Partners & Marriage

[mantoy]

share ko lang. para sa mga may asawa at gustong mag-asawa. may kahabaan but worth reading sya. galeng!


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 ***ual 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.

***ual 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 ***ual
fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves
***ually and ride out the most heated period of ***ual
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 ***ual side altogether
in an attempt to get to know each other apart from
their ***uality. But they cannot see clearly, because
the presence of unfulfilled ***ual 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 ***uality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall
under the spell of your ***ual 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
ourself. 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.

[BeetOls]

indeed it was a very good, worthwhile reading...made me think and enlightened

thanks for sharing...=)

[mantoy]

no problem man. ako rin napaisip after kong mabasa. heheh.

[ILuvDetailing]

nice read :D

[CVT]

There is nothing wrong with physical attraction in the onset. This is natural for us in the animal kingdom. But, we should find a deeper meaning or foundation for a relationship...

Marriage?- "I recommend the experience"

[Canwe?]

nicely said and done! question is: is there such a guy?

[Canwe?]

oooppsss..nicely said and written i mean!
"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."
this is going to be hard for so many men out there!

[BeetOls]

ok...veering to the practical side...for all the married tsikoteers here, did you guys marry during the time when you thought you were financially stable/ready and emotionally ready as well? I mean do both really have to be satisfied for the ideal marriage? i know for the average juan, the state of being financially stable/ready is kind of elusive and that if you wait for it, you might grow old not being able to settle down. but, on the other hand, if you decide to get married and not have enough funds, then that's not nice either. so what really is accounted for? when is the best time? say you are with the one you really want to be with but you can't ask her to marry thinking that you can't be a good provider, losing your job without having been able to save enough and all that stuff....or is it a totally different story after getting married? in other words, start from scratch talaga...

[BoEinG_747]

lalo lang tuloy nagulo isip ko sa pag papakasal ..


nice worth reading ..thanks sir mantoy

[Canwe?]

some men are so funny, they stay away from marriage all their life until one woman comes along and trap them in a marriage where they cant back out anymore! I've seen a lot of this kind of men. It takes one schemer only to get you! And at times the schemer is not even what these men thinks they are going to spend the rest of their life! The kind of joke life brings to those kinds of men, i can't help but laugh at it!
Peace sa mga natamaan !

[CVT]

Canwe: I agree with you. However, that is the irony of life... I'd say the best time for marriage is when you're done being a bachelor and you're ready emotionally and financially to dive into a full time relationship. I have some friends who never stopped being a bachelor, even after marriage.. tsk tsk.. nothing more to say here..

[BlueBimmer]

yes tsk tsk tsk

[Canwe?]

Canwe: I agree with you. However, that is the irony of life... I'd say the best time for marriage is when you're done being a bachelor and you're ready emotionally and financially to dive into a full time relationship. I have some friends who never stopped being a bachelor, even after marriage.. tsk tsk.. nothing more to say here..

i guess what i mentioned was one of the scenario is one of the reason why they have other gals. haha!
question is why marry if you can't keep you D!ck in your pants?
dapat talaga pagurin si manoy gabi gabi para hindi na maghanap sa umaga.
RAPE in marriage!!

[Belisarius]

Love is not all in absolutes, the life of a married couple is all about compromise, what we must not forget is that love must be present, if not to sound too corny, love must be worth fighting for. That statement must be in action not only in words, live as if you are always in love. enough said.

[Canwe?]

Love is not all in absolutes, the life of a married couple is all about compromise, what we must not forget is that love must be present, if not to sound too corny, love must be worth fighting for. That statement must be in action not only in words, live as if you are always in love. enough said.

very well said? are you married yourself? how is it?
it's rare for a guy to say the phrase "love must be worth fighting for".
Have you fought for someone and won?
My ideas are profound? just from observation and how i come to reason with everything that is happening around. Marriage is one death i don't want to be anytime soon.

[Belisarius]

Marriage is not a death but a new life, and what you both want to make your lives to be, another stage of challenges unavailable to the singles who arent hitched yet. Love must be the center of it all, and as long as one of you does not give up, it will endure....

[mikey177]

To be honest, not all persons are called to married life. There are really individuals who are better of remaining in a state of single blessedness.

For those that decide to get married, life will not become any easier or harder... life will just continue to be life, although shared with a partner who will stick with you through thick and thin.

I've been married for ten years. There have been sacrifices and changes in my life now compared to when I was single, but for every "freedom" that I've lost, I've gained much more in terms of maturity, wisdom, and the love and support of a family that my spouse and I started.

Besides, as I see it, the only "freedom" you give up when you get married is the freedom to chase after any skirt in sight. For me, it's not really a loss, since I've already found the perfect one.

And by this I don't mean that my spouse and I get along perfectly and have days filled with sunshine and laughter. Far from it. We have our share of arguments, disagreements, bouts of jealousy, moments of weakness, and burdensome problems. But we work them out TOGETHER, and we never give up on each other.

[BlueBimmer]

companionship is also one aspect in marriage that is most important especially after middle age

[mikey177]

companionship is also one aspect in marriage that is most important especially after middle age

Yup, it's no fun farting when no one else is around

[CVT]

Belisarius "as long as one of you does not give up, it will endure" - I do not totally disagree with you but I have a different perspective.

My personal opinion,- do not go into marriage because you are hoping/betting that your everlasting and enduring love can change the other person, because you see that there is something good in him/her somewhere... You might be disappointed. PEACE!

Canwe - I am sorry, but I do not share your view that 'done being a bachelor' means you've left your d*ck out of your pants everytime and that you are now ready to harness it. That is one,- but more importantly, it is to get rid of the carefree, tomorrow-may-not-be-here attitude of being single as you PARTNER with somebody who is willing to SHARE YOUR NAME.

Marriage? - "I recommend the experience"