Made in Heaven
Made in Heaven
Marriages, they say, are made in heaven. But the agony and ecstasy of marriage has to be experienced on earth. Many believe that partners are chosen by a divine force, that it is written in one's karma as to whom our partner will be and there isn't much we can do about it.
Nowadays, the choice of one's partner is predominantly left to the individual. Unfortunately, this is one choice you have to make with very little knowledge about the other person - even in cases where years of courtship is involved. When a choice is made out of ignorance, there are no guarantees that it will be the best. We must be prepared for the eventuality of our partner not meeting our expectations. But in making this important decision of your life, there is at least one thing you can always do - ask yourself why you want to get married. To make the right choice of partner, you need to contemplate on the reasons why you want to get married. It seems like an irrelevant question to ponder over, but it is the most important.
Otherwise, your unconscious motives, which look for short-term benefits, may take you for a very costly ride. Many people marry because others around them get married. It is the done thing. This is probably better than a variety of other reasons why people marry. Some of them are: to live independently, for financial freedom, to have a physical relationship, to have children, for business reasons, for status and prestige, to ward off loneliness, for security, to escape the present surroundings, to be able to spend more money, to quieten relatives who keep asking if something is wrong; some marry for they have nothing better to do, and so on. Many such reasons are born out of the present situation or some hidden fear or wish of the individual.
A girl from a large family living in a small house without privacy longs to get married and live independently. A man who is never allowed to take decisions at home wants to get out and be his own master, and marriage seems to be one way out. Yet another may marry because he wants a caretaker for himself, others to go abroad. Some people marry to please their parents! Yet others to please their grandparents!! Marriage in all such cases is used to fulfill a particular need of the individual that seems relevant at that point in their lives. These are very flimsy reasons for taking a plunge into an important relationship as marriage.
If you enter a relationship in order to fulfill a specific need, then the relationship is being used as a tool to fix that need. What happens once the need is fixed? If you marry for experiencing the joys of motherhood, once children are born - what next? If you marry to go abroad and once you go abroad after marriage, what has the marriage to offer you then? To have a limited range objective in a long-term relationship is counterproductive and disastrous. There will be a vacuum once the short-term goal is fulfilled because that will be taken for granted thereafter. You will then have to start searching for what more you can get out of the relationship. You may find that there may or may not be much you can get from your partner other than the specific reason for which you got married, which is now fulfilled.
Then, you start accusing your partner saying that you are getting nothing from the marriage. How will you?
The very foundation on which you built your marriage was made of quicksand. There are some people whose main reason for marrying is to merely experience a physical relationship. This is a non- sustainable proposition. It will never work out in the long run. A person you are going to be with day in, day out cannot be viewed as some plaything. Fulfillment cannot be obtained through one aspect of a person alone.
Over a period of time, that one aspect will lose its glamour. By focusing exclusively on one aspect of a person, you are denying yourself of experiencing other aspects that are potential possibilities in all relationships. These possibilities will bring forth far greater happiness than what the physical or any other single aspect of the person can. Let us not forget that the greatest happiness a human being can experience in the material world is only through human relationships. But to turn this possibility into a reality, every aspect of the person has to be experienced and not merely one part. We are not mere bodies, but minds and spirits as well.
Most of our happiness comes from our mind and heart, and not just from the body. The joy of tender feelings for another human being is far superior and more satisfying than any physical sensation, however intense it may be. Take the example of a beautiful girl born in a poor family. Depending on the extent of her deprivation, she may have a one-point agenda of experiencing the joy of being wealthy. She’ll strongly believe that with money all her dreams will come true. This desperation will drive her to marry the first rich man that comes along. Her thinking would be that if she misses this jackpot, another might not come her way. Her desperate mind will brush aside any intuition she may have about the inadequacies in her partner. The mind will further project a strong but false belief that after marriage everything will work itself out. She will undoubtedly enjoy prosperity, but at what cost?
Once she gets used to prosperity, she will begin to take it for granted and it will lose its luster. Her mind will then start looking for something else in the relationship, which she may or may not find. It is the same story when people marry for prestige, status, beauty, fame, family, etc., which are all external to the individual and not intrinsic to their nature.
The human mind is caught up in a hierarchy of needs. The fulfillment of one need will automatically bring forth the next higher need.
