Love and Marriage

    Perhaps I started this journey in kindergarten years. I had attractions for the opposite sex since I am able to recollect the slightest memory of my existence. I liked a boy in my kindergarten class, another boy from an advanced class, and another one across the street in my neighborhood. In about the same time. Somehow such attractions were triggered by something that I was more or less aware of-- physique, jokes, popularity...Their nature was quite volatile, as they changed intensities by week, or by month, and eventually to dissipate completely, just to be replaced by others, a bit more defined and stable, in time...

    I do not know exactly why I felt from an early age that my life had to be intertwined with the life of one of the opposite sex. As if I was a vine that needed a pole to hang over and hold it tight with its tendrils. It was something so natural to me to envision this kind of connection, that it become kind of a goal, a dream to find that person. It had to happen before I would achieve anything else in my life.

    Therefore, I was paying attention to whom I met. But I realized as I matured that many persons that I met and have been infatuated with,  I've never really met. I became conscious of my own inner being  as I was conscious of my own physical body, and wanted  to meet someone right there, in the inside, not just physically. In time I understood how rare this happens, but when it does it's something otherworldly. There is an array of feelings that one may nurture for the apposite sex, and physical attraction is perhaps the most exhilarating, but for me this alone was never enough. Complete chemistry is when something from the inside being is coming through the outside, so the other person may recognize it and be attracted to.

    So, as I was growing up,  I pedestaled love and made ornaments around. I  surrounded myself with a paraphernalia of romantic elements, and fed on it daily. It took some time, but at one point I felt enticed by the beauty of simple truth rather than the rosy coats of romantic projections. Not that I did away with everything romantic or somehow idealized, or I become all of a sudden too cerebral. Not at all.

    But I came to see that from all types of love, couple love is the most conditional one. It may become close to unconditional at a later stage, in time, from case to case, though. Conscious or less conscious, couple love is based on needs in most cases, if not all. We choose the person that we are going to be with because he or she has something that we need, and we are chosen  because we possess something that he or she needs. Rarely, if ever, the coupleship happens without the slightest interest. But not necessarily in the most utilitarian sense, but rather  we choose someone because we recognize something familiar in the other person, something that we can relate to, and this may have something  to do with a need.  

    Ultimately coupleship is about sharing space toghether, in the most physical, practical, and symbolical way, and  conditionality exists because we cannot share a personal space with just anybody. Marriage is about feeling that this space is home. Love in marriage it encompasses all its forms, from eros to agape. Laws are less relevant. But you follows laws because laws and papers make life easier.  It is easier to go through check points when having the same family name, for example. 

    You are there anyway because when togetherness happens, it's there anyway, with papers or not. Togetherness is about being together even when you are far from each other. Afar from time to time can be beautiful. It allows you to come back. Things should always flow free in marriage.

    But let there be spaces in your togetherness.

    And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

                                                                                         Kahlil Gibran, on Marriage

    Because couple love cannot be carried by one only, but always two,  a certain dynamic comes forward; it makes things move or not, like in physics. It involves balancing acts, negotiations, and conditionality hovers over, although not immediately perceived. How the two deal with time, pleasure, work,  or money; and how-- I found -- each thinks of love life... Certain differences are good while others are not. 

    In the country of fifty states is so much talk about diversity and its beauty. Sometimes the idea is applied to marriage as if  marriage is some sort of cocktail. I would say that as many similarities between the two are to be sought for because marriage is a small enclosure, a nest, and is not a place for the wildest diversity. Similarities are about connection, while diversity creates temporary excitement, rather.

    For the sake of reflection I revisited an allegorical poem that I studied in high school, about a potential marriage between Riga Crypto, a mushroom king, and Enigel, a women from the snowy pole. Riga liked to living in the shade, while Enigel loved the sun. Maybe their differences prompted attraction, but sharing a space together would bring pain, and couple love cannot thrive if there is too much pain. Therefore, such union never came to be.

    I got married when I felt home. The strongest feeling that I had for my husband was that I had been knowing him for a long time. A feeling of belonging. I recognized him as a person close to my soul. Love came through this channel. We met in our 20s, but fancied that maybe we've met sometime in childhood too since our grandmothers were living one or two streets apart. We climbed roofs that were facing each other and gazed at times in the distance over the other rooftops and tree branches as if looking for something...

                                                                       *  *  *

    Every morning, a man with a long white ponytail walks on a very slow pace a well groomed, white fluffy dog, while having a cigar and coffee. Now a man in his 70s, his whole demeanor still keeps some of his former handsome look. From my window, I watch a little bit his mindful walk, cherishing its repetitive property, as if time does not end. He is my neighbor and his morning routine is better than a clock-- I know that shortly after his walk, I need to take my kid to school. 

    I talk with my neighbor a lot. He is the first person that I've met whom I share the same birthday. There is something with numbers and months, and why we talk with certain people to the level of soul pouring, while with others we stop after we say "hi." Numbers may well be indicators of possible connections, I suspect. I came to this conclusion simply based on personal, ongoing experience. Still amazed at its accuracy.

    One time I observed the fatty tissue that built around his wedding band. Seeing how the metal strangulated this part of his body, I felt that his finger was hurt and was losing precious circulation; so I expressed my concern, but he assured me that he was not bothered or affected, and that he did not remove his ring since his wife placed it on his finger, some decades ago.

    He met his wife early in his life. He had seen a mass of light brown hair over a red coat in the park near a shop where he was hanging out. Struck by that appearance, he found a way to meet the girl with red coat,  dated her, and not too long after they got married. Love came in time, he said. He continued to tell me that being married is different than going on a date. You go on a date to experience something special and make arrangements to leave worries behind, but when you are married, there is no other place to leave your stress away; it is right there, close to both, and needs to be addressed quickly, and sweeps away specialness...

    " I rarely do what I want, you know..." he calmly confessed.

    I did not ask him about happiness, but based on a full range of other observations and statements, I would say he is, as much as he can, in his own serene way of accepting everything that his life has given him.