Wifey's "Intelligent" Thoughts
A couple's great sex life pretty much covers the "heaven" part of the marriage.
I'm not kidding. OK, maybe just half-kidding. I'm facing the fact of married life--and I know a lot will agree with me--that a good (or awesome) sex life in a marriage is as important as making a dish tasty (or awesome). Food will still have nutritional value, but who could stand eating tasteless stuff like that every single day? It's unbearable, almost inedible.
This isn't about encouraging premarital sex, but I think there is absolutely a great value in doing research on good sex, and having a healthy perspective on it, especially when marriage is around the corner. I'm afraid that some people don't see its essence in married life, especially because in some cultures, pleasurable sex is generally seen as something sinful, and talking about it is taboo. But what could be wrong about reading up on how to give a stress-relieving massage (and other tricks, ad infinitum) to your spouse? Being married for more than a year now, to my surprise and awe, marriage mysteriously does something to sex: it takes out its lustful horns and an "R" or "PG-13" movie rating and replaces it with angel's wings, transforming it into something holy and sacred. Probably the most pleasurable form of duty ever known. Making love is literally creating and producing more love and exporting it to the world (e.g. having children). Happy couples or families are inspired, more productive, and less cranky.
Of course, married life isn't all about heavenly sex--or obviously, a deep, lasting friendship. Moving on to the hell part of the post... [Insert doomsday music here, such as the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5]
Some people portray their marriage as all rosy and on top of clouds or a dream come true. And some others, if not most, don't like to talk about the depressing stuff, at least publicly. Or it's something they reserve to one or a few trusted people. While the fairytale-like experience of marriage could be very real, it looks like most marriages go through some form of struggle, of varying intensity. (Calling the attention of all star-crossed lovers out there seeking married life, believing it is happily-ever-after from then on. Please proceed to the marriage preparation counter immediately.)
There's marriage adjustment, bad bathroom habits included. Clashes in personality. Conflicting values, views on religion or spirituality, and ways of going about things. There's the dilemma of having a baby, or another baby, or not. There's postpartum depression. Mid-life crisis. There's infertility. There's not getting enough sleep due to a newborn baby, or headaches brought about by rowdy kids and problematic teenagers. Parenting children or children who do the parenting. There's disease, whether terminal or not. Infidelity. Oppression, discrimination, and extreme nuisance from in-laws. There's the individual's serious baggage and unresolved past. The "Acts of God" clause in an insurance policy (a.k.a. natural disasters). Unfortunate crime, security, and safety incidents. There's financial tension and mismanagement. Juggling all these with endless, mundane, and stressful household chores and work. Oh, I almost forgot politics and government. Did I miss anything?
I don't want to talk about choosing the right partner for you and all the other should's that psychologists, marriage counselors, and experts having been saying over and over again for decades. (But please, do humanity a favor by listening to what they have to say, and not allowing them to say, "I told you so".) My unsolicited, one centavo worth of advice is this: before pledging the rest of your life to one person, make sure that you, as an individual, must first have the courage and perseverance to go through hell alone. Yes, alone. It is true that husband and wife are "no longer two but one", and it is also true that if you have faith in God, God never leaves you. And you can also get support from friends and family. But that doesn't take away the experience--that of feeling as if everyone, including God and your spouse, has abandoned you. And so it is an illusion that when you get married, you will never be lonely. In fact, a spiritual director once told me that in marriage, the experience of loneliness is even deeper than that of religious life. I can't say that every married couple goes through this, in the same way that not everyone experiences an earthquake (or a natural disaster to that extent) in their lifetime. But if it does happen, please be ready for hell--or at least have the guts to face it. It won't take away the pain (a hell lot of hurt!), but at least you know that you'll pull through it. Hub and I are survivors of that anguish. The thing is, there is no other choice but to survive--it's till death do us part. You can call that a marriage's curse, but in this case, it is a grace--if not, THE grace. A deeper and stronger friendship emerges out of the purging fire. We're more understanding, more patient, and less cranky--even to others. And that is one big chunk of heaven on earth right there.
I'll never forget the wise words a friend back in high school shared with me. He said that the intensity of the pleasure you experience in a loving relationship is the same as the intensity of the pain you will experience. Awkwardly translated, "How pleasurable the pleasure is, is how painful the pain is."
In hubby-wifey life (or in any loving relationship), it can swing to either end of the spectrum.
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I've already finished the draft of this post when I Googled and saw William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and discovered that this post's title has nothing to do with the book. According to Wikipedia, the latter part of his work "climaxes into a fierce proclamation for the different peoples of the world to break the bonds of religious and political oppression". Whoa, intense. Not exactly in tune with my married life theme. But who would've thought I'd share a quote from that? And it is with this I end:
Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion,
Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence.
