What are the ingredients of a lasting marriage?
What are the ingredients of a lasting friendship?
It is honesty, trust, openness, patience, hope, humility and love
Honesty is the first principle; the first policy
Trust is the salt and the oil needed to eat the yam of friendship
Openness like trust is the engine room and fragrance
Humility maintains these engines and invigorates them
Patience is the safe-fall mechanism; a virtue
Hope is the expectation that all will be great
Anchored on the heptads that are there to manure the soil of friendship
Hence, they keep the vegetation lush even in winter

Love is not the only bastion of long lasting relationship
Yet love is paramount to a sustainable relationship
It gives meaning to the sacrifices and self denials
It is at the centre of the vortex of passion expressed in those votive wordings
The wordings of commitment and exchange of hearts
Love cannot support the heptads of relationship alone
It can only open the door for its off springs:
Kindness, respect, faithfulness, and affection  
They come in to strengthen and secure the bond of friendship

When lies and mistrust creeps in
When one party trades but in these woes
It weakens the heptads and erodes it of Trust
Honesty is murdered and openness buried
Patience slacks and love cringes
Humility scurries away and Hope is gone
The same applies to the off springs of love
That loves turns into hatred and resentment
In truth, the depth of love is always the depth of hatred
It can bring down every good thing it once erected
That it takes grace if not divinity to mend the walls again
Love is needed but without these others relationship crumbles