Firstly, be content with yourself or start sprucing and grooming yourself up and don't wait for the world to approve of you. Love yourself. True love is not dependent upon our acquiring some level of success or measuring up to some standard of worthiness. The confidence you will gain will ultimately lead you to experience the satisfaction of loving a person and knowing that you are loved in return.

Secondly, see to it that you do not threaten your partner's comfort, security or self esteem. Do not expect your spouse to change his/her personality for you. Acceptance and dependence should be the key words. It is also curious how we want to be loved forever despite our absurdities in characters, yet we shall never overlook another's. So, learn not only to love yourself but also your 'significant' other for what he/she is. It will help if you do not delve upon what you have given but what you have received. It's for the two of you to become one and achieve together and exist as a couple. Marriage was never designed to bend to our individual purposes. That's a counterfeit of the real thing. Marriage is the God-given opportunity to live out love and commitment to another human being for a lifetime.

Marriage is a testimony of contentment in the midst of chaos and loneliness. It offers a soothing calmness and makes you forget the chaotic world around, at the same time offering you solace, comfort and companionship in an otherwise empty life. Always share your dreams and ambitions, desires and wishes with each other. A dream shared is a dream half fulfilled. We must turn our obsession to satisfy ourselves into love for others. One can maintain the cultural value of individualism; recognize the beauty and blessing of shared life without being hopelessly dependent by understanding the real meaning of the concept of 'personal' space.

The greatest rule in a good marriage is personal space. The more you respect each other's need for privacy, the closer you shall come. Distance does not mean ignoring one another, but not prying into everything of the other. When you give each other enough space, the question of restricting or limiting the other's lifestyle does not arise. A few changes in your ideologies and a little compromise now and then will only make you happier.

Contentment, the most powerful tool leading to eternal peace, is a virtue not everybody is blessed with. It can be achieved only through patience and faith in the institution of marriage. Marriage is like clay in our hands, what we mould it into has nothing to do with the clay, but with the person who is holding it.

Marriage is a process of continuous growth and not restriction. You keep growing, single to couple and then become a family, all the while remaining one at heart.