One way of avoiding this is by growing up with each other, learning to know each other and growing together through the years in a friendship which will, inevitably, blossom into love. But all of us are not given that opportunity. Most of us rarely settle down in one place for a long period of years, long enough at least to begin a friendship with a future lover. We must seek for love "on the jump" as it were. There is but one solution to this important problem and that is an attempt at a common understanding. You must sit down with yourself, alone and start a conversation with yourself. First you must forget entirely about love. You must strip away everything romantic about your affair with the person with whom you think yourself to be in love. Bring your love down to earth. Then, when you have done this, ask yourself these questions:
Can he take care of me after marriage?
What are his faults?
Can I tolerate those faults?
What are his virtues?
Do the virtues compensate for his faults?
Frankly, few people are strong enough to divorce themselves entirely from love.
They will not answer these questions truthfully. This treatise on the art of love was written only to
direct the way. It cannot force people into the right path. And people, being what they are, will follow the dictates of their hearts rather than their brains. They will suffer. They will be burned. Some of them will come out unhurt. While others will emerge from a lost love embittered, soul-scarred and cursing love, love which they never really experienced.
