PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
(Author Unknown)
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom
met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems
constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what
it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our
lives. When i was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to
make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social
acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the
logical thing to do. Then I watched as they and their partners became
embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. i looked at
older couples and saw, at best, mutal toleration of each other. I
imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering days and could not
imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed
to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just
dependent upon each other and tolerant of each others foibles. It was
an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can
they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the
others habits? What keeps love alive in them. when most of us seem
unable to even stay together, much less love each other?
The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to
the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad
relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to
succeed. It is improtant to find someone with whom you can create a
good relationship from the outset.
Unfortunateyly, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages. Sexual
hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves
together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which
relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see
beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose
to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of
exual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can
work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts.
Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each
other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because
the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps
them from having any normal perception of what life would be like
together.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time
friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get
to know each others laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each
other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before
they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This
is the ideal, but not often possible.
If you fail under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you
need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these
is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each other's
company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and
healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy
relationship to the world.
Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh,
you can always, surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each
other, you can always keep the world around you new. Beware of a
relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate
relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour.
Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn
you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your
relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you
respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their
relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them.
They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming
power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world.
As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important
again. If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't
accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way she cares for
others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love
her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do
not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually
the two of you will not respect each other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live
on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart
resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery
of the unseen in life and relationships, while the other is drawn
only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the
distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each
feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are may other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all
have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and
rivate commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you
fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of
you, or if you cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves
growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share
the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives
and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of
petty hurts and daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter and
dissatisfied witn their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner
with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take
place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a
miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle
in marriage. It is called transformation.
Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed
becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes
spring and love becomes a child. We never question these, because we
see them around us everyday. To us they are not miracles, though if we
did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like
a seed, and time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that
will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have
chosed carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen
poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed.
We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in
a marriage. It was negative transformation that always, had me
terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. It
never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love
into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the
posssibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into
something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the
heat of fresh passion. All I can believe in was the power of this
passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something
lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative
transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But
instead of death of a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand
touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two
separate presences, two separate consciousness come together and share a
view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they
also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not closure and a
constiction, as I had once feared. This in not to say that there is no
tension and there are no traps. Tension and traps are part of every
choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not
taken is somehow more fruitfuland exciting, and each becomes dulled to
the richness that it alone contains.
But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavend by the
knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those
who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of commitment
that deepens that experience into something richer more complex. So do
not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong
reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of
transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found
someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith
that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the
partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the
cycle and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready
to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy
grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time
comes, a thousand flowers will bloom.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Have a pleasant day!
Sincerely,
Alex Quirante
"There is always a better way of doing things, there is nothing best!" -> A
motto for progress.