Myths of Marriage: Can Love Last?
"Love and marriage, love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage"
'Fairy tales can come true, they can happen to you, if you're among the very young at heart" sung by Frank Sinatra
In the 40's, Frank Sinatra crooned to millions of swooning teenagers and set their hearts aflame. His songs sparked romantic visions of moonlit strolls and barefoot romps along the beach. Oh my! Those were the days. Or were they? Romance was in the air, and then it turned into...smog?
My mother, no different than the other girls of her generation, was swayed by the idea of romantic love. The Brooklyn bedroom I grew up in was lined with pink lace and white French provincial furniture. On the wall, papered in red roses hung a beautifully embroidered picture where two well-suited men bowed toward two women dressed in puffy coraline dresses. A poem was embroidered above the couples that read: "Adorn your heart, adorn your mind with love of the purest kind. Sweet is the morning of youth inspired with love and truth." I read those innocent words over and over wondering what they meant.
Being born in 1950 and growing up a teenager in the sixties, I was split between free-love and romantic love. But engrained in my mind was the belief that if I wasn't married by the time I was twenty-one, I was an old maid. By twenty I was married. Thirty-nine years later I am still married to the same man. How did we make it work? How did we thrive through the passages of time and continue to grow as individuals without killing one another? I'm not with the same man all these years because of the idealistic views of a dreamy rhyme. My husband and I are still going because of years of hard inner work, therapy, spiritual retreats, commitment, and brutally honest communication. Our marriage is always a work in progress. More to come on this process of marital longevity, but first let's look at some history in regards to the myth of the "perfect marriage."
In previous eras, family and society dictated the moral, socio-economic and religious obligations of marriage. The marital bond was to ensure royal bloodline, property inheritance and children to toil the soil. Throughout history, families arranged marriages, and it continues even today. For most of mankind's "civilized" world a woman was considered a possession. She lived where her husband lived and performed the duties that managed a proper household. Love was a luxury, not a necessity for our ancestors.
Capitalism evolved society. Once women earned their own living they were free to marry or choose not to. No longer dependent on traditional family structure for moral, social and financial survival, women obtained unlimited lifestyle options.
Today, millions of people get married and millions more end up divorced. For couples working on marital issues, romantic love is their first attraction. However, it is only a matter of time when intimacy is tainted by the blame game of anger, fear and accusations, "if you really loved me, you would...!"
Somewhere between arranged marriages, romantic love and the feminist movement, the collective unconscious got trapped. We became lost in a dying vision of love. Today, a new mythology needs to emerge that allows relationships to evolve through consciousness, commitment and compassion. We need to give up the notion that there is somebody out there that will save us: fill up the hollow void that makes our heart ache to be "in love." Relationship can then be an awakening; a spiritual exploration into our divinity.
Jack Crabtree and Christine Barber, authors of The Biblical Foundations of Marriage, The Romantic Myth, ask the age-old question; "What is love," exactly? Quoted by the McKenzie Study Center radio show, they state, "Part of the mythology that is deeply ingrained into our culture is that there will be this person out there that makes us feel tender, noble, giving and serving." We think, 'If I can just marry that person, then being kind and selfless will be the most natural thing in the world and that will last forever.' The problem is that if we go into a marriage thinking we need to sustain that high feeling, then we set ourselves up for complete defeat and disappointment. Marriage doesn't come naturally the way loves comes when we are infatuated. The feeling we call "love" is a kind of "G-d given organic drug;" it builds right into our feelings a vision for what a commitment to another person should be all about. What must take its place for marriage to survive is a moral commitment. We learn joy by keeping our promises.
The idea of eternal romance has led most couples to dead ends and has kept us paralyzed in childish illusions of safety. The media encourages us to remain ignorant and asleep, drugged by the mythology of romance and hot sex being the ingredients of a "good marriage", without which it just isn't worth the trip down the altar.
According to Dr. John Welwood, psychologist, relationship expert and author of Journey of the Heart states, "We can struggle to hold to wishful fantasies and old outdated formulas, even though they neither match reality nor provide any useful directions, or we can learn to use the difficulties in our relationship as opportunities to become conscious and awake. Relationships force us to look at all the core issues of human existence: family history, our personality dynamics, questions about who we are, how to communicate our feelings, how to let love flow through us, how to be committed and how to surrender."
Early on in life we experience how the delusion of perfectionism splinters our minds and souls. As children we bear witness to our parent's arguments, silences, divorces and abandonment. However, most of us are denied the tools to express the purity of our youthful and painful experiences. Naomi and Doug Moseley, authors of The Shadow Side of Intimate Relationships, agree: "People who are only willing to look at or to be aware of one portion of themselves are essentially living in a delusion. Whether by deliberate conscious intent or unconscious denial and repression, their dark aspects and feelings get covered over or disguised in favor of masks they regard as more acceptable. Behind their masks, they don't have full awareness of who they are or what they feel. This control leaves them numb and without passion."
If we are fixated in emotionally young behaviors and beliefs, we are deprived of the kind of mature love that comes from commitment and wisdom that cultivates endurance and understanding.
Dr. James Hollis, Jungian therapist and author of Midlife Passage, From Misery to Meaning, writes, "Marriage is the prime bearer of the needs of the inner child. Having affairs is a prime renewed projection of finding the perfect father/mother to love us when the marital partner has proved mere mortal."
