What is Love? Is it what we experience in marriage/partnerships? Part 2

This is part of a Series on “What is Love?”

Why are the lessons we learn about love from marriage and partnerships important?

We have all lived as a young child. We watched our parents and caretakers, learning what was important to them.

My experience of watching my parents worked together was amazing. My parents showed us by their example how to be strong for each other because each of them had weaknesses. It was easy to see those weaknesses as a child. What I didn’t realize was that those weaknesses were what gave the other spouse a role to fill.

My parents were each strong where the other was weak.  This allowed the weak person feel comfortable in spite of their weakness. Why?

They weren’t strong for each other in the way I would be strong for them. In fact, I am through training, strong where they are both weak. And I am weak where together, they were strong. This created a dynamic that shaped who I was attracted to.

Because in their weakness, they made the other feel comfortable with their strength. “Oh, it’s OK for me to be stronger because you’re weak here. It’s not a bad thing for you to be weak because it gives me the opportunity to be strong. Obviously, this does not justify abuse. Only a mature and secure person can see the opportunity to build someone up when they see a weakness.

I saw that going on in my parents but I didn’t have the words to express it.

Finally, when I started pondering on why I wasn’t married yet I realized oh i was pushing for something that really was not what I wanted. What I really wanted was someone who would compliment my witnesses with their strengths. I needed someone who was mature enough to allow me to complement their weaknesses with my strengths.

Getting to know your future spouse during the period of engagement is all about getting to know what my role will be with my future spouse. It is not a time 2 figure out whether not I was going to marry this person. It was a time to reconcile myself with this strengths that this future spouse had that would compliment my weaknesses. And how my strengths could help compliment his weaknesses.

Now, there’s a fine line between that kind of interdependence and codependency. There is also a fine line between that interdependence of complementary persons and independence that pushes all relationships away.

In order to be successful in my marriage, I needed to understand what this force was that was making me feel comfortable in my skin and making my future spouse feel comfortable in his skin. It was not forcing us. Rather, whenever we interacted, we made each other feel comfortable. As a result, we chose to hang out with each other. We were attracted to that comfortableness that we have found in each other.

The idea is that there is not a one and only love made uniquely for us. We might all be cool with finding one of those people that just makes us feel comfortable with who we are and what we are. Someone who is frankly honest with us about who we are and what we are is the kind of person we are attracted to.  This is why we need to be sure we have in mind the type of person we are trying to be.