English
EspañolAs does each spouse, a marriage lives through chronological cycles and different ages. It is part of a mature love to know how to renew oneself along the way. What type of renewal? The one which occurs through deepening the length of conjugal love and its unity in the new circumstances of each stage of life. Renewal through the changes proper to each spouses´age and in the successive periods of the family. It is necessary to listen to each other with renewed interest and openness and know how to adopt opportune agreements together.
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“This process occurs in various stages that call for generosity and sacrifice. The first powerful feelings of attraction give way to the realization that the other is now a part of my life. The pleasure of belonging to one another leads to seeing life as a common project, putting the other’s happiness ahead of my own, and realizing with joy that this marriage enriches society. As love matures, it also learns to “negotiate.” Far from anything selfish or calculating, such negotiation is an exercise of mutual love, an interplay of give and take, for the good of the family. At each new stage of married life, there is a need to sit down and renegotiate agreements, so that there will be no winners and losers, but rather two winners.” (The Joy of Love, n.220)
Commentary
In business and the socio-economic sphere in general, it is usual to attribute success to projects in which both parties win; Win to Win projects with purposes that are also expected to be long-lasting.
Two people who love each other will know how to halt at the different stages of their life together to “agree on reciprocal illusions, offerings, and renunciations,” which, out of love, will lead them, and not divert them, from that unique matrimonial synthesis that each stage demands. A marital project, seen in this way, is an unavoidable work of two, which, among other achievements, will allow them to recognize each other as people who share the happiness of witnessing how they both come out winners and thus rejoice together in their ability to have made possible a successful project in a markedly individualistic and solitary environment.
Let us not be afraid to see marital love in this manner: as a project with a plan in which both spouses win (conquer common objectives) if things go well, and not, on the other hand – as we so often witness – as neglecting one another, unaware that the other will end up as bad or worse if one is in bad shape.
A frequent defect is an inattention towards the other (not even out of detachment or lack of affection), but out of selfish carelessness. This lack of care in placing the other at the center of our attention, without being aware of its enormous danger, can lead us to the point where, by not being affectionate and expressive with his wife, a husband, causes her to assume that he no longer loves her as before or even enough. The problem will worsen if she is convinced that she is no longer loved.
Finding the missing link, necessary to give way, each and every time, for reuniting, dispelling doubts and darkness, for healing, or the next stage of the marital project, requires learning to dialogue with an open heart, expressing not only worries and anger but also expectations and needs. According to their personality and characteristics, each husband and wife needs to feel loved, recognized, esteemed, and necessary to the other person. Love lives badly in the atmosphere of indifference, empty routines, and neglect.
Talk, talk, talk! Silences, fears, lack of trust are steps of estrangement and disunity. Embrace one another, accompany one another!! Negotiate, discuss and reach an agreement together and periodically as many times as needed. To anticipate and have our five senses set on what the other person needs is a vital exercise proper of the finest human beings, of those who together are destined to build and rebuild the “living life” of their “union.”
