A Serious Contemplation...

Love is a funny thing...
I don't think you can help who you are in love with. No one can. It is something that is either there or it is not. Other factors don't seem to take precedent over this feeling and the heart usually wins over the head. I have been asking both married women and women who have been divorced what love is and what makes a marriage work. All have said "You just know." The divorced people say that they knew in their heart that it was not right and would not work before they even walked down the aisle. I wondered if they thought that in retrospect but after accidently saying that out loud they answered that you know in your heart if it is wrong or right at the time. The ones that are married say that it is incredibly hard and it takes a lot of effort to keep a marriage alive and well. You need to have the love but there are so many other factors to take into consideration. I think in this day in age where divorce is so prevalent it makes it hard to make decisions about marriage. People seem to wait longer and longer to tie the knot and are far more contemplative about their potential mate thinking of all possible factors and making list upon list of positive and negative attributes. (Maybe this is just me??)
A common thing for people to do in modern times like these is select their dates on the internet. You get a list of their basic traits which include height, eye and hair color and even religion. You see if they have been married before or have had children with anyone else. Is this how you should meet someone? Is it possible that fate is a myth and a computer can play cupid?!?!? Fearful of making a mistake, I tend to overanalyze things and feel that I can not just listen to my heart but think down the road to the hardships that may or may not occur. I have talked with single people, people in relationships(both long and short term) and people that are married. Every person has a different story, different set of obstacles and different views on love and how relationships should be run. A friend of mine told me that an old lady she worked with(who had been married almost 70 years) told her that the secret to a long marriage is strength. Each person individually has to be strong enough to carry the other through the times when they fall out of love. This is reminiscent of "Footsteps" where the man thinks that he has been abandoned and God tells him that the times he saw one set of footprints in the sand was not because he was left alone...they were the times when he carried him. One person must always have enough love for both of them or it will not work.Each will undoubtedly fall in and out of love with the other throughout a lifetime together. I have concluded that there is no right thing to do and no cut and dry answers when it comes to love which poses a problem for me as I do not like to take risks. I want to be assured that everything will be perfect... but life is not perfect nor are relationships. Is love enough to make things work? Does the heart dictate a smooth marriage? In order to love someone completely you have to be able to forgive, compromise, compliment, apologize and above all respect that person for who they are and what they stand for. In addition to love...acceptance, respect and understanding are the key attributes.True love will encompass all of these things. Are we ever assured that we will not encounter problems of such magnitude that it forces us to give up on that person? My conclusion is there will never be that assurance but love does conquer all and it is the strongest of any human emotion. Love is all you have in life. Everyone inherently wants to love and to be loved. I am finally putting caution to the wind and shutting off my analytical side and will begin to finally succumb to this idea. If not I will surely end up alone with my bottle of wine sitting on my afghan covered couch surrounded by cats like Bridget Jones(in the first movie of course ;)