“Love consists of not looking each other in the eye, but of looking outwardly
in the same direction.”
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
Like many people, I first read Seth Adam Smith’s “Marriage
isn’t for you” when it went viral last fall.
Every so often, it pops up again as another friend discovers it and
passes it on, admiringly. Every time the
piece surfaces I look a little longer at the comments. Some of the feedback is
surprisingly negative (though I guess that shouldn’t surprise; there are haters
for everything on the Internet it seems—I’m
sure there’s someone out there yelling “Puppies—Boo!!!”
on some site somewhere). But the piece is so positive, so generous, so….sweet
that I haven’t wanted to criticize without thinking things through. It’s taken
me a while to put my finger on the problem as I see it.
Smith’s piece is great because it starts from a selfish
point of view: Smith worries about his own marital satisfaction and hopes his
wife will make him happy—but thanks to his dad’s advice and his wife’s actions,
he realizes that’s not what marriage is about. He concludes that it’s about the
person you marry and her (or his) happiness, that it’s about family, “It’s
about others….” I admire his honestly
and humility in telling his story. I love the way he stresses the kind and
gentle way his wife treated him and the realization and transformation it
prompted in him—and I think he’s totally
right that a loving response often transforms a hardening heart.
But here’s the
problem: you can’t make someone else happy. No, really, you can’t. When you
are first in love you think you can because of the intensely blissful feelings
of new love. But even those feelings aren’t full happiness. And your happiness
is bigger than any person—no matter how spectacularly wonderful and
well-matched—could possibly fill.
Smith has been married only a year and a half, and I’ve been
married for twelve and a half. He has no kids (yet, anyway); I have five.
But I’m not saying this because
I’m old and cynical and tired. I’m saying it because I want love and openness
and goodness like his to last and deepen. I worry
that thinking you can make someone else happy will become just as big a trap as
the focus on your own happiness. Worrying only about your own satisfaction
isn’t good, but it’s dangerous to think you’re going to make someone else
happy. Growing up, my mom would occasionally tell me, “It’s not your job to
make your parents happy.” My grandmother had been the clear favorite in her
family, and had labored under the burden of that for many years, believing
that—as the favorite—it was also her job to do what her parents wanted and
“make them happy.” I know that’s a parent-child relationship, but similar
things can happen to married people. You
start doing all the things you think should
make your spouse happy. You put their needs before yours. And then if they
aren’t satisfied, you get angry. “Why the heck isn’t s/he happy? With all I do
for him/her?” Or, alternately you get depressed, “What’s wrong with me?”
We can, on the other hand, help each other find happiness. We can accompany each other on this long
road; we can love each other madly, passionately, truly. We can walk together,
sustaining each other, encouraging each
other, making the journey much more fun--but we can’t be the road. That way
lies madness, not happiness.
In the words of Rainer Maria Rilke:
“Here is the paradox of the love between man and woman: two
infinites meet two limits: two infinite needs to be loved find two fragile and
limited capacities to love. Only within the horizon of a greater Love will they
not devour themselves in pretension, nor give up, but walk together towards
that fullness of which the other is a sign.”
Happy, Happy Valentine’s Day!
No comments:
Post a Comment