6 tips to Finding & Maintaining a Loving Marriage

Asha Praver, author of Swami Kriyananda as We Have Known Him, has been married for more than 26 years and has been living in community for nearly 40 years.

"Everyone wants to have joyful relationships," Praver says. She will share specific tools for staying happy with ourselves and our partners.

Praver has provided 6 tips to Finding & Maintaining a Loving Marriage:

Respect. People talk a great deal about love, but over the long term, respect is more fundamental. As long as you have respect for your partner, you can always be friends. Once respect is lost, even friendship is hard to maintain. To respect someone is also an act of will.

Courtesy. Courtesy is not dishonesty or hypocrisy. It is simply treating the most important person in your life with the consideration and respect they deserve. It is shocking to see how often people treat their partner with a rudeness they would never show even a perfect stranger! Many arguments start from a simple lack of courtesy.

Unique Individuality. Your partner is a fully functioning human being with a karmic trajectory of their own that has to be fulfilled according to the unique flow of their energy. Don't just project upon your partner your idea of who they are and what they need. Whatever future you have together will be more harmonious if you make a deep and sincere effort to understand how your partner sees the world and why he or she may think whatever they are committed to is a good idea.

Be a Cheerleader. No one wants a teacher for a partner, not for the long haul. The relationship is too close to be a place of constant criticism and correction. Even silent, mental criticism gradually drains the joy out of being together. Don't be insincere. If you don't agree, you can express that disagreement, but kindly, carefully, and with respect for your partner's need to come to truth in his or her own way.

To Thy Own Self Be True. As long as you can do it cheerfully, support your partner in whatever he or she wants when it is only a matter of preference or opinion -- the color of the couch, where you take your vacation, hairdo, clothing style. But if principles are at stake -- including the principle of feeling valued as an individual in the relationship -- you must stand your ground -- respectfully, courteously, but firmly nonetheless. If you compromise your core values, you set in motion a dissonant wave that sooner or later will break your relationship into pieces.

Self-Honesty. Most difficulties in relationships are not really between the two people, but within each one individually. If you don't know yourself, if you aren't clear on your core values, fundamental needs, strengths, and limitations you will always be blaming your partner for unhappiness that is actually self-generated. The effort required to make a relationship successful is the energy and courage it takes to get to know yourself. The partner is the mirror in which you see your own reflection.

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