Arranging for love
Cats: Ilona's Take|Attractive girl, 26/157, graduate in Dentistry from UK University and working in London inviting proposals from Professionals working abroad. Caste/region no bar.
What is marriage all about, anyway? Why do people do it? (Those who are allowed, of course, but where I live, all unmarried adults are allowed.)
I married for love the first time. It came, slowly but inexorably to a bitter, ugly, weary end. It took me a long, long time to consider the institution again.
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When I married the second time, after close to a decade of living together, I was doing it for love once more. This man, I really believe, is my soulmate. If you knew how, for years (even when I was in the first flushes of head-over-heels love with my first husband), I mocked the very notion of a ’soulmate’, you’d understand what an impact this relationship has had on my concept of love and relationship.
Would I have married the second time without having lived together first? Not in a million years.
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Because love is great, and all; soul-matery is even wonderfuller, but you have to know how you live together. You have to know how you bump along together through the daily mundanities.
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How much conversation do you each need? How much solitude? How much sex? How do you deal with the kids, if there are any? How important is your career in your life? How do you arrange work, home, relationship, leisure, spirituality, family in your personal, internal hierarchy? How clean do you need your home to be? Who keeps it clean? Do you squeeze the toothpaste in the middle or from the end? Toilet seat up or down? How do you load the dishwasher? Toilet paper over or under? How do you resolve conflicts?
These are make-or-break items that even love can’t always overcome.
Love helps. It give you that willingness to persevere, even when your partner is being an ass. When they want to be alone in their thoughts while you’re bubbling to express yours. When they insist on putting the damned knives pointed up in the dishwasher.
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But after a few years together, love, while important, isn’t the only tie that binds you together. You have a shared history now. You have patterns, you have traditions, you have things you do with each other that you may not even be aware of: the unconscious dance with your partner without which you would feel … a bit hollow. The longer you are together, the stronger your foundation of shared experience, expectations, assumptions, habits.
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And that is why, now that I am married for love and for life to my soulmate, about as pink-puffy-heart, pie-in-the-sky romantic as you can get, I have come to have solid respect for the idea of arranged marriages. Because, it seems to me, what arranged marriages attempt to do — with what success I have no idea — is to provide the couple with that foundation, right from the get-go. The idea that you seek someone of similar background, education, aspirations seems only reasonable. We tend to do it when we choose our own mates and marry for love, whether consciously or not.
People being people, it’s quite possible that the wrong factors are considered. It’s possible that it’s the parents’ aspirations that are being considered, not the child’s. It’s possible that it could go wrong in any number of dismal ways. However, it’s also possible that arranged marriages stand just the same chance to be as happy (or unhappy) as any others.
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(All ads are genuine, though I removed contact information and the bits I just didn’t understand, taken from December 9th Matrimonial pages (”Bringing People Together”) of The Hindu, an Indian newspaper.)
January 16th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
“If you knew how, for years…I mocked the very notion of a ’soulmate’, you’d understand what an impact this relationship has had on my concept of love and relationship.”
I’ve had a similar experience with my second time around, although I’m still not sure I totally buy the “soulmate” thing.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:11 am
I think it depends on how you define the word. I do not believe that there is one for every one; nor do I believe there is only one.
I think most people will never have one. They aren’t losing out on some cosmic lottery; a relationship can be a wonderful thing without it. And those of us who are lucky enough to have found it? Maybe there’s someone else out there who would be just as good a fit. Who knows?
To me, ’soulmate’ implies someone with whom you’re so much in synch that the relationship just works. All your deepest needs, most closely held values, your basic assumptions, mesh.
This is not to say that Stephen and I don’t annoy each other, or argue. But it happens rarely, and is always, and I do mean *always* resolved to full satisfaction of both parties. That may take several two-hour conversations over a couple of weeks, but if that’s what it takes, that’s what we do — because we both *want* to, because the importance of conflict resolution is one of those key issues we’re totally in synch about. We’re also mostly - 90% - in synch re: conflict resolution style, too.
Makes a huge difference.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I’m a big believer in the idea of a soul mate, and I feel lucky to have found mine the first time around (it took him longer… I’m his 2nd wife). We lived together for 4 years before getting married, and I can’t imagine marrying anyone, soulmate or not, without living together first.
It didn’t make us less committed to the idea of marriage, but it did allow us to marry with our eyes wide open and with a good mental toolbox stocked with what we knew we’d need to resolve conflict and be happy together.
A friend of mine will only buy shoes after she’s tried on every pair in the store, but refused to live with a man unless they were married (they’re now divorced). It always made me wonder… shouldn’t the way your mate fits into your life be at least as important as the way the shoe fits your foot?
January 18th, 2008 at 6:38 am
You know, I never gave any consideration to the potential significance of the fact that I didn’t live with my first husband prior to marriage. I’m not sure it would have helped: things didn’t start to go seriously wrong until after the first child was born.
And then there’s my personality at the time: I just didn’t give up on relationships! There was always a reason for the other guy’s bad behaviour, there was always one other thing I could try, or, at very least, I could attempt to convince myself it was my expectations, not the behaviour, that were at fault.
Let us just say that my first marriage taught me a lot of valuable life skills…
My eldest is currently living with her boyfriend, and, honestly? It’s a relief, to know this is how she will proceed. It would make me very nervous if she were to decide to marry someone without that experience.