People often confuse infatuation, or at times simple affection, with real love. Have you ever been to this phase of life? Well, marital experts and a number of psychiatrists describe this process of choosing a life partner as no pushover.

Committing to spend your life with one person isn’t a decision most people make lightly, so understandably want to make sure they’re not making a mistake.

A lot of marriages worldwide end in a divorce, it would appear lots of us may make the wrong choice of spouse, but what are the most common reasons?

Here are some of the reasons one must keep in view before making this life-altering decision.

Ask yourself core reason of marrying

As much as we may want to believe love is all you need, one person explained their view that marriage is a business arrangement more than anything else: “90% of life isn’t fun. It’s about coordinating chores, dealing with finances, caring for children and working. It’s more like the relationship between business partners than the relationship between lovers.”

And as unromantic as that view may seem, many people agreed: “Marriage is a commitment and love becomes a choice. You have to choose to love your spouse through the tough times and commit to working things out,” wrote a user on the Independent.

Seeking ‘complete perfection’ leads to distraction

Another common mistake appears to be choosing someone who ticks all their boxes on paper – the best-looking, smartest or most talented rather than the most compatible. One person summed it up succinctly, writing: “Marrying a profession: a lawyer, doctor, pilot, entrepreneur etc instead of the person.”

We’ve all heard the age-old adage that opposites attract, and for a lot of people, it’s considered justification for staying with someone so different to them. However according to one marriage counselor, you’re setting yourself up to fail: “Some variation is obviously good but the most successful marriages I’ve seen are the ones where the people were as similar as possible,” she revealed.

Avoid unrealistic expectations

Along the same lines, it seems many of us perhaps naively believe we can change our significant others. “I’ve read that men marry women expecting them to stay the same and women marry men expecting they can change them. Marrying with either of those goals in mind is probably a recipe for disaster,” shared one person.

A lot of people agreed that it’s so hard to commit to one person forever because as time goes on, we all change, and maybe not in the way your spouse would like.

Unsurprisingly, many people in the discussion cited common mistakes like settling for looks, staying with someone because you’re too afraid to be alone, and not agreeing on whether you want children or not.

Don’t rush in decision making

And on a somewhat sad note, one person said they believe “many people end up in relationships just because the other person is really persistent.”

But it’s not worth forgetting about love completely – one person summed it all up in a sentence: “Follow your heart, but make sure your brain does a sanity check too.”

How to make a right choice?

A girl, whose father is a psychiatrist, wrote a perfect illustration of what could have been a choice of choosing a life partner, but she evaded it after her father’s wise advice.

She describes: “I was very much in love with an absolutely wonderful guy who at the time seemed like a perfect match. Unfortunately, during our relationship we discovered that we had big differences in our life values and beliefs. (I’m not talking about different tastes in music, I’m talking about huge differences over life-changing decisions and core values). The fact that he was funny, smart, kind, handsome made it so hard to accept that he and I could never compromise our core values and it would be a mistake to choose him as my life partner.

After I finally took the painful step to end our relationship, I had pangs of doubt daily and could not stop thinking “what if…”

She said her dad shared his wisdom in the bestest way:

Look at it this way Lucy, let’s say you’re building a bridge and you need 100 bricks to reach the other side. Even if they were the loveliest bricks made of gold, if you had only 99 they would not be enough – the bridge would collapse.

However, if you had 100 good strong bricks, you have a solid bridge. Over time, you can polish it and strengthen it and it becomes something beautiful too.”