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FRIENDS, _______________________________________________________________________ PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz 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, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering
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 other's 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 other's 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 important to find someone with whom you can create a
good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, 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 sexual 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 other's laughs, passions,
sadness, and fears. They see each
other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they
get swept into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall
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 doesn't become an
unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood. There are many other keys, but you must find them by
ourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will
not betray and private 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 unsatisfied with 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 every day. 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 in 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 chosen 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 possibility that the first heat of love
could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more eaningful than the heat of fresh passion.
All I could 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 by a
thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two
separate presence, two separate consciousnesses 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 a closure and a constriction, as I
had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part
of every choice of life, from
celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains
within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful
and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it
alone contains. But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two
have chosen, against all odds, to
become one. Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a
specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into
something richer and 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 cycles and seasons
that your love ill 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...endlessly. |
