Speak kind words: what you say is what you create.
~Shawn Bird
6 pillars of a strong marriage August 8, 2012
Following on the heels of yesterday’s post on the purpose of marriage, here are what I consider the six most important components to a lasting relationship. There have to be a few pillars, because let’s face it, pillars do get knocked out from under us. If one or two of these is damaged on life’s journey, the other pillars are strong enough to hold up the marriage while rebuilding occurs.
.
1. mutual respect
Precisely what you respect might differ, but you have to value your spouse as an individual. Intellect? Accomplishments? Acumen? Beauty? Skills? It doesn’t matter. If you respect each other for who you are, you acknowledge personal value.
.
2. communication
Problems will come up. If you are able to hear one another and work together to solve them, you can overcome them.
.
3. common purpose
Your goal may be to maintain a middle-class life or to conquer the world. You may share a faith or intellectual pursuits. Whatever it is, if you’re both of the same mind and working within the same expectations, your relationship will grow.
.
4. mutual affection
If you genuinely like your partner as a person, it’s much easier to live with them and their inevitable foibles. Friends make the best lovers.
.
5. trust
Trust is earned and must be maintained by constant vigilance. You need to be reliable and consistent, abiding by the understanding and expectations that you develop together.
.
6. tenacity
If you are not willing to leave the marriage if problems come up, then you have to negotiate. You are forced to find solutions to the challenges. Not being willing to accept the possibility of failure goes a very long way to ensuring success.
.
Did you notice what was missing from my list? 🙂 I suspect that passion is like the paint on a house. It makes it look nice, but it has absolutely nothing to do with soundness of the structure beneath. I wouldn’t want to live in a passionless marriage, but should my spouse be sliced in half in some horrible accident, all the things that make our marriage strong would still be there.
The neurologists talk about the brain chemistry that keeps couples together and passion plays a crucial role. Check out The Science of Love. Is all emotion neurological? Pragmatically, does it matter?
PS 2013/06 I’m thinking that for all my talk of pillars, the walls are the physical intimacies of a sexual relationship. Yes, the roof/relationship stays up without it, but it’s a lot warmer inside if there are walls to keep out the winds!
the purpose of marriage August 7, 2012
I’ve been thinking a bit about marriage, this being a season of new marriages and significant anniversaries in our circle. We are seeing everything from the blush of new couplings, to those having reached a half century and stretching beyond.
Marriage serves many purposes. Once upon a time, a marriage could forge alliances, settle feuds, and enlarge estates. The bride was property to exchange, and the children would be the beneficiaries of those alliances. That was a long view of marriage, a kind of dynastic vision with the individuals’ place firmly seen as a small cog in a greater machine of familial destiny and power mongering.
Nowadays, we tend not to think such of great thoughts and purpose. Sure, a spouse with a rich or influential family provides a nice security, and undoubtedly a youthful trophy on an man’s arm gives him at least an imagined superiority over others. Some pay for their shallow reasons in hefty divorce settlements, and that’s the price of doing such business.
Way back in the second book of Genesis, God declares, “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Gen 2:18) and so God fashioned woman. Consider some ways to interpret that: a helper is a help mate, a companion, a consort, an accomplice, a partner, a protector, a guide, and a colleague (so says the on-line thesaurus).
A spouse (whatever the gender) must be all those things. What first brings a couple together may be prosaic, and some romantics might scoff at the dispassionate process that bonds some couples, though I think such sober decision making provides stronger glue than the chemical waterfalls of attraction and biological imperative. Sexual coupling requires far less effort than a lifetime partnership, after all. I know a lot of people who choose toxic partners repeatedly and then bemoan their horrible relationships. It seems ironic in the extreme that they don’t recognise that “If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always gotten.” Choose your life partner for more important reasons than the colour of his eyes or how she looks in her jeans.
I once heard that falling in love releases massive amounts of hormones into your system. The result is that your brain is numbed and drugged, as the rush of dopamine is equivalent to a cocaine high. You can’t make rational decisions when you’re so befuddled. I heard that it takes a full year for your brain to clear the chemicals so you can think lucidly again.
