thoughts and opinions. I continued listening to people everywhere I went from then on. I still do the same today, although it is now with more knowledge and experience than in high school. There was a turning point that made me even more serious about helping people. I call it "My Life's Lesson."

My precious daughter was born pretty much right after I graduated high school. I got married and started working multiple jobs to support my family. I worked at a hospital in the cafeteria, where I saw and talked to a lot of individuals. I remember one day talking to a guy who was a nurse recruiter. He informed me that male nurses were in extremely high demand and that if I were to become a nurse, I would likely be able to name my salary to work in the top hospitals where male nurses were needed. I then set my sights on becoming a nurse and returned to school. I changed my job to working in nursing homes to get experience with patients. Of course there were mostly women working there, so I had tons of women who wanted to talk to me about their relationships. I started at the nursing home as a certified nurse's assistant. Once I obtained that certification, I knew that I wanted to move to the next level and went to college and also obtained a certification as a phlebotomist. I worked at a hospital as a phlebotomist while I continued my coursework with a goal of making it into a nursing program. When I worked at the hospital, there were tons of women who talked to me about their relationships there too.

With two full time jobs, I began my prerequisites for nursing in college. One of my first required classes was Chemistry. Now I have to be honest here and let you all know that since I had been away from high school for so long, I was taking on two full time jobs, and was trying to tackle college at the same time, I knew it would be rough. In fact, when I opened my chemistry book for the first time, I got an immediate headache. I became dizzy after looking at the periodic table! I got through chemistry with a D and English composition 1 was a breeze. I can write in my sleep (which sometimes I actually had to do). I wasn't happy with that D in chemistry, I felt like I was cheating myself because I knew that I was a better student than that.

The next semester, I took anatomy and physiology along with psychology. Because I worked two full time jobs and went to school, I was rarely on time for class. I was usually only a few minutes late.

One day I arrived to my psychology class a few minutes late and the class had started an exercise that separated the students into four groups. When I walked into the classroom our instructor placed me with one of the groups and the students started trying to figure out how we were going to exclude someone from our group because of their difference from the rest of the group. I really just sat there and let them decide who we were going to exclude since I rolled in late. Once we had all decided on one individual to exclude from our group, our instructor asked us all to leave the classroom for fifteen minutes and leave the excluded individuals behind in the classroom.

As we walked out of the classroom our instructor set up four desks in front of the room and facing the chalkboard next to her desk. Each of the four excluded students took a seat in one of those desks. After fifteen minutes had passed, we all returned to the classroom and the four individuals were still in those four desks, but were now facing the rest of the students. Our instructor then repeated her instructions for this exercise. She said, "I told you all that I wanted you all as a group to select one individual that was significantly different from your group and exclude them from your group. You all decided to choose these four individuals from your group and now I want someone from each group to explain why you all chose the individual that you did." One group told her that they selected their person because they were the only one wearing shorts in their group. Another group said they chose their person because that individual was the only one with braces in their group. Another group said that they chose their person because they were the only one with freckles in their group. Our group said that they chose our person because they were clearly much older than the rest of us.

After a long pause and a pretty disgusted and shameful look from our instructor, she let us in on what the excluded individuals went through with her as we were on a celebrated fifteen minute break from class. She said, "I did my best to torture these individuals by scraping my nails on the chalkboard and slamming their desks with books and my ruler. I also took time to squeal in each of their ears. After we all looked horrified and amazed that she would do something like that to people, she let us know that they endured that treatment because we decided to exclude them from our group thereby, discriminating against them because they were a little different from us. The things that we excluded them for were not significant enough reasons for them to be excluded, and yet this is what people do to each other every day.

The students started complaining that she told us to do this and we were only following her orders to exclude someone. She reiterated that she...