To the One I Wed in my Vow

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.