A reflection on couple's life...
Love is this fire of one's heart that makes us loose reason.
I have found my sister, the one that will fulfill my heart... Now that my love has found the heat of your arms I cannot think of leaving without you.. When on that day you smiled to me, My love sunk and forgetting my past I run for a future made of joy and hope. You have made a fire of my heart and dreams... It transforms our heart, opens us to life, to the other, to Love...
It makes us change our habits, loose our egoism. It is a motor of a living joy and attention to others.
This force is huge, it breaks mountains of fears, gives us confidence. We can only praise this optimism which is nothing than life, marvel of nature and of men...
Free, you said free ?
In the history of an encounter, will takes takes a back seat. Main characteristics of choices of one and another are :
Mutual sympathy : "We are well together"
No one chose the beginning of an love story on an objective love... The feelings reigns. Feelings are something you cannot control.. And some, after some time ask themselves : "Am I free of this relationship ?" One of the first crisis of acouple's life comes from freedom. Liberty to remains bachelor, freedom to look in another direction, freedom to do what I want, freedom to be or not on your side...
But, what is freedom ?
It is a mixture made of different levels, distinct but mostly hidden by desire :
first, freedom is often to approve or deny. In couple's life it is the instinctive freedom to say yes or no, to refuse a common goal felt as a constraint...
then comes self independence (to chose between going to see friends or your family). It needs thinking. Choices according to criteria (you say so, I think so...)
True acting freedom is more delicate. More than choosing (external non choosing leads to death as Don Juan tragedy says..) it engages my will. In couple's life it means making an effort. I decide, I do...
Liberty taking into accounts others, is a third level. Its a freedom but where certain internal constraints (desire, ideal, complementarity) as well as external (family pressure, friendships, work) breaks my ability to be free. (I would like, but you don't or you refuse...).
At the beginning of one's story, we feel free, because we are pushed by desire, we are driven by what seems like a bigger place for freedom. This appearance brings happiness and is thus a freedom to compare with our bachelor's life. We feel it is freedom.
But blindness of our first desire hides the deep reality of the other as well as ours. Differences, deep divergence do not appear at the beginning. Seduction plays a major role...
To win your heart, I am tenderness, softness and attention. I offer you flowers, I run to our meetings, I fly in your arms...
Seduction game is not an exercise where we master our will. We are mostly blind or slave of our desire (on others and ourselves). I found myself in love when I got disappointed by her.. It passed from idealistic love to true love, respecting others' integrity, with it's qualities and weaknesses.
This is why we need time.
- Taking time to talk, to exchange words...
- Taking notice of differences, freedom of each one,
- Taking time for tenderness of meeting one another heart before one another flesh...
When love leads to marriage, grounds for this decision are multiple and are a complex mixture where our freedom can be trapped :
When loves means happiness, we wish to make it public. To show family, friends that this union is joy. Passage from private to public is a sign of maturity. It shows an openness above the initial will of merger.
To pass from desert island (with love and fresh water) to an exhibition to social life, joy of meetings with third parties (exchange and complementarity, benefit from the third to couple's life), risking outer looks of others on the other, risking the look of the other on others...
When loves means happiness, we wish to make it public. To show family, friends that this union is joy. Passage from private to public is a sign of maturity. It shows an openness above the initial will of merger. To pass from desert island (with love and fresh water) to an exhibition to social life, joy of meetings with third parties (exchange and complementarity, benefit from the third to couple's life), risking outer looks of others on the other, risking the look of the other on others...
It is rather delicate. Sometimes to show how much I love, my fidelity, some imagine that a wedding will be a proof of attachment... But it can also reveal a floating of one's interest. This interrogation might be necessary to mature one's willingness. A wise reaction could be to differ or take distance to re-examine the essential reasons that made us close and redefine its will out of the initial seduction...
A recent letter shows this state :
I would like to marry a friend. But I feel scared. I'm panicking...This reaction might be excessive. However, considering your experience with couples could you tell me if it is frequent ? Have those feeling the same fears succeeded in winning over this fear ?
Going further, giving another more than ever before. Using it's attachment to jump over my selfishness in a decentering... This tendency which comes from one's interior correspond more to a "true" love. Its a tension that opens our heart, which is not narcissic or selfish but calls for our responsibility and our will. It is a freedom of another kind, where our will takes over our desire. If we get this far, wedding makes sense.
