love and marriage.
Love is a feeling of being desired by someone you desire.
That's a simplistic view but by and large holds a sense of reality and reason. Afterall, love is often mistaken for something much deeper when truth be told, the human capacity to love is limited and often not entirely selfless, at least between two un-related individuals.
And how does this relate to marriage? Strangely for every 3 couples, perhaps that sort of unconditional love is found in 2 or less. From my personal observations and experiences, marriage is sometimes a contract of stability and love is simply an entity one takes for granted in the package. Do you love your spouse or are you simply obliged to do so in the contract?
I have 3 close friends of whom all are married. Like them, I also was for nearly a decade, but unlike them, I threw in the towel last year. I meet up with them once in a while and we update each other, as we used to when time permitted B.C (before children).
1) Friend C has been married nearly 9 years and hers has weathered storms even before the wedding, a near break-up caused by infidelity on his part. But she loved him regardless and she has that sort of practical personality which spends more time doing than thinking. Unlike me, I would've analysed the problem to death and possibly end up with a pre-nuptial divorce. Her marriage is rock solid only because she has that amazing ability to look at things in the long haul, forgiving his error as a momentary slip which would correct itself when trust somehow repairs itself through the healing of time.
2) Friend W is a typical coupling of yuppies who made good in a bullish market and now live an impossibly lavish lifestyle with privately-schooled children. Their marriage has always been as businesslike as their 10-year financial plans and both being in the investment and banking sectors somehow shapes the way it all works. When I spend time with them, I sense a solid and secure partnership where both are in complete trust in each other that no one will cop out at anytime, just like a punter who wouldn't throw away his winnings on a sure thing. Call me cycnical and I love my friend W and all, but if marriage could be rated on a Celsius scale, I'd give it a lukewarm and stable 36.9C. But it works for them simply because her expectations are very pragmatic and well, text-book safe.
3) Friend Y married against all sorts of cultural/financial odds. First it was the conflicting religious backgrounds, and then threats to cut off her heritage and what have you because her parents felt she could do a lot better than settling for a man who believed that they could really live on love. She did give up a lot for him (namely her rather extravagant ways) to commit this to a pairing that has seen nearly 8 years. And from what she shares with me ocassionally, hers isn't exactly a storybook romance. Often she second-guesses her decisions but her nature is essentially submissive and fatalistic. She wouldn't run out of a burning house unless her partner opens the door. Well, in a word, she's lasted this long in the marriage because she's resigned herself to it. Even when in the past year an ex-flame who's now all corporate and thriving tempted her with his attention. She stuck it through because she felt it was morally the right thing to do.
4) Then there's me. I admit that my relationship with him started on the premise as stated in the opening quote. I guess love to me has always been a transient 'feeling', you're completely in-love with somebody until it settles into a calm state of habit and being together. And that may have well been the case till present if not for our often conflicting ideology of how a family should be raised. Well, that and my often cerebral preoccupation with how happy I should be or how much of my expectations of marriage were fulfilled. Unlike my 3 friends, my notion of marriage should encompass that 'wow' factor in your life where your spouse embraces you with all sorts of loving nuances and understands you so thoroughly that you never need to utter a word - just a look, a whine, or even the silence.
Of course I was completely delusional. If such a spouse were to exist, we should just marry ourselves.
So the whole point to this entry is really that I have learnt that perhaps marriage can only work when the couple either are joined in a very rare selfless kind of love, a very focussed sort of commitment and/or a very acceptingly passive sort of union where you get by each day just by existing beside each other till, well, 'death us do part'.
That's a simplistic view but by and large holds a sense of reality and reason. Afterall, love is often mistaken for something much deeper when truth be told, the human capacity to love is limited and often not entirely selfless, at least between two un-related individuals.
And how does this relate to marriage? Strangely for every 3 couples, perhaps that sort of unconditional love is found in 2 or less. From my personal observations and experiences, marriage is sometimes a contract of stability and love is simply an entity one takes for granted in the package. Do you love your spouse or are you simply obliged to do so in the contract?
I have 3 close friends of whom all are married. Like them, I also was for nearly a decade, but unlike them, I threw in the towel last year. I meet up with them once in a while and we update each other, as we used to when time permitted B.C (before children).
1) Friend C has been married nearly 9 years and hers has weathered storms even before the wedding, a near break-up caused by infidelity on his part. But she loved him regardless and she has that sort of practical personality which spends more time doing than thinking. Unlike me, I would've analysed the problem to death and possibly end up with a pre-nuptial divorce. Her marriage is rock solid only because she has that amazing ability to look at things in the long haul, forgiving his error as a momentary slip which would correct itself when trust somehow repairs itself through the healing of time.
2) Friend W is a typical coupling of yuppies who made good in a bullish market and now live an impossibly lavish lifestyle with privately-schooled children. Their marriage has always been as businesslike as their 10-year financial plans and both being in the investment and banking sectors somehow shapes the way it all works. When I spend time with them, I sense a solid and secure partnership where both are in complete trust in each other that no one will cop out at anytime, just like a punter who wouldn't throw away his winnings on a sure thing. Call me cycnical and I love my friend W and all, but if marriage could be rated on a Celsius scale, I'd give it a lukewarm and stable 36.9C. But it works for them simply because her expectations are very pragmatic and well, text-book safe.
3) Friend Y married against all sorts of cultural/financial odds. First it was the conflicting religious backgrounds, and then threats to cut off her heritage and what have you because her parents felt she could do a lot better than settling for a man who believed that they could really live on love. She did give up a lot for him (namely her rather extravagant ways) to commit this to a pairing that has seen nearly 8 years. And from what she shares with me ocassionally, hers isn't exactly a storybook romance. Often she second-guesses her decisions but her nature is essentially submissive and fatalistic. She wouldn't run out of a burning house unless her partner opens the door. Well, in a word, she's lasted this long in the marriage because she's resigned herself to it. Even when in the past year an ex-flame who's now all corporate and thriving tempted her with his attention. She stuck it through because she felt it was morally the right thing to do.
4) Then there's me. I admit that my relationship with him started on the premise as stated in the opening quote. I guess love to me has always been a transient 'feeling', you're completely in-love with somebody until it settles into a calm state of habit and being together. And that may have well been the case till present if not for our often conflicting ideology of how a family should be raised. Well, that and my often cerebral preoccupation with how happy I should be or how much of my expectations of marriage were fulfilled. Unlike my 3 friends, my notion of marriage should encompass that 'wow' factor in your life where your spouse embraces you with all sorts of loving nuances and understands you so thoroughly that you never need to utter a word - just a look, a whine, or even the silence.
Of course I was completely delusional. If such a spouse were to exist, we should just marry ourselves.
So the whole point to this entry is really that I have learnt that perhaps marriage can only work when the couple either are joined in a very rare selfless kind of love, a very focussed sort of commitment and/or a very acceptingly passive sort of union where you get by each day just by existing beside each other till, well, 'death us do part'.