Marriage – the Dare to Love: Love – Relationship – Marriage

By Judy Cheng

As a veteran counselor in a marital introduction company, Judy Cheng aims at sharing some of the toughest experiences people encounter in their married lives; stories that are shared with tears, broken hearts, struggles, plights and pains, which unexpectedly, turn out to be lessons of strength and wisdom leading to hope.
Enlightened by the stories of people who have suffered immensely but who are also not intimidated by the hurt and loss, Judy tells those stories as ruthlessly as they actually are. Those are amazing stories of people keeping hope and faith alive despite being beaten badly time and again by that very thing called ‘love’. The book is an extraordinary journey of love and relationship that readers would find resonance, consolation, support and insight.
This book is inspired by real life couples.
To protect the privacy of all of the characters involved, all names, incidents, places, and organizations have been fictionalized.

“Some of Cheng’s advice is inspirational in tone; for example, regarding one’s choices on life, she writes that “open doors are everywhere. You only need to dare knock on them.” At another point, she sagely advises bickering couples to think of each other as fine works of art to appreciate and admire.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“She also includes several client case studies, which are the most memorable parts of the book. In one poignant anecdote, for instance, she describes how an abused woman bravely decided to look for love again.”
— Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Jun 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543756616

Judy Cheng

Judy Cheng has long been engaged in the job of marital introduction. She is married with two sons and currently resides in Hong Kong, where she continues to pursue her passion for writing. This is her first book.

Book preview

Marriage –

THE DARE TO LOVE

Love – Relationship – Marriage

Judy Cheng

42354.png

Copyright © 2020 by Judy Cheng.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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.

To protect the privacy of all of the characters involved, all names, incidents, places, and organizations have been fictionalized.

The book is not for entertainment or fun but about having you specifically look at your life. The book talks about something people would need in their lives. It is the value of the book so tremendously in line with everyone’s ideal value that justifies its existence and makes it worth reading. Whether or not you think you are good at or weak in the subject of love, relationship, and marriage, you have to deal with them in your life most of the time. Hence, this book is yours.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

Contents

Prologue

PART ONE

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

PART TWO

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

PART THREE

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

PART FOUR

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

For

the people who have once or twice suffered or experienced setbacks in the area of love, relationships, or marriage, I hope this book will help restore to them different levels of revitalization, making them feel revitalized enough to move forwards and go believe in love again. The book is for my two dearest sons Tommy and Simon. They mean the world to me, and I every day wish them a happy and healthy life. At the same time, the book is for the younger generations who are so fresh and ready to go through a new stage of love life with so little or even no experiences to start off. At last, I make a point of offering the book to my nephew and nieces who are also fledgling and starved of life experiences in terms of seeking love and going into marriage in the nearest future. I am hoping that this book with so many wisdoms bitterly gained in people’s experiences in tackling with love, relationship, and marriage will help all the above acquire more knowledge and skill in those areas, making them well prepared enough to embark on an amazing journey of a life of wonders—marriage.

Prologue

B ehind such a fiery mission of writing about such a specific topic that is so essential to everyone, especially to tell you some inevitability that is brutal in life, is a meaningful purpose of helping people, and I am emotional about it. My book is tough to read, but it will change your life. The book has life and soul nutritious enough to elevate your mentality and spirituality. In the book, I don’t utter many a life coach used jargon, but by offering you my many down-to-earth suggestions using my own simple words, you will find the content is more useful, practicable, and genuine.

Furthermore, I feel especially glad and blessed to be talking about what I believe is true. When what you talk is really what you believe, your words will be a lot more empowering, for it is all from your heart. And most importantly, you will have a strong desire to talk it out with confidence and conscience, strongly believing it will benefit the ones who are listening. I haven’t shirked writing the truest, the most concrete, the most specific, and the most meticulously detailed without giving any room for you to imagine or any shelter for you to flee. Be brave to take the book a read to acquire more knowledge about the nature of mankind and you will know more about yourself.