In movies such as Camelot and Dr. Zhivago, the affair becomes an idolized entitlement for true love. We believe that out there is another who will heal and restore us; and it is usually not the one we are married to. Hollis continues to say that, "affairs will persist because the vastness of the unknown persists." We are always searching for love because love is the great unknown, the quest for the Holy Grail within ourselves. Hollis asks several basic questions: "What myth are we living? Are we living out our parents' unlived lives, compensating for their fears? Are we tied to the values of the herd, which may offend the soul but keep one compliant? Are we subject to complexes which will direct the rest of our lives on automatic pilot for so long as that they remain unconscious and unchallenged?"
Intimate relationships make us feel the rawness of these primal human questions; makes us face the wounds from our past. We know so little about how to be alive in our bodies, how to live on this planet, and what it truly means to be authentically male and female. Marriage, as a conscious relationship, can be the container for the commitment to explore these questions; a way to express all of our feelings as an intrinsic need to be loved. Couples can use the heat of conflict and resentment to self-actualize. Each person can learn to trust that they will not be abandoned when their dark side emerges. The acceptance of the shadow-self creates the sacred space for couples to be fully seen and heard. Only then can true passion and love grow.
Welwood re-tells the story of the Greek myth of Eros and Psyche in the introduction of Journey of the Heart. Dr. Welwood states that the myth suggests, "What the journey of conscious relationship may entail." The legend begins as, "Eros becomes Psyche's lover on the condition that she must never attempt to see his face. He visits her by night and for a while things go smoothly between them. But never having seen her lover, Psyche begins to wonder who he really is. When she lights a lamp to see his face, he flies away, and she must undergo a series of trials to find him again. When she finally overcomes the trials she is united with him again; only this time in a much fuller way." This myth points out to the age-old separation between consciousness (Psyche) and love (Eros). Traditional western marriage has been like the love in the dark. Like Psyche, we are presently undergoing the trials that every advance in consciousness entails.
Fairytales can come true if one is willing to forge through the intricacies of intimacy and grow up. By allowing love to be ordinary instead of all glitter and gold, unconditional love can blossom and a marriage "made in heaven" can emerge through years of conscious commitment and soulful exploration:
What is a soulful exploration?
- When two people meet, it is important for them to understand each person's family of origin patterns. For example: I came from a family where shouting and screaming was common. My husband's family rarely spoke of feelings or anything dramatic. Chaos at the dinner table was usual in my family: phones ringing, arguments etc. For my husband, quiet, polite and "don't speak unless spoken to" was his family's style. My husband had to find ways to open up more deeply, I had to practice listening and allowing him the space to find the words. Learning to feel and express emotions takes a lot of patience and honesty. You might not always agree, but you can find a middle ground, or simply let differences to exist within the relationship. Marriage does not mean you are bonded at the hip, it means that you are making a choice to be with this person, committed to the other. Commitment does not mean you settle. It means you stay in communication until you reach a better understanding of what is needed individually and as couple to keep it going.
- Learning to receive the other just as they are without trying to fix or manipulate them. Give it a try. See what happens. Most want the other to be the image of their dreams. But when they pick their teeth or fall asleep during a movie we want to slam dunk them. This might seem small, but it can lead to huge problems if we blame the other for being uncaring, distant and boring. Receiving another is a simple behavior. You take in the other and feel your feelings. You might get angry at your husband or wife for falling asleep, but you don't have to call them a jack-ass. You can simple say "I am angry and need for you to be here with me while we watch the movie." The other person needs to be honest and say, "I am afraid that if I tell you I don't want to go to a movie and that what I really want to do is sleep, you will reject me." When we are vulnerable and don't hide our true selves, we feel closer to the other and don't take the other's needs and feelings personally.
- Feelings are the most difficult aspects of a relationship. Our feelings are usually hidden under behavior that is controlling, protective and mistrustful. Through the years, couples hurt one another through misunderstandings and are ignorant of the other person's needs and desires. That is because most people don't truly know at first what they need and want. As time progresses everyone changes. What we need in our twenties is not what we need in our thirties, forties, fifties and so on. We have to constantly stay alert and in touch with who we are and what is changing in ourselves. If we don't, we can't communicate to the other the truth and then relationship will fall to the dogs. This means a commitment to engage in self-inquiry and communication, is a continuous renewed commitment for couples to give each other through time, attention and touch. Things don't happen magically, unless you express, make plans, and dream and share a vision that holds you together.
IN OTHER WORDS, MARRIAGE TAKES WORK. NOT LIKE A JOB, BUT AS A DREAM ONE WANTS TO PURSUE AND NEVER GIVES UP.
The truth is, after thirty-nine years of marriage, I know myself and my husband better than I did when I was twenty. What kept us together? Faith and a strong determination, even when we both wanted to walk away and say goodbye forever, we'd find that attraction, that innocence, that vow that drew us together in the first place. Something inside of us said, "We will work this through. We are committed." Because of that commitment our marriage still lives on. And yes, Frank did know something that was true...when you are young at heart you can laugh and see the twinkle in the others eye and embrace their spirit and heart. Then you are allies in life, not enemies. Love, is then an adventure, a journey of mystery and self-discovery.
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