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Marriage Learning To Love
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Marriage Of Hearts > > >
My daughter was recently in her school's performance of Fiddler On The Roof. She was one of the daughters. If you don't know the story, it focuses on the changing culture of marriage, from one where the marriage is arrainged by family and community to one based on mutual attraction.
In one of the songs, the main character asks his wife if she loves him. She replies that for 25 years, she has shared his bed, made his meals, tended his house, raised his children -- so what kind of question is that? The point is that in their relationship, love wasn't even a question or consideration. But after some back-and-forth, they decide that, indeed, they love each other.
This led me to think about what I know about marriage. And here is what I think about the question of love and marriage: we fall in love to get together, then spend the rest of our lives learning to love the other.
You see, the initial attraction is really about "I." "I" feel a certain way, so I know I am "in love." But that part of the relationship is driven by my need to feel that way, my need to be with the other person, my need to have my needs met. My needs are fueled by my desire to feel the intense emotion of "being in love."
But in reality, love is a verb, something I do for the other. So, it takes the rest of my life to learn how to attend to my spouse's needs. From my desire to be with my spouse comes my desire to meet my spouse's love needs.
We are "fooled" into commitment by the overwhelming feeling of attraction, and then we have to put forth effort to create a sustained relationship. I say "fooled" because our culture has us believing that this love is the foundation of a relationship. It is not. It is merely a temporary starting point. It is not the destination. It is just a part of the journey to a lifetime relationship.
Those intense feelings will calm over time. The overwhelming need to be with someone that marks the infatuation portion of a relationship is not sustainable on its own. It's like placing a flame in a bottle. Eventually, the flame will burn all the oxygen in the bottle and be extinguished.
So, there has to be some "fueling of the fire." This is "love," the verb. When I act in loving ways, I fuel the fire and keep it burning. If I stop tending to the other's needs because I don't feel that infatuation, the relationship will slowly (or not so slowly) die away.
When we continue to believe that "love" (infatuation) is the heart of a relationship, when that feeling is gone, we believe we are no longer in love. That is not the case; we have just failed to fuel the fire.
Reality TV has proven that any two people, given the right circumstances and settings, can fall into love (chemistry of infatuation). But story after story shows that it is harder to make the switch to "true love" that comes from action. Choose action, and don't be fooled by chemistry.
By acting on love, by making love a verb and not an emotion, we keep the emotional fire stoked. And that is the great irony: if we depend on the feeling of being in love to keep us together, it will fail. But if we set that aside and focus on being loving, the feeling of being in love is sustained. Mature love is a verb, not an emotion.
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Marriage Of Hearts > > >
BONUS : Marriage Of Hearts
Marriage is one of the oldest customs known to us. It is difficult to answer about why a couple would like to marry, if they can live together even otherwise. But marriages are considered a proper union worldwide in most cultures and religions.
If one looks at a married couple, one can plot a graph of happiness in marriage and the years of married life. With most of the couples, one may find that the happiness decreases as the years pass. There may be many reasons for this, and every study will bring out newer results. Let us think about how a married couple can have a marriage of hearts that will have happiness forever like we find in books of fiction.
How does one define a marriage of hearts? One way of saying would be, that both the partners are very emotionally attached to each other. They care for their partner. Their thoughts become one, their views become one and they live with each other in all the senses. There are no compromises. Look around yourself and you will find the neighborhood full of marriages where compromise is a way of life. What true joy can a marriage full of compromises can give?
True togetherness comes with the marriage of hearts. How to make one's marriage a marriage of hearts? The first step should be absolute openness about everything. To begin with, tell your partner about everything that you feel about him/her and about yourself. All of us do self talk, Isn't it? We talk to ourselves. During this kind of talk, we are very open, because we don't worry about the reactions. Let your talk with your partner become something like self talk. Openness gives two benefits. One - your partner knows very precisely about your views, your likes and your dislikes. So there is no tension to think about what is going on in each other's mind. The second benefit is faith. When you tell everything very openly, you are sending the message of faith. I have full faith in you. I feel totally open with you. I want to hide nothing from you.