Part One

Chapter One

M any times, it would appear in our lives that we have to choose to adhere to either reason or love, and it turns out love is always chosen, amazingly so. Such a phenomenon doesn’t necessarily mean reasons are less important or powerful than love; instead, it only proves love is the most essential thing in our lives, making us more than willing to live with it. And the most amazing thing is when you adhere to love enough, you will finally find love is already a reason.

For a realist who would be fond of lending realism to everything, love will probably appear to him or her more of a reality. While it all depends, love is definitely more of a subject substantial enough in our human universe to be a course, urging every one of us to spend as much time as possible earnestly studying it through and through for life with the aim of making the world we live a better place.

Is love really good innately? Not exactly. It is great not because it is so but because it has to be—so great that it can help an couple in accepting each other’s weaknesses, in forgiving each other’s mistakes, and in tolerating each other’s many, many unexpected, unwelcome things which they can by no means discover from each other until going into marriage, sleeping on the same bed, and sharing a common dream. Without love being so great for them living in each other’s heart, the common dream they share from their kitchen to their bedroom will turn into a strange bedfellow, causing them to plunge into an abyss of pain and leaving each other the most painful chapter in life.

Many will consider love, originally, the easiest subject among others, posing on to our lives without us having to learn how to do it, for it is right for us to assume that we are born to love, and hate is just an uninvited guest that we have not sent an invitation to. With love seeming so granted to us from our mother once we are born, many of us will not see love as a learning subject and just assume we can gain whatever kind of love we want without learning it, confirming it is really granted. However, we cannot help but gradually and brutally come to realize that love is not only a learning subject but also the hardest one to learn. Furthermore, never attempt to make light of this subject while learning it, for it can easily turn your life upside down if you dare to mess up such a course.

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Don’t let the subject of love be your weakest spectrum, or you will only eventually be weak no matter how strong the rest of your other spectrums are.

In this instance, you may find love overwhelming when it can actually make waves in our lives, leaving in our minds happy memories as well as many a sad one and leading us a peaceful life as well as not a few tempestuous ones. And it can come and go arbitrarily without first obtaining our consent. It can play hide-and-seek with us where we will find it coming or going at a wrong time every time. However overwhelming love is, it cannot live without us.

Love is not a cuisine course cooked well for us to take but a lifetime course has us spend our whole life to learn. There is no graduation so to speak, but every day, a lesson starts.

Chapter Two

W ith love promising to lead us somewhere from nowhere, we will be not only a happier person but also a nicer and better one, and most importantly, from loving someone, we will have to give the best of ourselves. By doing so, we will get to know more about our weakness and find out what to improve. With improvement, the benefit will not only be on the self but also on the many others around us.

Many times, when love comes, we are very happy thinking we are going to have much to take, but we fail to realize that the true essence of love is giving. With giving, we will stand the most precious chance of exploring the mystery and beauty of love, while taking will only make you solid in form and hollow in substance.

Love speaks the language of giving, sharing, and experiencing and not a bit of possessing by taking. Since it is not a possession, it will go according to its own time. Don’t be sad when it goes even when you have given, shared, and experienced enough. Keep your heart tranquilly open, and love will come again without you expecting. Love will be on any doorstep with its door open. And when it comes again, it will only be better.

When love is not a possession, a husband never belongs to a wife, a wife never belongs to a husband, a son never belongs to a mother, and a daughter never belongs to a father. We learn that they are what they are, and we can only love them without thinking of them as possessions no matter how much we love them or need them. There are no strings attached in such a kind of love. We have to be wise enough to see that being able to love is already a reward.

Love is a gift that we have to give away but not take away, and it will come and go gracefully in our lives according to its own time. Be more than glad when love lives for a moment in our lives, for every moment of love will take our breath away, leaving the most unforgettable memories in our mind’s eye, which is one of the essential elements that render our lives the most beautiful and meaningful. To know more of love, we should have it come and go in our lives and treat it with utmost respect and admiration.

