Love is based on a well-rounded knowledge of a person’s strengths and weaknesses. It’s hardly surprising, then, that love is much more than a feeling. Love is, among other things, “long-suffering and kind. . . . It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” And love makes a person act in these ways based on knowledge—not on credulity or ignorance.

Take stock of your feelings first, try examining your feelings coolly and objectively. He that is trusting in his own heart is stupid. Why? Because all too often the judgment of our heart is misguided. And what feels like love often turns out to be something else. I needed someone to love me and care for me. From childhood I’ve never received love. That affected me deeply. If you come from an unloving or abusive family environment, you may likewise feel a hunger for love and recognition. But is a romantic relationship necessarily the cure?

Unfortunately, people who feel empty and lonely often make poor marriage mates. They enter matrimony expecting to get what they feel they so desperately need. However, true happiness comes from giving, not getting. And a woman is far better equipped to handle marriage if she feels reasonably good about herself and ‘keeps an eye, not in personal interest upon just her own matters, but also in personal interest upon those of others.’

When you feel under pressure to get married, you can easily overreact to any attention from the opposite sex. Sometimes a woman’s desire for romance is nurtured by friends and family. Some societies put great emphasis on a girl’s marrying as soon as she is of marriageable age if a woman nears thirty and is still single, she becomes the object of great concern to her family. Because family honor is involved, a father may try to marry off his daughters as young as possible.

Nevertheless, I would urge people to wait until they are “past the bloom of youth” before marrying. So, what if you feel your friends or parents are putting undue pressure on you to marry. Perhaps expressing yourself in a similarly firm way would bring results, especially if your parents are still together.