There is no escaping this and we just cannot wish it away. For instance, once we have enough money, the next higher need, which could be recognition in society, will manifest itself in no time. It comes without our asking. Just when we thought we've made it in life, nature fills the vacuum with another need. We wonder why, after having got what we always dreamt of, there is still that nagging thought of not being fulfilled. The destination that seemed so near now seems so far once again. We never seem to arrive. The same principle operates in relationships. The person we married to fulfill the most pressing need in the beginning is expected to fulfill the next need and the next and the next, whether he or she is capable of it or not. That's when dreams begin to die.
Once the initial need is fulfilled, other needs will manifest one after another, like clockwork. But the need that will ultimately manifest in all relationships is the need to be loved, adored, valued, cherished, wanted, appreciated, and to be cared for - the emotional bonding. This is a never-ending need and has to be perennially nourished. This need is always lurking within us and will surface with great intensity when other pressing needs have been fulfilled. If this one need is fulfilled, it is generally a smooth sail thereafter.
It often happens that the partner who provides financial security, a separate home, independence, material goods, social status, prestige, children, etc., now seems like a different person when it comes to fulfilling this most important need of making the other feel loved. In that respect, he or she may be lacking that extra something that is needed. He may otherwise be a very nice person, kind, considerate, caring, successful, rich, smart, savvy, suave, intelligent, but if he is not able to fulfill this ultimate need the way his partner wants it to be fulfilled, the relationship will begin to falter.
Confused and bewildered, he will ask - have I not provided you with everything you always wanted? Why are you dissatisfied? In the process of providing, he comes face-to-face with something he never bargained for. By fulfilling the specific needs of his partner, he has brought to surface this deep inner need, which was hiding beneath. Fulfilling this need requires a personality, which he has not cultivated. This stage can be most painful, as there is nowhere to turn to for help and one's personality cannot be changed overnight. But there is no option other than change.
Therefore, one must not marry merely to fulfill a limited short-term need or fill up the present vacuum, because other needs will keep manifesting, especially the ultimate need to feel loved. Fortunately, all human beings are capable of expressing love and affection for one another. But, for the other person to love you there must be something in you that the other wants to love. What is that elusive something? It is not the money in your bank or your flashy car. That something is nothing but your own ability to express love for your partner. This is something that you have to learn to do yourself. But how do you go about doing this, especially when you don't like a few personality traits of your partner that don’t fit in with your ways?
Though it looks tough, all is not lost. People whose initial needs have been fulfilled but are at a dead end in their marriage, where the marriage has become a marriage of convenience, where conversation does not go beyond what the children and neighbors are doing, can try this experiment. Start looking for positive aspects in your partner that you have hitherto ignored or taken for granted, or thought were of no consequence or didn't know existed. Don't look for external ones like success, wealth, status, position, fame and the like.
That will take you on a dangerous and destructive ego trip. If the money, status or position goes, love will turn into contempt. Look only for qualities that are intrinsic to one's personality. Look for the smallest, teeny-weeny ones. Look for things you can observe in day to- day life. Something that will not deteriorate over time, something that cannot be taken away by circumstances, something that can never be lost - like the way he walks, her exuberant laughter, his sense of humor, her soft tone of voice, his witty remarks, the way she talks on the telephone with her friends, his helping nature, her dress sense, the way the children adore him, her straightforwardness, his honesty, her lovely smile, his shyness, her confidence, his commitment, her vulnerability, his kindness, her innocence.
Tender and soft qualities- the ones that don't make big noise. Small things in life - the smaller the better. The most inconsequential ones. Things you thought were irrelevant, things that don't get anybody any prize.
Personal qualities that do not arouse the ego. Don't let your egoistic and logical mind decide. Let your heart decide. Accumulate as many of these in your memory as you can. Dwell on them everyday with fondness. Visualize them. Strengthen them. Make them appear important. Put some life into them. Reminisce constantly. Invoke them whenever you see your partner. Invoke them when you don't see your partner. Invoke them during arguments with your partner. Whenever the aspects that you don't like about your partner raise their heads, immediately invoke these positive ones stored in your memory to neutralize them.
Don't dwell on or fight with the negative. Instead, use it to trigger the positive.
Once sufficient quantities of such thoughts and images are stored in your emotional warehouse, you will be able to express them with ease. Constant expression of the stored up feelings will further reinforce the mental pattern. The language of expression needs to be personalized with 'I like' statements. I like the way you handled the situation, I like the way you talk to my mother, I like the way you smile, and so on. If you are not used to such verbal expressions, it may be difficult initially. Simply practice them in your mind. The outward expression will happen on its own accord - slowly, but definitely, with time.
Over a period of time, you will notice a qualitative change in your relationship with the very person who you thought had nothing more to offer you. Ultimately, a time will come when the mere presence of your partner will give you a deep sense of fulfillment.
