Love Can Last: A Common Sense Guide to Relationships

By Sterling Hearns

Don't wait for your relationship to be in shambles before you seek relationship assistance. By reading Love Can Last, you and your partner will be able to get on the same page and succeed in your relationship. This book will even help couples that already have a good relationship.

When we grow up, there is no relationship 101. We have to learn about relationships from watching our parents and their risky, trial-and-error approach. When we choose our partners, we are essentially taking a gamble that they are the one with whom we belong. By loving them we are gently placing our heart, mind, body, and soul in their hands. We can only hope that they will love and respect us enough to keep us safe from unnecessary heartache and stress. We can better prepare them for handling our emotions if we prepare ourselves for how we want to interact with our partner.

This book will help you and your partner get on the same page in your relationship. These important topics in Love Can Last will help shift your perspective, so that each of you can take more responsibility for the way that your relationship works. Both partners have the power to steer the relationship clear of the pitfalls that lead straight to divorce. By reading Love Can Last, you will be able to incorporate key elements into your relationship that will help you get through tough times and strengthen the foundation of your relationship, making you stand stronger together for many years to come. By realizing that God is there for you both and to help keep others from interfering in your relationship, you will stand united in your quest to keep your partner happy. If you can forget about the concept that a relationship is 50-50 and give 100 percent to your partner, you will see a huge difference with how you treat each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477271339

Sterling Hearns

Sterling Hearns is married and lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He has a daughter and two grandchildren. He has counseled couples and individuals since high school in the early 1980s. He has spent over thirty years talking to couples and individuals and learning about couples’ interactions. Through his extensive experience and knowledge of resources, he has earned the title of relationship mentor. He is both passionate about and dedicated to helping couples learn about each other and helping them better understand their partners. Hearns is an entrepreneur. He has been a DJ and a computer technician for over twenty years. He started a gel candle company with his wife in 2011. He is president of the nonprofit organization Strategies for Family Development, which was founded in 2009. This organization is setting up programs to help children and young adults get fit, get healthy, and learn about proper nutrition. Hearns has pledged 20 percent of all of this book’s profits to help Strategies for Family Development become successful in aiding as many young people as possible. He is currently working on his second relationship book and hopes to help reduce the divorce rate in America one couple at a time.

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© 2012 by Sterling Hearns. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV®

Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™

Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/30/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7134-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7132-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7133-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920488

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

My Dedications

Introduction

1 My Life’s Lesson

2 Compromise Is Key

3 How to Choose a Partner

4 Trust is the Glue of a Marital Foundation

5 Where Are All of the Good Men?

6 Disagreements Size Up Your Relationship

7 Actions and Reactions

8 Characteristics and Qualities

9 What Is love?

10 Staying Connected

11 Kids: Friends or Foe?

12 Change Is Inevitable

13 Fulfill Your Role in Your Relationship

14 Other Women and Your Man

15 Valentine’s Day

16 Sex and Marriage

17 Fantasy

18 You Decide

Conclusion

MY DEDICATIONS

When you think about heroes, people seem to have different definitions of what that means exactly. For me, I believe that heroes come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders. So, I have decided to dedicate my book to my personal heroes. I believe that one definition of a hero is a person that positively influences another person’s thoughts, feelings, or actions, either directly or indirectly enabling that individual to become a better person. Don’t misunderstand me, my outside heroes are our military personnel who fight for us on a daily basis, our teachers who also wage battle every day to teach our children in stressful situations for little pay, and our policeman and firemen who risk their lives every day to keep us all safe. I say thank you to all of you individuals for all of your efforts. This book is being dedicated to all of the people who have influenced me on a very personal level. It is because of you that I wrote this book.

To my wife, Patricia Hearns, who is my fuel in life, for keeping me going and for making me want to be a better man every single day. Thank you for being my ultimate partner in life. For you, my dear, I am dedicated to your happiness.

To my Father, Allen Hearns, who taught me more things than I could ever list about being a man and whom, although he has passed, continues to live through me and who keeps me strong in facing the world. To my Mother, Juanita Hearns, who has always been there for me and has always encouraged me to not only dream, but to dream big. To my daughter, Rayna Hearns, who by her mere presence in this world, has kept me focused and goal-oriented so that I may give her someone to look up to, setting the standards for her future life path. Thank you my precious.

To Oprah Winfrey who through her passion for people, sincerity, and generosity has made me want to live up to her standards. To Ellen DeGeneres for her smile, laughter, and dancing, for her love of her job, for her determination to be on the cover of O Magazine, and her accomplishment of that significant goal. To Steve Harvey who has brought me many years of laughter and whose accomplishment of writing his relationship book has inspired me to complete my own. Finally, to Whoopi Goldberg who, for all of these years, has remained true to herself and has been one of the most grounded individuals that I have ever seen. She has inspired me to be the same.

INTRODUCTION

The way we humans are created, relationships are as natural as breathing. Because relationships are so natural to us, we tend to take them for granted much in the same way that we do breathing. Often when our relationships don’t seem to be working out, we quickly move on to the next relationship just as quickly as we move on to our next breath of air. God didn’t intend for us to treat our relationships with such little regard. In fact, he wants us to put as much into our partners as we do ourselves. The whole idea is to join together as one flesh to become whole. You do that by connecting with your partner in heart, mind, body, and soul. Connecting with your partner in heart, mind, body, and soul is a huge goal. Figuring out how to get that done eludes many of us. One way is to always try to learn more and more about the person that you are with. Often, once we get with someone, we stop learning about each other and therefore stop growing as a couple. We begin to focus on our work, children, and finances.

In three, five, or ten years down the road we no longer feel the connection or intimacy we had when we first got together. We start to feel like roommates who started a journey together a few years back. There are many keys to having a successful relationship. One of those keys is love. Not man love, but godly or unconditional love. We tend to throw the word love around far too loosely. When God refers to his love for us, it has a deep spiritual meaning. It is not the same as when we say we love hotdogs, baseball, or apple pie. We also tend to blurt it out in desperation in efforts to get what we want from one another. A good solid foundation is an important key to the success of our relationship. Throughout the course of this book, I will discuss a number of ways to maintain a strong, successful, and ever-growing relationship.

1

MY LIFE’S LESSON

A lot of people ask me how I got started as a relationship mentor. For that answer I will have to take you back over thirty years ago. When I was a sophomore in high school I got kicked out of school. To make a long story a little bit shorter, I