a guide in knowing the real on

A close friend of mine forwarded this email to me. He told me that it was meant for me, but i beleive it meant for everyone who's still trying to find the real one, the one that God had created for us. Please find time reading it, who knows it might lead you to the right person.enjoy!!!!!


I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But i have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage.Something about the closure seems constricting, notenabling. Marriage seems easier to understand forwhat it cuts out of our lives than for what it makespossible within our lives.When i was younger this fear immobilized me. I did notwant to make a mistake. I saw my friends get marriedfor reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever,or just because they thought it was the logical thingto do. Then I watched, as they and their partnersbecame embittered and petty in their dealings witheach other. I looked at older couples and saw, atbest, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined alifetime of loveless nights and bickering and couldnot imagine subjecting myself or someone else to sucha fate.And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old coupleswho somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence.They seemed really in love, not just dependent uponeach other and tolerant or each other's foibles. Itwas an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible.How, I asked myself, can they have survived so manyyears of sameness, so much irritation at the other'shabits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of usseem unable to even stay together, much less love eachother?The central secret seems to be in choosing well. thereis something to the claim of fundamentalcompatibility. Good people can create a badrelationship, even thought they both dearly want therelationship to succeed. It is important to findsomeone with whom you can create a good relationshipfrom the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to seeclearly in the early stages.Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors theway you see yourselves together. It binds you to thethousands of little things by which relationshipseventually survive or fail. You need to find a way tosee beyond this initial overwhelming sexualfascination. Some people choose to involve themselvessexually and ride out the most heated period of sexualattraction in order to see what is on the other side.This can work, but it can also leave a trail ofwounded hearts. Others deny the sexual sidealtogether in an attempt to get to know each otherapart from their sexuality. But they cannot seeclearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexualdesire looms so large that it keeps them from havingany normal perception of what life would be liketogether.the truly lucky people are the ones who manage tobecome long time friends before they realize they areattracted to each other. They get to know each other'slaughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see eachother at their best. They share time together beforethey get swept into the entangling intimacy of theirsexuality.This is the ideal, but not often possible. If youfall under the spell of your sexual attractionimmediately, you need to look beyond it for other keysto compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughtertells you how much you will enjoy each others companyover the long term.If your laughter together is good and healthy, and notat the expense of others, then you have a healthyrelationship to the world. Laughter is the child ofsurprise. If you can make each other laugh, you canalways surprise each other. And if you can alwayssurprise each other, you can always keep the worldaround you new.Beware of a relationship in which there is nolaughter. Even the most intimate relationships basedonly n seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Overtime, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the worldtends to turn you against those who do not share thesame viewpoint, and your relationship can become basedon being critical together.After laughter, look for a partner who deals with theworld in a way you respect. When two people first gettogether, they tend to see their relation ship asexisting only in the space between the two of them.Then find each other endlessly fascinating and theoverwhelming power of the emotions they are sharingobscures the outside world. As the relationship agesand grows the outside world becomes important again.If your partner treats people or circumstances in away you can't accept, you will inevitably come togrief. Look at the way she cares for others and dealswith the daily affairs of life. If that makes you loveher more, your love will grow. If it does not, becareful. If you do not respect the way you each dealwith the world around you, eventually the two of youwill not respect each other.Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteriesof life. We live on the cusp of poetry andpracticality, and the real life of the heart residesin the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected bythe mystery of the unseen in life and relationships,while the other is drawn only to the literal and thepractical, you must take care that the distancedoesn't become an unbridgeable gap that leaves youeach feeling isolated and misunderstood.There are many other keys, but you must find them byyourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our heartsthat we will not betray and private commitments to avision of life that we will not deny. If you fall inlove with someone who cannot nourish those inviolableparts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in her,you will find yourselves growing further apart untilyou live in separate world where you share thebusiness of live, but never touch each other where theheart lives and dreams. From there it is only a smallleap to the cataloging of petty hurts and dailyfailures that leaves so many couples bitter andunsatisfied with their mates.So choose carefully and well. If you do, you willhave chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and thenthe real miracle of marriage can take place in yourhearts. I pick my words carefully when i speak of amiracle. But I think it is not too strong a word.There is a miracle in marriage. It is calledtransformation. Transformation is one of the mostcommon events of nature. The seed becomes the flower.The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomesspring and love becomes a child. We never questionthese, because we see them around us every day. To usthey are not miracles, though if we did not know themthey would be impossible to believe.Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Ourlove is planted like a seed, and in time it begins toflower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom,but we can be sure that a bloom will come.If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloomwill be good. IF you have chosen poorly or for thewrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quitewilling to accept the reality of negativetransformation in a marriage. It was negativetransformation that always had me terrified of thebitter marriages that I feared when I was younger. Itnever occurred to me to question the dark miracle thattransformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet Iwas unable to accept the possibility that the firsthear of love could be transformed into somethingpositive that was actually deeper and more meaningfulthan the hear of fresh passion. All I could believe inwas the power of this passion and the fear that whenit cooled I would be left with something lesser andbitter.But there is positive transformation as well. Likenegative transformation, it results from a slowaccretion of little things. But instead of death by athousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches oflove. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings,two separate presence, two separate consciousnessescome together and share a view of life that passesbefore them. They remain separate, but they alsobecome one. There is an expansion of awareness, not aclosure and a constriction, as I had once feared. Thisis not to say that there is not tension and there arenot traps. Tension and traps are part of every choiceof life, from celibate to monogamous to havingmultiple lovers. Each choice contains within it thelingering doubt that the road not taken somehow morefruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to therichness that it alone contains.But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand andbe leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen,against all odds, to become one. Those who Levtogether without marriage can know the pleasure ofshared company, but there is a specific gravity in themarriage commitment that deepens that experience intosomething richer and more complex.So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rushinto it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faithand it contains within it the power of transformation.If you believe in your heart that you have foundsomeone with whom you are able to grow, if you havesufficient faith that you can resist the endlessattraction of the road not taken and the partner notchosen, if you have the strength of heart to embracethe cycles and seasons that your love will experience,then you may be ready to seek the miracle thatmarriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace ofa marriage well made is worth your patience. When thetime comes, a thousand flowers willbloom....endlessly.What can you say?


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