Happiness never comes from outside of us!

Rule #1: You never make others responsible for your own happiness!

In relationships:
"If you take your happiness and put it in someone else's hands, sonner or later, he or she will break it. If you give your happiness to someone else, she or he can take it away.
Then if happiness can only come from inside you and is the result of your love, you are responsible for your happiness...not someone else. We can never make anyone else responsible for our own happiness."

"When we go to the church to get married, the first thing we do is exchange rings. We put a star in someone else's hands, expecting that he or she is going to make you happy and vice versa. But it doesn't matter how much you love that person, you are never going to be what that person wants you to be. That is the mistake we make right from the beginning."

"We base our happiness on our partner, and it doesn't work that way. We make all those promises that we cannot keep, and we set ourselves up to fail."

You can be happy with someone because of the love that is coming out of that person. But as soon as you make him or her responsible for your happiness, they will break it. Because you cannot make someone else responsible for your happiness. This is the reason most relationships and marriages fail. And I know, because I've been in this situation before and had someone put me in this situation before.

- taken from The Mastery of Love, a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz...author of The Four Agreements.