Everybody wants to know how to find that true love, but what about finding it and keeping the love while raising children? So far, our love has endured the true test of time, from building and then losing a dream house together, to the trials and tribulations of raising boys in “Paradise”.

After watching writer Mandy Len Catron’s video on TED it came to me that the subject of my blog, and perhaps my book, should be on whether it is possible to make true love last, especially after having children.

Len Catron spoke about Psychologist Arthur Aaron’s theory that thirty-six specific questions plus four minutes of sustained eye contact is a recipe for falling in love, or at least creating intimacy among complete strangers. Finding the questions online she proposed to test it out with an acquaintance of hers, and guess what? They fell in love.

When posting her story she did not consider how viral a topic “finding the key to love” would be, she also did not foresee the problems that would arrive when exposing she and her boyfriend’s relationship to hundreds of thousands of people. Mandy became disillusioned by that attention and concerned that people were more interested in how long her love would last rather than what the key ingredient was to making that love last.

This gave me pause with great reflection in the days before our 17th anniversary. Having had our oldest boy for one year almost to the day after our wedding day, the ebb and flow of our love has always been vulnerable to financial stressors, societal obstacles, and natural forces that get thrown our way at any unexpected moment, toss in three boy babies that morph into dirty, rambunctious, awkwardly cool teens looking like adults on the outside but on the inside the frontal lobes are formed only enough for them to take risks with their lives, and you have the makings of indeterminable disaffection, love gone sour.

Ultimately, it is best if we are not experiencing the pressures of life at the same time so that one can hold the torch and be that grounding force while the other slips off to crumble, twitch and hover in some dark place until ready to grab the hand that is being reached out and get coaxed back through humor, understanding and a whole lotta of love, petting and affection.

If I were to talk about the key ingredients, I would say that it all has to do with having a mutual respect for one another and treating each other with as much love and tenderness as possible, and with great integrity. Admittedly, I have my moments when I let my mind wander to thinking about how life could be different, easier, had I met somebody who was more my mentor than my equal, who was the same religion as me, and who had a whole lot more money. Ultimately though, having a magnetic attraction to one another and the ability to make each other laugh hard when the chips are down, not to mention having an unadulterated loyalty, is what has kept us together (in the end, the answer is….sex!)

As with everything, our world has opened up so completely by having children, but it is one heck of a payoff.