Partners and Marriage

Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo de
Manila University, Philippines, where he had Father Ferriols as
professor.
Father Ferriols, meanwhile 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 a 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+.


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 others 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 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 cant 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 presence, 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 constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there
is no tension and there are no 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.