Love demands our absolute respect. When it comes, respect it first and then embrace it and celebrate it even if it will stay for only some moments in your life. Although not all the love will last forever, its memories will, and every single memory of true love will live on and on with us, melting the core of our hearts.

Love is nothing but a collection of memories.

Chapter Three

L ove—a mixed blessing—can bring out both the best and the worst of a person. Let love sincerely reveal the best and the worst of us because only love can do so.

While love is never scarce in a world of innocence, it is so in an adult world where there are many adults who used to brashly think they are the master and dominator of the human universe, they never know their brashness has unwittingly made them become complicated, worldly, and, separated from one another. Their inborn ingenuousness God bestows upon them, that is essential in terms of love, is thus and so distorted or even destroyed by them. Many or even all adults are lack of love. Such is the scarcity of love in the adult world that has all of us learn what we lack is not love but innocence and simplicity.

Ingenuousness is the key to spark love and save love.

Love is one of life’s essential fascinations. Despite that, it will also involve making sacrifices, leaving tears and broken hearts. Many will appear to be exceedingly happy when love comes, thinking there is someone going to love them. However, more often than not, it turns out to be the contrary, with the other person needing them to offer love. It more than easily not only upsets their hope but also relentlessly leads them to forfeit a potential loving relationship which stands a great chance of flowering and bearing fruit.

When many cannot even have someone to love in their lives and not know why, we have to find ourselves lucky and blessed when we can have someone to love. Go love him or her or them to the utmost, paying no regard to gain or loss, for gain or loss are ideas that the devil scornfully imposes upon us, causing us to forget what love is—literally an angel.

Love is how much you give and how beautiful and meaningful your life will be. And such a gift you offer will only unwittingly make you a happier and better person in which you will find no other stuffs in your life can have that power to do the same.

Love doesn’t need to go to the moon and back; instead, it only needs our enough effort in giving, leading it to go the farthest without limit. Love is an amazing element enriching our lives that gives us something to admire and appreciate and, at last, treasure. Once you have such an element and you have made enough effort, your life will be different forever.

Part Two

Chapter Four

W hile I have for years and years been working as a counsellor in a marital introduction company, every day, my very job has me offering my clients helpful advices, acting as a role of counsellor, and at the same time being a trusted bosom friend they can freely talk to without worries, providing them methods on how to survive the hardships that a two-sex relationship or others eventually face. I find I am being enlightened by them with the stories they tell. What’s more, sometimes, my eyes cannot help but be widely opened up with watching how deplorable and tempestuous the love path they could have struggled to live and go through.

Listening to their stories from time to time, I will, by proxy, get distressed in some ways, having me to admit that love can play different dramas in our lives dramatic enough to shift the landscape of our original lives, ushering us into a place where we didn’t belong before. Yeah, doubtless, love is absolutely a learning course having us learn and learn through and through for life.

With the expertise of being an experienced counsellor in a fully fledged marital introduction company for years, there are reasons for me to deeply believe that I can effortlessly handle the questions or problems love or relationships generate in any circumstances. However, I find I have to be humble enough to make ‘love’ as my major subject that I have to not only learn but also study, for I know a little learning is a dangerous thing, especially when I know I have to throw myself into a job of immense responsibility to the people who come to me.

But how do we learn or study a course which schools neglect to teach us when we were in the days of attending school? Yeah, love is a community course that we have to learn by ourselves without teachers tutoring us and without textbooks or researches where we can go get correct references. It is a real-life subject course that we have to attend on our own, with ourselves being our own teacher learning one lesson after another on and on and on non-stop. What’s more, there are tests every day with the aim of learning the practicality of learning by doing. As to the test, no one will ever get full marks since the mark of the test is based on a countdown-like system starting from full marks. What we have to do is try our utmost to avoid the full marks being reduced to zero or even negative, leading to debt that we may not afford to repay.

Such test is so grim that