Here are two things I found taking the long road, though: Applause is a quick fix. And love is an acquired taste.

We don't know how much we are capable of loving until the people we love are being taken away, until a beautiful story is ending.

The stuff it takes to be intimate is authenticity, vulnerability, and a belief that other people are about as good and bad as we are.

Sometimes the real bonding happens in conversations about nothing, Don," she said. "Sometimes being willing to talk about nothing shows how much we want to be with each other. And that's a powerful thing.

After all, to love somebody is to give them the power to hurt you, and nobody can hurt you if you're the only one writing the script.

If our identity gets broken, it affects our ability to connect. And I wonder if we're not all a lot better for each other than we previously thought. I know we're not perfect, but I wonder how many people are withholding the love they could provide because they secretly believe they have fatal flaws.

When writing their one-liners, many people fail to connect the problem, solution, and result. For instance: Many families struggle to spend time together, but at Acorn Family Camp, we solve the problem of boring summers so families create memories that last.

When I met couples whose marriages were thriving after thirty and forty years, none of them were riding an emotional roller coaster of passion and then resentment. Instead, they loved each other as an act of their conscious will. They were more in control of their love than their "love" was in control of them.

I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our buildings and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal, that we had eaten dinner with prostitutes, held them in our arms, opened up spare rooms for them, and loved them and learned from them.

But love doesn't control, and I suppose that's why it's the ultimate risk. In the end, we have to hope the person we're giving our heart to won't break it, and be willing to forgive them when they do, even as they will forgive us.

We're all amateurs when it comes to love and relationships.

The greater are our affections the deeper are our afflictions, and the more we love the more we have to weep.