Foojan Zeine
Contemporary media throughout the world promotes the promise of a life of “happily ever after” with a significant other, as if acquiring the relationship is paramount in the couple’s life together. Courtship is treated as if it is the state where couples sufficiently acquire the necessary skills to sustain their relationship. It appears that many couples who are blinded by love, often find themselves stung by cupid’s arrow and startled by a rude awakening–a happily ever after marriage demands time, attention, and multiple skills from both partners. The lack of “staying power” in marriage by one or both partners is a fact supported by statistics that reveal some harsh realities about the state of marriage in the 21st Century. This report addresses the multidimensional topic of love to lay a foundation leading to an investigation designed to explore the trustworthiness of Awareness Integration Therapy (AIT) as a credible approach to couples therapy. The “theories of love,” are explored by defining love, and suggesting approaches for sustaining love in relationships with the goal of achieving lasting love through marital longevity. A proposed investigation that focuses on the phases a therapist uses when following AIT with a couple is suggested to explore AIT. There is strong anecdotal evidence from members of the field of clinical psychology that AIT has the potential to advance the field of psychology in couples therapy. These validations from marriage psychologists are based on numerous case reports highlighting AITs contribution to couples for sustaining marital satisfaction and thus longevity.