The most important question to ask yourself when your brain function returns is “Why should I marry this person? What would the purpose of such a marriage be?” When you can step back and study the goals, you stand the best chance of making a marriage that will have staying power.
creating beauty August 5, 2012
“You are beautiful,” he whispered to me
“If you say so.”
“Do ye not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean— if you say it, then it’s true.”Diana Gabaldon. The Fiery Cross
I have pondered over this concept a lot. When Grace first sees Ben in Grace Awakening Dreams, she thinks he’s completely average and uninteresting. By the end of Grace Awakening Power, she describes him as handsome, golden, and glorious.
What has changed? Has he literally become better looking, or has her perception of him just altered, so that she finds him more attractive? Does being in love, and having someone love you make you more attractive?
I think the answer to all three questions is yes.
It reminds me of a parable I heard when I was a teen about the 100 cow wife. Hunting on the internet, I see that it’s actually about an 8 cow wife. (lol Memory inflation!) The gist of the story is that you get what you pay for. If you want a beauty, you have to treat her like a beauty.
Physical beauty, internal beauty, or whatever, your declaration to the beloved is what makes it true. Conversely, if you denigrate your spouse, call him or her names, and put him or her down, you create what you declare. You create what you desire and what you declare.
encircling silence July 30, 2012
This silence is a circle.
Mine says,
“wrap me with warm words!”
Yours says,
“huh?”
So silence encircles,
Mine says,
“compassion is in companionship.”
Yours says,
“shh.”
Silence circles.
her with him July 27, 2012
It’s not truth,
but danger.
Not what is real,
but what’s perceived.
The excluding
exclamations
of laughter
contrasted by
bored eye brows
and sighs.
An amused knife
slicing through
her security.
© Shawn L. Bird
————————————————–
Being a free verse, there is no strict rhyme or rhythm pattern in this one, but you’ll see lots of examples here of consonance, assonance, and alliteration. Notice in particular the pattern of growling of the /r/s, the explosive /ex/s and the sighing /s/s which reflect the narrative persona’s emotional experience.
There is a circle pattern with the 6 sections (not quite stanzas, not being separated) being strongly consonant /r/, then assonant /e/, then alliterative /ex/, and then reversing: alliterative /b/, assonant /i/, and finally consonant /r/ again. How does this pattern reflect the persona’s emotional state?
You are welcome to use this poem in your class room, crediting the author. I’d also be pleased to see a comment indicating where and when you did. Thanks.
The value of poets June 21, 2012
Discovered this great quote on the blog “Greater Umbrage”
“You see, in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was made flesh in the weave of the human universe. And only the poet can expand this universe, finding shortcuts to new realities the way the Hawking drive tunnels under the barriers of Einsteinian space/time… To be a true poet is to become God.”
~ Dan Simmons
Wow. It makes me feel crazily powerful! How daunting. How magnificent. How humbling!
Invocation for dads June 16, 2012
Our fathers are our first role models of what it is to be a man.
If we are blessed to have a good one driving our household mini van.
He shows us how a romantic partner should behave;
He demonstrates just how our children should be raised.
He shows us this without a word, by what he does each day,
So we’ll reflect his teaching as we go on about our way.
If we weren’t blessed to have our father there to show us what to do,
Let us be thankful there are men, who’ll gather us in, too.
In thanks for each man, standing by his family,
Who cares, provides, corrects and loves, from those of us who see.
.
© Shawn L. Bird 2012 Free use within Rotary, though please indicate when and where you have used the invocation by leaving a comment below. Thanks!
Shawn L. Bird 
one thousand comments! August 15, 2012
Tags: akismet, blog, comments, spam, thousand
Today, with Deb Palmer’s comment on Drain Kids, I finally reached one thousand comments on my blog. To get to this point, Akismet has skimmed out 15,435 spam comments.
I hope that capturing so many advertising messages does provide some sort of negative karma to those spammers that waste so much band width!
Thanks to each of you who read and take the time to like posts or to leave a response. I appreciate your encouragement and support on this literary venture.
Share this: