Around the globe and across the ages, philosophers and poets have been considered experts on the subject and have written more about love than anyone else, yet they repeatedly contradict one another in hopelessly irreconcilable terms. Some call love “a sickness full of woes” and “a mighty pain” while others assure us that love is a “many splendored thing” and “the sweetest delight of earth”

Falling in love can certainly be a tremendous joy. From the Buddhist view, however, the blissful expectations and intense feelings of rapture we associate with love are not true love but the symptoms of love-mere illusions. And as with all illusions, they can vanish as quickly as they appear.

Our collective love affair with illusion plays itself out in the reality that 60 percent of marriages collapse, regardless of the dramatic and oft-spoken vow “till death do us part” include the number of other long term relationships that fail, such as common law and gay partnerships, and it’s enough to make us wonder what has happened, or hasn’t happened, to create such puzzling state of affairs in this thing called love.

Yep, that is right, your actions, your thoughts not those of your partners, are what determine your success in love as well as in all other areas of your life. That knowledge is powerfully freeing, for no longer are you reliant on others for your happiness. You alone direct the course of your love and life and attract happiness on your own terms.