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
yourself. 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
meaningful 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 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…endlessly.
