Haven't we all been there before. Aren't we there everyday, every minute of our lives? We humans bounce around from emotion to emotion some of us barely making it through the day let alone this thing we call life. It is our intrinsic nature to want to share, to not be alone but once we partner up the very thing we craved ends up turning into something we hate. Living with someone else is the ultimate desire for every single man and woman out there and living alone more often than not is the sentiment from married couples around the globe. WHY???? Where did we go wrong in this marriage thing? Maybe where we went wrong is that there are too many "Adam's" out there looking for their "Eve".
Hmmm I remember God saying that man needed a partner and so from Adam's ribs he created Eve thereby creating the whole "other half" mentality. Many many many marriages then follow and occur throughout the Bible but I never recall a recounting from a sermon, message or wedding ceremony during biblical times that mentions the spouses mutually completing each other.
I would argue that we never really can or could complete each other. So why did God design us to need a partner? Why did he put us out in this world flailing around searching? The religious right says that we are not searching for our partner but instead God. The anti-religious left would say the God in us is attracted to the God in another. I say I have no frigging idea. In literary terms I do not possess the knowledge or depth of insight to discern what is the correct way to live this life.
That concept aside let us venture onto after a marriage takes place. What happens next? Where does it go from there? I personally like the concept that love reveals the true person rather than hides it, flaws and all. And then together they work, yes work, at their marriage sometimes on a daily basis. Relationships are not passive places for us to hide, rather they are jobs that we need to work on in order to grow.
I heard a pastor speak out on divorce recently. He even candidly talked about mental, emotional and physical abuse as NOT being cause or reason for divorce. Stating that God HATES divorce. Yeah, well so does everyone that goes through it. God hates sin as well but we can't seem to stop doing it.
Divorce happens because we are looking for the best fit.
Divorce happens because we are looking for the best fit.
Yes I repeated myself - I want you to hear it as clear as I can type it. Do you go to the store to buy a pair of jeans and not try them on? Do you order a meal only to be disappointed? Am I comparing finding a soul mate to shopping??? Hell yes I am because one, I am a girl and two, it is the truth. Hello we call this "shopping" dating. Well, for anyone who has ever lived with someone or been married they know that "shopping" is a heck of a lot different than buying. Sometimes those jeans even after you tried them on at the store come home and hang in your closet unworn.
Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a book on marriage that dives deep into the history of the concept and what role the church and state once played and still play in that union. It is very educational. In biblical days if a man chose to divorce his wife, he merely needed to write it down. A woman on the other hand was forced to endure it until the bitter end or a merciful release. In biblical days daughters slept with fathers, cousins slept with cousins and authoritative men raped and sodomized. I mean if we stuck to everything that happened in biblical times I shutter to think about how my life would have turned out. Forced into an arranged marriage I see my spirit ending in a Romeo and Juliet fashion. I have no desire to be told who to marry or that I am stuck with that person for life even if I have made a mistake. Even up into the Victorian age women could be Queen but were not qualified to choose their lover? Clue in to everyone out there.....this is not a perfect world and will never be a perfect world. We can look to the Bible for answers, we can look for guidance and I believe that God would have us use common sense in both instances. Looking at things for what they really were and some times taking them in literal translation rather than seeking a deeper meaning.
I am starting to digress. I have a point, or at least I think I do. LOL I used to believe in the fairy tale that there was one person out there who would as Tom Cruise put it best, complete me. Now I believe that there is one person out there who can love me BEST. There are many who can love but only one who is my best mate, a soul mate. There is never completion rather acceptance. You can live with their flaws better than anyone else. You look at them and do not need to see a perfect person or perfect reflection of yourself. It is the person that puts you at ease in a way that no one else is capable of doing. Do they dote on you? Do they sense your every need? Do they never get angry? Do they never get frustrated? Do they give you everything you ever wanted? Not necessarily but they love you best.
The great oxymoron of life is that we can never truly be content. As in the movie Serenity - contentment breeds apathy and apathy breeds death. Each and every one of us are designed to fight in some sense of the word. The day we stop fighting is the day we cease to exist.
I love a man who isn't perfect, a man whom I look at with trust and respect. Do I get hurt by him? Absolutely. Do I hurt him? Sure. Do I enjoy him? Immensely. Does he compliment and bolster my confidence? Repeatedly. Does he complete me? NO. I am complete without another human being. God made us to want a partner because he knew what it felt like to be alone, why do you think he created us? But he also created us uniquely and outside of Adam, I do not believe that he took half of our rib to create another human being to complete us in life. Rather that there is a partner created that best compliments each of us.
So my final soap box rant circles around my key concept of love and marriage. Why is there so much divorce? Because we cannot stand to be alone.
Better to be with someone you can tolerate than on our own pining away for something that we desire. I mean lets look to Hollywood - sigh... I hate using Hollywood as an example because I do not believe in Celebrities (but that is a whole other blog in itself) but in this case I am referring to a media's documentation of a certain demise of a marriage. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. This topic plays beautifully into my point. Look at the media coverage. Who is the bad guy? Angelina Jolie. Who is the victim? Jennifer Aniston. COME ON. In this day and age we are going to go with the stereotypical type casting?? Is Jennifer Aniston truly the victim? People say that because she is the one that ended up alone. But WHY IS ALONE SO BAD? Why do we look at alone as a negative? Would everyone still feel sorry for her if she was re-married with 5 kids? Was Brad to continue living a lie ending in a relationship like Tiger Woods and his wife, with multiple infidelities?
So ask me the tough question now. Ask me how you decipher the best person to complete you before you get married? Yeah, good luck. There really isn't a way. I'm going to throw a radical notion out there and then leave you to think on your own. Here it is: More than one person can love us but only one loves us best. Some of us may easily find our 10. Some may be perfectly happy with their 5. Perhaps to some 5's their spouse is their 10. Are you following me here? Do you see the infinite pattern? What are the statistical mathematics of a 10 finding their 10? Factor in time into the equation and you get an even larger pool of numbers. Over 10 years can a 5 move up to a 6 or what about an 8? Is is possible to start out an 8 and a 5 but by year 25 become two 10's?
The answer is yes. In this perfect chaos there is order. We live, we grow, we change and we fight. As I said before without fight we would die. Some people love easy and others love hard. In the end if we work at it we can raise our stakes and in that instance I say we pray for our true 10 in hopes that he or she has also found someone that will work to move into the double digits for them.
Just going to stand there and watch me burn? That's alright because I like the way it hurts. Just going to stand there and hear me cry? That's alright because I like the way you lie, I like the way you lie.
We settle for less and we expect more. We can grow into more, so much more but when your 10 comes a long while you are waiting on the 5 to evolve the end result is divorce. For that matter if you marry a 6 and a 7 comes a long the desire to "upgrade" presents itself strong.
Guess what? I'll shut up now, thanks...
