Because every time we try to make love work in a specific way, at a specific time, in a specific sequence, it’s almost always certain that it’ll backfire on us — and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it backfire on so many men and women.

You can not make love work on a schedule. You just can’t. You can create conditions and learn experience-enhancing skills, habits, traits or other behaviors that make love most likely to happen faster, but when love happens is ultimately out of your control.

This can be hard to swallow especially if you are so used to doing things at the pace you choose and at the times you choose for the results you want. Because you've always, by will power, hard work and determination made things happen, you can’t help but try to somehow force love to work on your schedule and do what you want it to do.

Occasionally you may succeed in manipulating a few things to work in your favour, but as you will soon find out, only temporarily. The harder you try to force love to work on your schedule and do what you want it to do the more stress, frustration and unhappiness you experience. In most case, all you end up doing is coming across as pushy, manipulative, controlling, desperate and needy.

Trying to force love to work on a schedule is what sometimes makes some people think that things are not working out even when everything is really working out the way it is supposed to. Many get discouraged and begin to lose hope, and others give up because it’s taking so long. Some give up just when they were closer than they were ever before.

Others take the drastic step of breaking up and cutting off all contact. On the onset this seems like regaining that sense of control because it somehow stops them from feeling the frustration with their current situation. But instead of feeling in control they find themselves thinking over and over about situations they have control over, and losing hours of sleep in search of that much needed but illusive “closure”.

And here is the tragic part. The way that you act and behave when things don’t go your way or when you don’t get what you want tells the other person what kind of person you will be like to live with (for the rest of their lives).  And since the greatest natural relationship killer is the fear of regret — something your behavior may already be causing — the other person will most likely want nothing to do with you after seeing you act pushy,  manipulative, controlling and/ or running away to hide instead of calmly facing the situation.

Let me say it again: You can not make love work on a schedule. The sooner you accept this simple truth the more likely that you’ll not only be able to salvage your relationship, but make it last for a very long time.