Last week I received the most meaningful e-mail from a Beyond Blue reader, Mike, who recently lost his wife and was celebrating Thanksgiving without her for the first time. "I lost my girlfriend, wife, and mother of my children," he wrote. "We had 46 years of marriage which allowed us to glow as a couple and individuals."
I thanked him for sharing this with me and asked him what advice for marriage he had, since his love and devotion to his wife were so obvious to me, and I feel like an apprentice with only 12 years tucked away.
Here was his reply:
I'm not sure what I can share in a blog at this time, there is a lot of pain. Questions unanswered, a hole inside me, and where do I fit in this adventure. Some suggestions to keep a lover could include: kiss everyday, say "I love you" even when it is not coming from the heart that day, and send flowers often.
And then he shared with me a passage from Joseph Campbell, the late American mythology professor and writer:
The whole thing in marriage is the relationship and yielding - knowing the functions, knowing that each is playing a role in an organism. One of the things I have realized - is that marriage is not a love affair. A love affair has to do with immediate personal satisfaction. But marriage is an ordeal; it means yielding, time and again. That's why it's a sacrament: you give up your personal simplicity to participate in a relationship. And when you're giving, you're not giving to the other person: you are giving to the relationship. And if you realize that you are in the relationship just as another person is, then it becomes life building. A life fostering and enriching experience, not an impoverishment because you're giving to somebody else. . . . The beautiful thing is the growing: each helping the other to flower. We often want to freeze the other person but you can't have that and love too.
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Being married for 36 years, together 40, there is a definition that perhaps we both agree with, and probably Yeshuah also. Let me point out that Yeshuah never got married (maybe that was because He was more brilliant than we give Him credit for !) For me, it was because He was married to the whole human race and all of Creation. I guess being born of the Father, may slant your vision a bit that Way.
Love/Marriage is the ability to sacrifice yourself to a higher order or power or person. Love is not in the geting, but in the giving ... "It is in the giving that you receive" How great a Love can you have for someone ? Maybe this says it all! ... While you are being nailed down to your cross, smile and say with a tear in your eye "Father forgive them, for they ain't got a clue, as to what in Hell they do!" (or something like that !)
LUV 2 ALL
Wisdum
I would never hesitate to recommend this sage piece of advice to anyone in any relationship. I neither originated it nor used it very well the first few times I tried it. I'm still mastering the technique but will say unabashedly that it works miracles. And, yes, they do still happen. Here goes:
Forgive before you're asked to do so and do so wholeheartedly. Don't do an "I told you so." later or drop hints that you're so magnanimous that you forgave before you were asked - but do it anyway. Reach down in your knapsack with tongs and pull out the broken glass of hurt feelings or the anger embers and toss 'em before they cut or burn you any more than necessary. Find a quiet place and take a few moments to pray for the person you just forgave. Pray for their welfare, peace of mind, happiness, joy - any good thing that comes to mind. Pray sincerely. Once you've prayed it long enough that you mean it, then pray for yourself - to stay the course, to take the high road and to be do the right thing. Then take a moment to ask God's forgiveness before you go back into the frying pan.
I talked with my daughter a few days ago and told her that it's hard to shift from being 'directive' when a child is young, to making 'suggestions' when they are making more decisions on their own to stating 'opinions' (when they're out on their own and can do what they darned well please. We are slow to relinquish control - even when we really never had it or had much less of it than we deluded ourselves into believing. And so it is with this recommendation. I offer it with the best of intentions and no particular motivation other than sharing something that seems to work consistently. It's one of those ideas that takes practice and persistent. You might try it and if it works - cool. If not you can get a full refund of the purchase price.
Peace~
Frank,
IMHO the biggest difference between a love affair and a marriage is the 24/7 part of the latter. It's easy to put on your best face when you're getting ready to spend time with a lover (and I mean that both figuratively and literally) when you have "lead in" time to prepare for the encounter whereas in marriage you (hopefully) weake up in the same bed, brush your teeth at the same sink and see--let alone WASH-- one another's dirty drawers!
Marriage will only last if you do have the ability to forgive, My parents were married for 47 years before my mother passed. In a nut shell she forgave my very handsome father for quite a bit. He had to be very forgiving of her also( she was very difficult and that is putting it mildly).In the end he cared for her at home until he phiscally could not do so.She passed soon after she went into the nursing home. He missed her so after she passed. They were a mismatch, but towards the end you could see the love that had grown between them during their 47 years.He knew how much she had to forgive him and always gave her the credit for pushing him onto the straight and narrow.They knew each other for only three days before they were married, and literaly fought to keep it together, and not quietly I may add.It was a very disfunctional journey for all of us( We were nicknamed the loud family).Whose to say what makes a marriage last, by todays standards their marriage would have never had a chance.Love ? Yes , but perserverance is a really big help. I heard this quote once, I think it is appropriate here: LOVE IS A DECISION! I failed at two marriages, The love is still there for my George but it doesn't seem it alone was enough to keep us together( at least in the conventional sense)I stink at relationships. Those of you that have sucessful ones, Treasure them every moment that is avaliable to you. There are times I wish I had a one. :)
Lynne
You are absolutely correct in the fact that love is a decision; I think that's where many fall down. Once the "romantic spark" has cooled (and it enivetibly will!) they lose their commitment to the decision. I find it rather ironic that it's a much easier and quicker legal process to marry in our society than it is to divorce...as Wisdum would say, "What's wrong with that picture?" How fortunate you were to witness parents who WERE commited to their decision in spite of their difficulties. and from assessing your prior input here on B.B., I doubt very seriously if you "Stink at relationships" don't forget that by it's very definition, relatinship requires BOTH parties to decide and then perservere with that decision. I, too, miss not having a relationship, but I wouldn't settle for another troubled one in which I was doing all of the giving and perservering! Nor do I want a "casual one" (Today's anomaly of "friends with benefits")
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