LOVE & MARRIAGE

FROM WHERE I SIT Love & Marriage   Jan. 30, 2014  PAT SPILSETH

The LOVE chapter expresses well what love in marriage can be.  Corinthians 1:13 is read at many weddings: “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous, or conceited, or proud; love is not ill-mannered, or selfish, or irritable; love does not keep a record of wrongs: love is not happy with evil, but is happy with the truth.  Love never gives up: its faith, hope and patience never fail.” 

Many love poems praise the joys and beauty of love, its tenderness and kindness.  Poems and songs praise the way love lifts us up, out of ourselves, into a greater communion with the world.  Then again, some lyrics of love take us down into the depths instead of up into an open sky.  

The “aches of marriage” are also good to know and experience: they make our love stronger, more commited.  These dark passages of many years reveal the treasures worth digging for.   

Poet Rilke said, “It is also good to love: because love is difficult.  For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.”

There are always going to be questions.  If you ask yourself, “Why should I stay in this marriage”, there will always be days when you don’t have a good answer.  That’s why an underlying commitment is necessary.  You have to know there’s something, today, tomorrow or next month, that’s worth hanging in there for you to want to stay and make it work.

Kahlil Gibran writes in The Prophet, “ For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you.  Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.”

That idyllic, romantic stage of early love, when you’re crazy about each other, often leads to other stages of love.  Couples may feel trapped, uncomfortable with the idea of marriage.  It can be a terrible time for all.  In our minds, there’s often an elaborate dance of uncertainty and fear.  It might have been a lovely romance, a whirlwind courtship, but was there commitment?

Today many couples feel that living together will serve as their roadmap to whether marriage would work for them or not.   All too often the relationship doesn’t work: one or both of the individuals end up feeling devastated, destroyed. One or the other moves out.  House payments or rent are no longer shared, but worse than the money involved, is the destruction of self-image and worth. 

Novels, song lyrics and “Dear Abby” columns reveal individuals lamenting, “I never would have agreed to our living together if I didn’t think it would lead to marriage,” she said.  “I thought he felt the same.  He’d always told me he wanted to be married.  I don’t think he was lying to me.  He believed it.  But when it got too real he couldn’t face it.”

An honest commitment demands the lack of impatience, selfishness, demands and expectations.  In contemporary society, many men and women have given up hope of finding someone with that level of commitment.  Others resign themselves to stay in destructive relaionships because that’s all they know.  

Self worth plays a major role in a commited relationship.  True commitment is not just living together; true commitment is a bonded marriage, ensuring a lasting commitment through good and bad.

Having fun together with playful, lighthearted moments, lightens life.  After those idyllic first stages of marriage, couples get used to one another.  Life can become a bit boring--unless individuals are willing to work at the relationship and inject fun and laughter.  Perhaps we need more date nights, an unexpected trip to some destination dreamed of but never thought possible, sharing a book or movie, planning a “dream” house or weekend.

The Love Doctor, Leo Buscaglia, advises us to build a solid foundation to our love.  He wrote, “One does not fall ‘in’ or ‘out’ of love.  One grows in love.”  Being behind each other, one hundred percent, demonstrates abiding respect for each other.  Resilience  means YOU AND ME AGAINST THE WORLD.

Kiekegaard wrote, “To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation either in time or in eternity.”  He added, “Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair.”

The Bible’s love chapter ends, “Love is eternal...There are faith, hope and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”  788 words