For You
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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.
"Expressing love, increases love."
ily
l.l. xlvii
the intro to the article posted above:
Subject: Partners and Marriage
Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo de Manila University,
Philippines, where he had Father Ferriols as professor. Father
Ferriols, at that time was the Philosophy department head. Currently
he still teaches Philosophy for graduating college students in
Ateneo. Father Ferriols has been very popular for his mind opening
and enriching classes but was also notorious for the grades he gives.
Still people took his classes for the learning and deep insight they
take home with them every day (if only they could do something about
the grades...)
Anyway, come grade giving time, (Ateneo has letter grading systems,
the highest being an A, lowest at D, with F for flunk), Fr. Ferriols
had this long discussion with the registrar people because he wanted
to give Calasanz an A+. Either that or he doesn't teach at
all...Calasanz got his A+. Read the paper below to find out why.
