English
EspañolTo love each other is to know each other, not ignore one another. It is trust and sincerity, not fear and lies. What mirage, fictitious character, or mask is loved by those who do not honestly know themselves? Mirages vanish; so does that “love.”
Text
“Many couples marry without really knowing one another… without facing the challenge of revealing themselves and coming to know who the other person truly is.” (The Joy of Love, n.210)
Commentary
In recent years, there have been an increasing number of cases of young marriages that begin with great enthusiasm and divorce shortly after that. Is this volatility due to the fact that marriage is too difficult, perhaps even impossible? Is marriage to blame for the fragility and short duration?
Many causes could have been detected and solved in time. Some are mainly due to the lack of real mutual knowledge. I am not alluding to knowing which is the favorite dish or color or other minor and superficial things. I am referring to the knowledge of each one´s reality, expressly as potential spouses, the ability to build together, the strength to accept and help one another, and not succumb to frustrations; the knowledge of each person’s true values, virtues, and defects, their dreams and projects, their laborious personality and tenacity, their vision of a family and children, the meaning they give to life, and their spiritual dimension.
We long to love, but we avoid getting to know each other in-depth. It seems that we are afraid to have deep conversations because perhaps we have been distracted for so long by the superficial and not having cultivated inner life; we hide the fact that we have nothing to offer. If we are empty, if we deceive ourselves with appearances, if we lie to ourselves and pretend to be what we are not…, if we are ghosts or soap bubbles, who do we really love? Can we genuinely love in this way?
In order to know each other, it seems essential to know oneself. If we never face ourselves in the mirror, with realism and humility, if we are empty and without the slightest interest in knowing and improving our inner selves…, the way is open to frivolous, superficial, manipulative, false, and lying personalities. It is a death foretold to marry with these mistakes and ignorance as a foundation.
A common intimate life project as big as marriage, having children, building a warm, stable, strong home, capable of giving each other love, trust, mutual help, loyalty, fidelity, and companionship…, requires us to have the opportunity to truly know each other, to communicate with sincerity, to accept each other with conviction.
