Being a couples therapist for almost 25 years has taught me a lot about what really matters for the success of marriage and committed relationships. One of the biggest success builders is — valuing love, knowing how to behave lovingly, and doing it regularly.

On the other hand, people who stress getting the love they feel they deserve and pay minimal attention to giving love themselves take energy from the relationship, rather than give it. It is in the nature of people to flourish when they are loved and to languish when they do not get the love they need.

As a couples therapist, writer about marriage and relationships and family person with a wife and children, my commitment is to promote the way of love to those who care about relationships and want to make their partner relationship better.

I also want to share an important approach to commitment that I have been working on — learning how to love with joy and abundance, rather than with  duty and obligation.

I love beginnings, especially beginnings of events that hold a lot of promise.

• For a teenager, first date with someone you’ve wanted to date for a long time
• For an actor, first performance of a new play
• For most everyone, first day of a much-needed vacation at a great place
• For a store owner, first day the door opens for customers

Beginnings are full of excitement, anticipation, fear — driven often by a vision of how you hope it is going to be, mixed with fear of how you could be disappointed — just enough of each to give you a heightened sense of anticipation.

I am Dr. David Sanford. I am a couples therapist and coach and a writer about marriage and couple relationships. Why all this on beginnings? This is a new blog, inspired by a new vision about love and community, described in a new book of mine, about a new, joyous approach to a perennial subject — love between partners. And this is the first post.

I’ll tell you more in the next post.