A woman who once came to me for counseling complained of her husband, “He thinks I’m rejecting him if I tell him I want privacy in the bathroom!”
Let’s face it, there are times when all of us feel that the world, including our own nearest and dearest, is rather too much with us.
Marriage should therefore, I think, be rooted primarily in mutual respect. For only out of such respect can love grow to become a healthy plant, capable of surviving all the storms of changing fortune — and feeling.
Anyone who’s fallen in love knows that human feeling is subject to fluctuations. Love cannot be expected to continue with unabated intensity forever. We are told that familiarity breeds contempt, but more often what it breeds is an attitude of simply taking the familiar object for granted. A person may be gracious to the veriest stranger, and yet overlook the simplest courtesy where his spouse is concerned.
Respect can develop only out of inward centeredness-a centeredness not in the selfish ego, but where a degree of distance is maintained, and an appreciation of each other’s right to privacy.
For everyone needs some space of his own.
Couples need time apart from one another — even as everyone needs time apart from the world (in sleep, for instance), in order to return to the struggle of life refreshed, and with renewed enthusiasm. Only from a sense of inward freedom can we preserve the creative joy that is the highest promise of any human relationship.
Remember, you came alone into this world, and alone you’ll leave it in death. The effort to escape your aloneness by clinging to another human being is based on a delusion. Any union that encourages such clinging is headed for the rocks of disappointment and, eventually, of disillusionment.
I remember one couple: the wife so doted on the husband that he, unable to bear her suffocating worship, took to drinking heavily. The more she worshipped him, the harder he drank. It was painful to me, as their friend, to see them drifting ineluctably toward disaster. Nor could I say which was the greater pain: hers, for doting so fondly on someone who, at least by his present actions, was bound to disappoint her in the end; or his, for the imprisonment he felt in a cage of excessive dependency which he could not, by the canons of his upbringing, define as anything but desirable and good.
The fact is, her affection was possessive, and therefore far less generous than it seemed. True love is based on mutual giving. It never makes demands. It never says to the other person, “You owe me such and so, because I am your wife (or your husband).”
Love is a sharing, not a taking.
Marriage is such a sensitive relationship that if in any way you try to coerce one another, you stand in danger of damaging your relationship irretrievably.
Respect each other’s free will. Instead of emotional commands and ultimatums, offer your suggestions kindly – humbly even – to the other person for his or her free consideration.
In the Indian Scriptures the following advice is given to married couples: “The husband should love the wife, not for the sake of his wife alone, but for the sake of the Divine Mother who is manifest to him in the form of his wife. And the wife should love the husband, not only as her husband, but as the Lord manifest to her in human form.”
A body without a head cannot function. A physical and mental “body,” similarly, that lacks the direction of spiritual awareness is bound sooner or later to stumble, spiritually. To expect to maintain an attitude of loving respect without a foundation in higher awareness would be like expecting a plant to flourish without soil.
As Emerson put it in his essay, “The Over-Soul”: “I feel something higher in each of us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us. Men descend to meet.”
Unless marriage is spiritualized it cannot, in the deepest sense, be successful. The very basis of true marriage is a love that is spiritual, not earthy.
Respect for one another should include giving each other the freedom to grow and change, each at his own pace. Women who expect a second Jesus Christ for a husband would do better to enter a convent. And men who want another Sita(1) for a wife should remember that Ram himself made no demands of his saintly wife, but rather urged her not to sacrifice security and comfort in order to serve him.
A basic rule of life is to work with things as they are, not as one wishes they were. This rule certainly applies to human relationships, and perhaps above all to marriage. Accept your spouse as he or she is. Only on the basis of that acceptance will you have any chance of encouraging such potential as may exist in your spouse for improvement.
Would you like to see a change in your partner? First, introspect to see whether the need isn’t really for an inner change in yourself.
But it would be simplistic to claim that one is always at fault for any flaw that he observes in others. The Scriptural commandment not to judge others refers to disliking them for their flaws; it is not a warning against developing the soul-faculty of discrimination. It is important for our own spiritual development to be able to see where the world is in relation to its own well-being, and to where we ourselves want to be on the path of life.
So then, what if you do see a flaw in your partner’s character? The chances are that he has his share of them, given the average human condition. Should you try, then, to change him? If your desire to do so is rooted in love, and if your concern is for his (or for her) welfare, not for your own, you have a duty to try, provided always that you try in the right way.
It is seldom wise under any circumstance to offer advice. In the married state, however, it can be disastrous. Remember, you are not your spouse’s guru. (Yet how many try to assume that role, where their wives or husbands are concerned!) Even when the other person asks for advice, treat the request sensitively.
Never criticize. Offer – humbly, tentatively – mentally leaving the other person utterly free to accept or reject your offering. Even tell yourself that he will be doing you a favor if he accepts it. Never let yourself feel that he owes it to you to accept what you tell him.
Never speak under the influence of emotion. And never go deeply into a matter with your spouse when he or she is upset. Strong emotion abhors reason. Do plan to talk a difference out; don’t suppress it. (It is amazing how often hurt feelings and misunderstandings simply evaporate, once one summons up the courage to confront them.) But it shouldn’t be viewed as suppression if you put it mentally on a shelf until the right moment to bring it out again.
Speak not only when both of you are calm, but when whatever you say is likely to do the most good. Admittedly, this takes patience, but then, without patience no lasting good is ever accomplished.
An important guideline for married couples is to think always of giving one another strength, and not contributing to the other person’s weaknesses. This may sound obvious, but it is surprising how many couples reinforce each other’s negativity — agreeing with one’s partner’s dissatisfaction, for example, not always because one is dissatisfied, but for the more dubious purpose of accumulating credits against such a time as one may want one’s own negativity reinforced. One of the most insidious aspects of marriage, once one allows it into the relationship, is the tendency toward increasing, not decreasing, both partners’ delusions. In this manner marriage, which ought to be a means of assisting each other’s spiritual development, can actually stand as a formidable barrier to each partner’s progress.
Think in terms of long rhythms, not of short ones. Keep your sense of over-all proportion. Remember that your commitment is to the total relationship; don’t get swept up in the exigencies of the moment.
It is easy, during a momentary pique, to forget how insignificant this feeling is compared to the over-all depth of your love for one another. Don’t allow yourself, even by a sharp tone of voice, to convey the much greater (and, one hopes, completely false) message, “I don’t love you.”
If your partner is upset, you be the peacemaker. Don’t play games with your love; too much is at stake. Why create a contest between you? If you can be the peacemaker, maybe he (or she) will play the same role for you, the next time you are upset.
Finally, don’t make situations, or things, or anything more important in your relationship than the love and respect you bear one another, or than the spiritual support that you give one another. For circumstances change. They are fleeting compared to the long-range relationship you are building together — a relationship that may, if you build it sensitively and truly, carry you past the portals of this life into eternity.
