A response to a post of Quell's.

Concerning the post in general--

It's good to hear this being said within your realm. I offer overwhelming agreement, with but one caveat: your emphasis on the individuality of two within marriage, on the maintenance of separate identity.

It's an interesting question, and not one easily answered... actually, even one wrongly answered constantly, with the correct answer veiled to us, being so rarely demonstrated (or so I would posit, at least). How do two people relate to each other within marriage? What does that even look like?

I would personally imagine it's something a lot more unified than which you speak. It's a hard question to even fathom, but I imagine its reality is somewhat difficult to understand until it's experienced, in a similar way to a parent's love for a child... I can't picture that kind of sacrificial love, but I've heard a number of people tell me that once they had a kid, it's like a new part of their brain functioned. They didn't know that had the capacity to care for someone else like they now do, like they did the moment they saw their child.

I don't think it works with your spouse like that, a 'love at first site' thing. Rather, I think the birth of that kind of love and unity, "oneness", is one that comes through much labour and time. But I picture two people being changed, growing to know and fit each other in a way such that they become inseparable in their deepest parts... assuming, of course, that both allow the other to know their deepest parts, something rare in this day, and in all the days of fallen man.

I don't have any experience with marriage, so I can't speak with any authority on this topic, as I've never experienced what I believe. I could go on to from whence I draw my conclusions, but that's unnecessary in this context, I think.

Concerning the "hardest question in the world" (with which I poke playfully at your less-than-sophisticated hyperbole ;)--

I think you hit the nail on the head in realizing the issue at hand is loyalty, devotion... and commitment. I would suggest the reason this question is so difficult to answer is because it is circumstantially contrary to the nature of man's heart. Dating is just not how love was meant to be done. We weren't made to become deeply emotionally (or otherwise) involved with other people without the pretext of commitment... when the bridges of intimacy are built between two, and then betrayed, inescapably the break is a messy one that gets in the way of future 'bridges'. People destroy themselves using this pattern, and assume something is wrong with them, and so break their ability to bond deeply so seriously that it stops to happen at all, in any deep place, and thus to stop hurting--which, of course, is according to one paradigm 'broken, jaded', and to another 'wise'.

(I happen to side with the former, if you didn't gather. ;)

The situation in dating looks like this: "Let's trust each other, but refuse to be accountable to each other, so either of us can pull out if we choose to."

That's what I call a flaky friendship at best. I should hope my close friends will not just bail on me when they feel like it, but be with me through thick and thin--how much more so the one I am to share my love with throughout my life?

I know that'll leave people saying there's no other way, that you need to date to learn how to be in a relationship--to which I respond that people have done otherwise for all of history. I find friendship far wiser than dating for finding romance--for one, I can get to know a person who isn't trying to impress me constantly better than otherwise, as with dating. Secondly, however, and relative to this discussion, I can make a commitment to a friendship, to care about a person as a friend, without crossing a line I shouldn't.

Anyways.
That's maybe a bit more than two cents,
but you chose to read it,
so decide for yourself if it makes sense--
and accordingly take it or leave it.

K