Saturday, May 23, 2009
Live above the influence/
Found this little article in my mail this morning while browsing through,crap I don't even remember who sent it,but I think its a good read,and appropriate,seeing how most of my days this week in camp was full of anger,irritation and disgust at how many of the guys treat love and relationships so simple and rather low.
ok nuff said.Long read ahead,don't start if you're not up to it.lol
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 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 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 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 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 is 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.