Finding the Love of Your Life—Part Three

Rick Warren opens with a blunt observation: the number one cause of conflict in marriage, when you boil everything down, is selfishness. "Conflict comes because I want what I want, you want what you want. We're both selfish, and neither one of us are willing to budge." From that starting point, he builds a case that the qualities people typically look for in a spouse—appearance, sexual attraction, the thrill of being noticed—are precisely the wrong things to prioritize. Instead, he argues, the Bible offers a clear set of non-negotiable character traits that predict whether a marriage will thrive or collapse.

The five warning signs

Warren lays out five character flaws that should be dealbreakers when considering a spouse. The first is uncontrolled anger. The second is addiction. The third is bitterness—"a bitter person is a miserable person to live with," he says, and they make everyone around them miserable too. The fourth is selfishness, which he calls the root of all marital conflict. "The more unselfish I am, then the more we're going to get along," he explains. "The more unselfish you're going to be because it responds back to each other."