.
Marriages, they say, are made in heaven. But the agony and ecstasy of marriage has to be experienced on earth. Many believe that partners are chosen by a divine force, that it is written in one's karma as to whom our partner will be and there isn't much we can do about it.
Nowadays, the choice of one's partner is predominantly left to the individual. Unfortunately, this is one choice you have to make with very little knowledge about the other person - even in cases where years of courtship is involved. When a choice is made out of ignorance, there are no guarantees that it will be the best. We must be prepared for the eventuality of our partner not meeting our expectations. But in making this important decision of your life, there is at least one thing you can always do - ask yourself why you want to get married. To make the right choice of partner, you need to contemplate on the reasons why you want to get married. It seems like an irrelevant question to ponder over, but it is the most important.
Otherwise, your unconscious motives, which look for short-term benefits, may take you for a very costly ride. Many people marry because others around them get married. It is the done thing. This is probably better than a variety of other reasons why people marry. Some of them are: to live independently, for financial freedom, to have a physical relationship, to have children, for business reasons, for status and prestige, to ward off loneliness, for security, to escape the present surroundings, to be able to spend more money, to quieten relatives who keep asking if something is wrong; some marry for they have nothing better to do, and so on. Many such reasons are born out of the present situation or some hidden fear or wish of the individual.
A girl from a large family living in a small house without privacy longs to get married and live independently. A man who is never allowed to take decisions at home wants to get out and be his own master, and marriage seems to be one way out. Yet another may marry because he wants a caretaker for himself, others to go abroad. Some people marry to please their parents! Yet others to please their grandparents!! Marriage in all such cases is used to fulfill a particular need of the individual that seems relevant at that point in their lives. These are very flimsy reasons for taking a plunge into an important relationship as marriage.
If you enter a relationship in order to fulfill a specific need, then the relationship is being used as a tool to fix that need. What happens once the need is fixed? If you marry for experiencing the joys of motherhood, once children are born - what next? If you marry to go abroad and once you go abroad after marriage, what has the marriage to offer you then? To have a limited range objective in a long-term relationship is counterproductive and disastrous. There will be a vacuum once the short-term goal is fulfilled because that will be taken for granted thereafter. You will then have to start searching for what more you can get out of the relationship. You may find that there may or may not be much you can get from your partner other than the specific reason for which you got married, which is now fulfilled.
Then, you start accusing your partner saying that you are getting nothing from the marriage. How will you?
The very foundation on which you built your marriage was made of quicksand. There are some people whose main reason for marrying is to merely experience a physical relationship. This is a non- sustainable proposition. It will never work out in the long run. A person you are going to be with day in, day out cannot be viewed as some plaything. Fulfillment cannot be obtained through one aspect of a person alone.
Over a period of time, that one aspect will lose its glamour. By focusing exclusively on one aspect of a person, you are denying yourself of experiencing other aspects that are potential possibilities in all relationships. These possibilities will bring forth far greater happiness than what the physical or any other single aspect of the person can. Let us not forget that the greatest happiness a human being can experience in the material world is only through human relationships. But to turn this possibility into a reality, every aspect of the person has to be experienced and not merely one part. We are not mere bodies, but minds and spirits as well.
Most of our happiness comes from our mind and heart, and not just from the body. The joy of tender feelings for another human being is far superior and more satisfying than any physical sensation, however intense it may be. Take the example of a beautiful girl born in a poor family. Depending on the extent of her deprivation, she may have a one-point agenda of experiencing the joy of being wealthy. She’ll strongly believe that with money all her dreams will come true. This desperation will drive her to marry the first rich man that comes along. Her thinking would be that if she misses this jackpot, another might not come her way. Her desperate mind will brush aside any intuition she may have about the inadequacies in her partner. The mind will further project a strong but false belief that after marriage everything will work itself out. She will undoubtedly enjoy prosperity, but at what cost?
Once she gets used to prosperity, she will begin to take it for granted and it will lose its luster. Her mind will then start looking for something else in the relationship, which she may or may not find. It is the same story when people marry for prestige, status, beauty, fame, family, etc., which are all external to the individual and not intrinsic to their nature.
The human mind is caught up in a hierarchy of needs. The fulfillment of one need will automatically bring forth the next higher need.
There is no escaping this and we just cannot wish it away. For instance, once we have enough money, the next higher need, which could be recognition in society, will manifest itself in no time. It comes without our asking. Just when we thought we've made it in life, nature fills the vacuum with another need. We wonder why, after having got what we always dreamt of, there is still that nagging thought of not being fulfilled. The destination that seemed so near now seems so far once again. We never seem to arrive. The same principle operates in relationships. The person we married to fulfill the most pressing need in the beginning is expected to fulfill the next need and the next and the next, whether he or she is capable of it or not. That's when dreams begin to die.
