Partners and Marriage

THE ARTICLE

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 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 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 friend 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 up 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 others 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 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 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 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.