Forget about love and pleasure: what you need to consider are kindness and character. And, maybe, faith.
People change. But while strongly held beliefs do change - and sometimes very rapidly - deeply held beliefs change much less.
Avoid fanatics. They may be fun to be with, but if the cause - whatever it is - is more important than you, then the best you can hope for is to continue to be in second place. But if there is ever a choice to be made - and life is full of choices - then you are likely to find yourself left behind when they go off to follow the cause.
The one exception is if they are devoted to a God of love. Not just any God of love, of course: a God Who approves of 'free love' is unlikely to produce devoted followers with happy marriages. A God Who tolerates anything is unlikely to have much of an impact one way or another. But a God Who practices sacrificial love and faithfulness, and Who calls and empowers His followers to do the same - this God is likely to produce the kind of person you will want to be married to.
Of course, the challenge is to be the sort of person the sort of person you want to marry will want to marry.
If you want a successful marriage, then integrity is vital. There is no point in trying to 'catch' the ideal partner by pretending to be something you are not. You can't keep up the pretense indefinitely, and when they discover you are not the person they thought they had married, and never were, the result is likely to be both painful and predictable.
This is just one example of the general principle that, if you want a happy life, then your best strategy is to be a good person.
This ought to be self-evident, but sometimes it helps to spell things out.
Consider why criminals tend to be lacking in intelligence. Career criminals, that is - not folk who are essentially law-abiding, but find themselves breaking the law through carelessness.
If you want to build a career as a criminal, there is only a limited amount you can achieve on your own. You can mug old ladies, but you are not likely to get rich that way. If you want to get hold of some serious money, you need some partners in crime. And that is where it all falls apart.
Thieves may tell you that there is 'honour among thieves'. Don't believe them: as well as thieves, they are liars. There is no 'honour'. There is something along the lines of a code of honour, but this is no more than a set of boundaries you dare not cross.
If you 'work' with criminals, the one thing you know is that they cannot be trusted. What keeps them 'honest' in their dealings with you is not morality but fear of what you will do if they cross you. So you need to achieve a delicate balance of keeping them afraid enough to do what you want, while not so afraid that they run. You want them to need you enough, but not too much.
The bottom line is that, as a criminal, you choose to associate yourself with people who want to cheat you, and you find yourself having to trust people who you know cannot be trusted. As lifestyles go, it is not the most attractive.
If you choose to achieve success through deception and cruelty, this is likely to have an impact on the sort of person you turn into. You may think at the outset you can limit it, but deception and cruelty feed on themselves, and it is hard to hold to any limits, or, after a while, even to see where the limits are. And, lets face it, anyone who is attracted to a deceitful and cruel person, is unlikely to make you happy in the long run.
Criminality, the prospect of 'easy money' may sound attractive. But as soon as you start to think about the personal consequences, the money becomes less tempting.
Given the option, how many people want to be married to someone who will lie to them if that seems like the easiest thing to do, or who will cheat them if they can make a quick profit from you?
On the other hand, how many people want to be married to someone who is kind, truthful, gentle and reliable?
Of course, the claim is always that these people are honest and faithful to their friends and family, and only cheat and beat up strangers. Don't believe them.
An honest person will be honest, as far as they can. A dishonest person may be honest when it suits them - but that does not mean you can trust them. It simply means you can trust them until they have a reason to be dishonest. And in any relationship, there is always a reason.
A violent person may have been gentle with you. But this does not mean that they are gentle with you. Only that they have not had a reason to be violent. Yet.
Forgive me for labouring this point, but it matters. Films and TV are full of attractive criminals who are essentially decent people. But it is fiction. It makes a good story. Trying to follow their example does not make a good life.
I know it sounds horribly simplistic, but bad people are people who have chosen to do bad things to other people. They tend not to have long-term happy and healthy relationships with other people. They tend to be unhappy, and often think that this unhappiness somehow justifies their bad behaviour, as if it was a revenge on a world that has denied them happiness. In reality, their unhappiness is a direct result of their own choices. You reap what you sow.
Good people do end up in relationships with bad people. Sometimes they are deceived. Sometimes they think they can reform the other person. It never works.
Your best strategy, if you want a happy life, and if you want long and happy relationships with other people, is to be a good person. it is in their interest to