Once the initial need is fulfilled, other needs will manifest one after another, like clockwork. But the need that will ultimately manifest in all relationships is the need to be loved, adored, valued, cherished, wanted, appreciated, and to be cared for - the emotional bonding. This is a never-ending need and has to be perennially nourished. This need is always lurking within us and will surface with great intensity when other pressing needs have been fulfilled. If this one need is fulfilled, it is generally a smooth sail thereafter.
It often happens that the partner who provides financial security, a separate home, independence, material goods, social status, prestige, children, etc., now seems like a different person when it comes to fulfilling this most important need of making the other feel loved. In that respect, he or she may be lacking that extra something that is needed. He may otherwise be a very nice person, kind, considerate, caring, successful, rich, smart, savvy, suave, intelligent, but if he is not able to fulfill this ultimate need the way his partner wants it to be fulfilled, the relationship will begin to falter.
Confused and bewildered, he will ask - have I not provided you with everything you always wanted? Why are you dissatisfied? In the process of providing, he comes face-to-face with something he never bargained for. By fulfilling the specific needs of his partner, he has brought to surface this deep inner need, which was hiding beneath. Fulfilling this need requires a personality, which he has not cultivated. This stage can be most painful, as there is nowhere to turn to for help and one's personality cannot be changed overnight. But there is no option other than change.
Therefore, one must not marry merely to fulfill a limited short-term need or fill up the present vacuum, because other needs will keep manifesting, especially the ultimate need to feel loved. Fortunately, all human beings are capable of expressing love and affection for one another. But, for the other person to love you there must be something in you that the other wants to love. What is that elusive something? It is not the money in your bank or your flashy car. That something is nothing but your own ability to express love for your partner. This is something that you have to learn to do yourself. But how do you go about doing this, especially when you don't like a few personality traits of your partner that don’t fit in with your ways?
Though it looks tough, all is not lost. People whose initial needs have been fulfilled but are at a dead end in their marriage, where the marriage has become a marriage of convenience, where conversation does not go beyond what the children and neighbors are doing, can try this experiment. Start looking for positive aspects in your partner that you have hitherto ignored or taken for granted, or thought were of no consequence or didn't know existed. Don't look for external ones like success, wealth, status, position, fame and the like.
That will take you on a dangerous and destructive ego trip. If the money, status or position goes, love will turn into contempt. Look only for qualities that are intrinsic to one's personality. Look for the smallest, teeny-weeny ones. Look for things you can observe in day to- day life. Something that will not deteriorate over time, something that cannot be taken away by circumstances, something that can never be lost - like the way he walks, her exuberant laughter, his sense of humor, her soft tone of voice, his witty remarks, the way she talks on the telephone with her friends, his helping nature, her dress sense, the way the children adore him, her straightforwardness, his honesty, her lovely smile, his shyness, her confidence, his commitment, her vulnerability, his kindness, her innocence.
Tender and soft qualities- the ones that don't make big noise. Small things in life - the smaller the better. The most inconsequential ones. Things you thought were irrelevant, things that don't get anybody any prize.
Personal qualities that do not arouse the ego. Don't let your egoistic and logical mind decide. Let your heart decide. Accumulate as many of these in your memory as you can. Dwell on them everyday with fondness. Visualize them. Strengthen them. Make them appear important. Put some life into them. Reminisce constantly. Invoke them whenever you see your partner. Invoke them when you don't see your partner. Invoke them during arguments with your partner. Whenever the aspects that you don't like about your partner raise their heads, immediately invoke these positive ones stored in your memory to neutralize them.
Don't dwell on or fight with the negative. Instead, use it to trigger the positive.
Once sufficient quantities of such thoughts and images are stored in your emotional warehouse, you will be able to express them with ease. Constant expression of the stored up feelings will further reinforce the mental pattern. The language of expression needs to be personalized with 'I like' statements. I like the way you handled the situation, I like the way you talk to my mother, I like the way you smile, and so on. If you are not used to such verbal expressions, it may be difficult initially. Simply practice them in your mind. The outward expression will happen on its own accord - slowly, but definitely, with time.
Over a period of time, you will notice a qualitative change in your relationship with the very person who you thought had nothing more to offer you. Ultimately, a time will come when the mere presence of your partner will give you a deep sense of fulfillment.
.
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