the sweet lover

Advice for the married, planning to get married, single but not available, single and available, no love life.

Eduardo Calasanz was a student at the Ateneo Manila University Philippines, where he had
Father Ferriols as professor. Father Ferriols, at that time was the Philosophy department head.

Currently he still teaches Philosophy for graduating college students in Ateneo. Father Ferriols has been very popular for his mind opening and
enriching classes but was also notorious for the grades he gives. Still people took his classes for the learning and deep insight they take home with them every day (if only they could do something about the grades…)

Anyway, come grade giving time, (Ateneo has letter grading systems, the highest being an A, lowest at D, with F for flunk), Fr. Ferriols had this long discussion with the registrar people because
he wanted to give Calasanz an A+. Either that or he doesn’t teach at all…Calasanz got his A+.

Read the paper below to find out why.

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PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE

by Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I have never met a man who didn’t want to be

loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn’t fear

marriage. Something about the closure seems

constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier

to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than

for what it makes possible within our lives.

When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I

did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends

get married for reasons of social acceptability, or

sexual fever, or just because they thought it was

the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they

and their partners became embittered and petty in

their dealings with each other. I looked at older

couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of

each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights

and bickering and could not imagine subjecting

myself or someone else to such a fate.

And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old

couples who somehow seemed to glow in each

other’s presence. They seemed really in love, not

just dependent upon each other and tolerant of

each other’s foibles. It was an astounding sight,

and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself,

can they have survived so many years of

sameness, so much irritation at the other’s habits?

What keeps love alive in them, when most of us

seem unable to even stay together, much less love

each other? The central secret seems to be in

choosing well. There is something to the claim of

fundamental compatibility. Good people can create

a bad relationship, even though they both dearly

want the relationship to succeed. It is important to

find someone with whom you can create a good

relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is

hard to see clearly in the early stages.

Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors

the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you

to the thousands of little things by which

relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to

find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming

sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve

themselves sexually and ride out the most heated

period of sexual attraction in order to see what is

on the other side. This can work, but it can also

leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the

sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know

each other apart from their sexuality. But they

cannot see clearly, because the presence of

unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it

keeps them from having any normal perception of

what life would be like together. The truly lucky

people are the ones who manage to become long-

time friends before they realize they are attracted

to each other. They get to know each other’s

laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see

each other at their worst and at their best. They

share time together before they get swept into the

entangling intimacy of their sexuality.

This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall

under the spell of your sexual attraction

immediately, you need to look beyond it for other

keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter.

Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each

other’s company over the long term. If your

laughter together is good and healthy, and not at

the expense of others, then you have a healthy

relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of

surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you

can always surprise each other. And if you can

always surprise each other, you can always keep

the world around you new. Beware of a relationship

in which there is no laughter. Even the most

intimate relationships based only on seriousness

have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a

common serious viewpoint on the world tends to

turn you against those who do not share the same

viewpoint, and your relationship can become based

on being critical together.

After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the

world in a way you respect. When two people first

get together, they tend to see their relationship as

existing only in the space between the two of

them. They find each other endlessly fascinating,

and the overwhelming power of the emotions they

are sharing obscures the outside world. As the

relationship ages and grows, the outside world

becomes important again. If your partner treats

people or circumstances in a way you can’t

accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at

the way she cares for others and deals with the

daily affairs of life. If that makes you love her more,

your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you

do not respect the way you each deal with the

world around you, eventually the two of you will not

respect each other.

Look also at how your partner confronts the

mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and

practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in

the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the

mystery of the unseen in life and relationships,

while the other is drawn only to the literal and the

practical, you must take care that the distance

doesnt become an unbridgeable gap that leaves

you each feeling isolated and

misunderstood.

There are many other keys, but you must find

them by ourself. We all have unchangeable parts

of our hearts that we will not betray and private

commitments to a vision of life that we will not

deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot

nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you

cannot nourish them in her, you will find yourselves

growing further apart until you live in separate

worlds where you share the business of life, but

never touch each other where the heart lives and

dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the

cataloging of petty hurts and daily failures that

leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with

their

mates.

So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will

have chosen a partner with whom you can grow,

and then the real miracle of marriage can take

place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully

when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too

strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is

called transformation. Transformation is one of the

most common events of nature. The seed

becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the

butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love

becomes a child. We never question these,

because we see them around us every day. To us

they are not miracles, though if we did not know

them they would be impossible to believe.

Marriage is a transformation we choose to make.

Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it

begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that

will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will

come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the

bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for

the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are

quite willing to accept the reality of negative

transformation in a marriage. It was negative

transformation that always had me terrified of the

bitter marriages that I feared when I was younger.

It never occurred to me to question the dark

miracle that transformed love into harshness and

bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the

possibility that the first heat of love could be

transformed into something positive that was

actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat

of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the

power of this passion and the fear that when it

cooled I would be left with something lesser and

bitter. But there is positive transformation as well.

Like negative transformation, it results from a slow

accretion of little things. But instead of death by a

thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand

touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two

separate beings, two separate presence, two

separate consciousnesses come together and

share a view of life that passes before them. They

remain separate, but they also become one. There

is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a

constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to

say that there is not tension and there are not

traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of

life, from celibate to monogamous to having

multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the

lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow

more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes

dulled to the richness that it alone contains. But

only marriage allows life to deepen and expand

and be leavened by the knowledge that two have

chosen, against all odds, to become one. Those

who live together without marriage can know the

pleasure of shared company, but there is a

specific gravity in the marriage commitment that

deepens that experience into something richer and

more complex.

So do not fear marriage, just as you should not

rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of

faith and it contains within it the power of

transformation.

If you believe in your heart that you have found

someone with whom you are able to grow, if you

have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless

attraction of the road not taken and the partner not

chosen, if you have the strength of heart to

embrace the cycles and seasons that your love

will experience, then you may be ready to seek

the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait.

The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth

your patience. When the time comes, a thousand

flowers will bloom…endlessly.

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A beautiful piece. Pls pass it on especially to the

young people who restarting to get into

relationships or are in a relationship. It would save

them a lot of heartaches and bitterness down the

road.