Every year the divorce rate creeps higher and higher. In today's society it might seem that marriage is taken too lightly. At one time marriage meant a life time commitment for better or worse. We are making hasty decisions about something that will affect us for the rest of our lives. Then when we hit the first little bump we jump ship.

So with the risk of a short marriage that will end in divorce how are we to know what we have found is love. I think there are all kinds of love in our life, but not all of these types of love will withstand the ups and downs of a marriage. Unfortunately as much as I love the Beatles Love is not all you need.

First before you can begin to even think about finding love and marriage you need to know yourself and love yourself. You can not expect someone else to come along and make you happy and solve your problems. Life is unexpected there will be good times and bad. You need to be able to stand up and face that on your own. Even in a good marriage there will be times in which you will have to face some problems on your own. You will have your partners love and support, but they can not always do everything for you.

You need to accept your own faults and know that the person you love will have faults of their own as well. There is no perfect man or woman on this earth. You need to know what you are willing to live with and what you can not. As much as you may love the person can you imagine having to deal with their faults for the rest of you life. It will not always be as good as it is now. There may be times when money is supper tight. There will be unexpected illnesses, troubles with the children, and so on. Life is stressful and not always picture perfect.

Friendship is a key quality in a relationship. Friends fight, they laugh, they cry, but in the end they are always there for each other. Everyone knows that when they have a problem they can't figure out they go to their friends for help. Why would you not want this quality in a love?

I wish there was a test that you could take that proved real love. Unfortunately we often think we are in love and are making some of the biggest mistakes of our life. It is usually when you are standing in the aftermath that you realize that it is not love.

I have been with my soon to be husband for over three years now. We have been through so real rough patches. A year after we met he had to have two surgeries to remove parts of his digestive tract due to a ruptured colon. He had to have an ileostomy. Which for those who do not know means they had cut a hole in his abdomen and leave a few inches of his lower intestine out. He now uses the bathroom in an adhesive medical bag attacked to his side.

He has Crohn's disease we knew this was a possibly, but was one he did not wish to have happen. It was a difficult time for us. This was a big blow to his self esteem. He believes for a long time that I would leave him because of this. He would make me so mad, but I knew that I needed to show him patience and understanding. What he was going through was difficult and he was not going to act the same as he did before the surgery.

The point is that life is unexpected and sometimes it is difficult to prepare for everything that it brings. There have been many times in our relationship that I have wanted to leave for one thing or another. I have yet to do so because no matter how bad life is for us the thought of waking up the next morning with out he kills me. As crazy as our life has been every time I have hit my limit he has come to me and worked things out.

It will not be easy, nothing worth anything ever is. Only you will know if it really is a love worth working on. There is no such thing as happily ever after.