The first step in loving someone is learning to listen to them. If you don't want to listen to them then how do you expect them to want to listen to you! listening to each other is the most valuable thing you can add to any relationship.
Being in love does not mean that someone is perfect, it simply means you accept them just the way they are with all their failures and stupidities, cause we are not perfect either!
Love is way more than a contract between two people, it is a construction that compels the participants to go beyond narcissism. For tough love that we must reinvent itself.
Love never dies a natural way. It dies because we don't know how to reply its source and how to appreciate each other. It dies of illness and wounds, it dies of weariness. It dies of mistakes and blindness and betrayals.