How to react to your partner's openness? Once your partner begins telling everything very openly, you will get many shocks. You never knew that he/she was thinking like this for some issue! What to do? First - appreciate the openness. If you are shocked with few thoughts, put yourself in his/her shoes in find out if you also don't have opinions that may shock the other party? One must always think of two issues. 1) Who is the person who is holding the views that I don't like? 2) Are the views more important or the person? Also think if you are always the best judge of views. Should you be deciding what is right and what is wrong? Do you change your opinions from time to time?
With the openness of thoughts, there will be no possibility of any conflict about suppressing your personality to keep the marriage alive. As both of you open up, discussions will improve in quality. And slowly both of you will begin understanding each other very well. As you come to know more about the true thoughts of your spouse, you will make efforts to see that he/she is not hurt by you unknowingly.
Respect the other person and his/her views and desires at all the times. If you feel bad about anything, tell. Don't be quiet. Let the other partner know that you want her/him to change in certain areas. Request for change. In most of the relationships, people are unaware of the thoughts of their partner for a very long time. Both the parties suppress themselves to continue the facade of sharing and love. Such marriages may outwardly look successful, but give no happiness in life. Happiness and marriage of hearts comes only with openness and confidence about the relationship.
Talk this out with your spouse and if you feel that you should become more open with each other and proceed towards true sharing in every sense, please do. One compromises in every relationship in life. Should marriage also be one such relationship?
Marriage is one of the oldest customs known to us. It is difficult to answer about why a couple would like to marry, if they can live together even otherwise. But marriages are considered a proper union worldwide in most cultures and religions.
If one looks at a married couple, one can plot a graph of happiness in marriage and the years of married life. With most of the couples, one may find that the happiness decreases as the years pass. There may be many reasons for this, and every study will bring out newer results. Let us think about how a married couple can have a marriage of hearts that will have happiness forever like we find in books of fiction.
How does one define a marriage of hearts? One way of saying would be, that both the partners are very emotionally attached to each other. They care for their partner. Their thoughts become one, their views become one and they live with each other in all the senses. There are no compromises. Look around yourself and you will find the neighborhood full of marriages where compromise is a way of life. What true joy can a marriage full of compromises can give?
True togetherness comes with the marriage of hearts. How to make one's marriage a marriage of hearts? The first step should be absolute openness about everything. To begin with, tell your partner about everything that you feel about him/her and about yourself. All of us do self talk, Isn't it? We talk to ourselves. During this kind of talk, we are very open, because we don't worry about the reactions. Let your talk with your partner become something like self talk. Openness gives two benefits. One - your partner knows very precisely about your views, your likes and your dislikes. So there is no tension to think about what is going on in each other's mind. The second benefit is faith. When you tell everything very openly, you are sending the message of faith. I have full faith in you. I feel totally open with you. I want to hide nothing from you.
How to react to your partner's openness? Once your partner begins telling everything very openly, you will get many shocks. You never knew that he/she was thinking like this for some issue! What to do? First - appreciate the openness. If you are shocked with few thoughts, put yourself in his/her shoes in find out if you also don't have opinions that may shock the other party? One must always think of two issues. 1) Who is the person who is holding the views that I don't like? 2) Are the views more important or the person? Also think if you are always the best judge of views. Should you be deciding what is right and what is wrong? Do you change your opinions from time to time?
With the openness of thoughts, there will be no possibility of any conflict about suppressing your personality to keep the marriage alive. As both of you open up, discussions will improve in quality. And slowly both of you will begin understanding each other very well. As you come to know more about the true thoughts of your spouse, you will make efforts to see that he/she is not hurt by you unknowingly.
Respect the other person and his/her views and desires at all the times. If you feel bad about anything, tell. Don't be quiet. Let the other partner know that you want her/him to change in certain areas. Request for change. In most of the relationships, people are unaware of the thoughts of their partner for a very long time. Both the parties suppress themselves to continue the facade of sharing and love. Such marriages may outwardly look successful, but give no happiness in life. Happiness and marriage of hearts comes only with openness and confidence about the relationship.
Talk this out with your spouse and if you feel that you should become more open with each other and proceed towards true sharing in every sense, please do. One compromises in every relationship in life. Should marriage also be one such relationship?
