I've been thinking about marriage and what it means to me, and what my expectations or intentions and what I want in a marriage are. So far, I look at my friends and past experiences and get more of a list of what I don't want in a marriage. I don't expect marriage to solve any problems, actually, I expect it to bring up a lot of past problems each individual will need help dealing with, and create new ones between them that will take a lot of creativity and cooperation and compassion and compromise to work out how to deal with things. I just now had the vague thought that the marriage itself is like a child! Each person has the personality and traits and habits and life experience that makes them how they are, and all that is like the DNA combining to make something new- the dynamics of the marriage like the potential going into a new creation. When the couple comes together, they combine to make the marriage what it will be, and then they need to grow and develop together and both nurture the marriage like a growing child who will need all the love and care and atention and patience and support a newborn child would need, totally dependent on them. I think too many people see marriage as something larger than themselves to take care of them, when it's really a new creation made of their combined selves and needs them to take care of it. I feel like marriage is at least as great a responsibility as parenthood. I feel like people who are serious about wanthing to get married and have a marriage work need to first work on themselves to develop the skills they will need in dealing with themselves and another person in a marital relationship. I believe a lot of self-knowledge and self-development are necessary resources that need to be there already, at least marginally, before the marriage, or it's like a developing embryo trying to draw building material from a malnourished body, you can't draw from something that not there. You can't build something with no materials to work with. I see that it's dangerous for two under-developed people to be so needy they suck each other dry, like two black holes trying to be filled and fulfilled by each other's void. It just doesn't work. And I've seen it's also damaging for one to be so needy and dependent on the other for self-development that they "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" as it were. I feel like it takes two people who are working on their own development as individuals, who are maturing as a dults, who don't expect something or someone outside of themself to fix all their problems for them, who consider themselves each as a whole person complete and independent and not as as incomplete symbiote in constant need of the other in order to function. Basically, I feel each person needs to develop into marriagable material before trying to build and maintain a marriage. I feel like there are a lot of trial and error and learning experiences to go through preparing for, and then during the development of a marriage. I don't feel like you have to perfect yourself first before getting married, but I feel like you need to work on getting your base of interpersonal skills started on and your identity forming/developing/building skills worked on so you can have those tools to work with when you need them. I feel like some people go into marriage so it can form their identity for them by giving them the role to fill, of husband and wife. I guess maybe it might work for some people, but I want to be more than that. I want to define my marriage, and not just let it define me. I feel there needs to be a kind of give and take with the relationship as well as in the relationship. No one of the components- the husband, wife, or marriage, should be the constant be all and end all of the relationship, I feel they all need to balance, with each other and inside themselves. Now I'm seeing images with colored hoops or circles. The two hoops are joined, but how much they overlap will vary, and they each can be their own color/self or clear/neutral and be submissive to the other color, letting it be dominant, and I think this will happen sometimes, but if it happens too much, the color that loses itself will usually just stay clear and not contribute and mix and blend in the overlap, and the combination of colors to make a new one, their color, will be lost also. Or if they each keep their own colors but never mix them, never overlap to make a new color of their own to share, then they are only joined by the outer bond of the hoops. On the other extreme would be the two circles attempting to overlap completely constantly and totally sacrificing their own colors to the new one, pretending the new color should eclipse their own always and they should never seem to be separate components again. Or both just become clear and nothing -overlapping or not- has any color anymore. The way I see it seems would be good to me, is constant changes and shifts in overlap and colors- like a kalidescope. Things don't always have to be even to be balanced either, just so it really works together. You don't get harmony just by singing the same note, you sing different notes that sound good together. So what do I want in a marriage- what do I expect? I want to build a marriage with somjeone who is a true friend. A friend who accepts all your traits, and puts up with you while you are working on yourself. Someone you can be completely human with. Someone you can work things out with and come back together again with even when one or both of you are having a really rough time. I want someone to be partners with in dealing with life, running a household, and raising children and parenting them. I want someone I can be lovemates and lifemates with, someone I can fit with and be compatible in all the senses I need that in. I want someone who can and will appriciate me, my self, and will feel I'm wonderful, and I can feel the same way, that they are wonderful too in the way I need someone to be mutually wonderful for me as I am for them. I want someone I feel a sense of companionship and kinship and family and belonging with- a kindrid spirit and soul mate. I want someone I can feel like we make a unit together, that we work well together as a unit, as a "we." I want someone who has had the experience of choosing to be friends and has worked on friendships and relationships with other people and learned how much it takes to make it work and developed the skills and traits needed to stick it out and not just retreat because they don't know how to, or care to, stay there and make it work again when things get strained or broken or start falling or drifting apart. I want someone I'm comfortable and at ease with. I want someone I can change and grow and mature and live and grow old with and make it through life and death and whatever comes next with them, together.
Elise