Quieter Love

You really should marry your best friend. Yes, I know the current controversy swirling around on the various forums about how you should not, nor even want to marry your best friend. They should be your partner. Someone you love. Not like your current best friend. Would you marry your best friend? Of course not! But I say, yes, you should. Why wouldn’t you? Let me explain.

Natural inner desires aside for the more physical, obvious side of marriage and its benefits, which we all know, let’s look at the long-term aspect of marriage. Everyone who enters marriage knows that they want to make it last. They intend for all good purposes that the person they are marrying will be there beside them for the rest of their life. I’m not sure many people stop and think about this very seriously when they are considering getting married. You pretty much will have to live, work, move, talk, sleep, eat, decide, plan, play, cry, laugh, breathe, struggle, toil, cook, read, sing, and more than likely argue, with this person you’re marrying for the rest... of your... life. Every single day. Life will interfere, of course, as things like the normal work day, business trips, retreats, travel, and hospital stays will separate the two of you for a while. But other than that, you can just about plan on seeing that person somewhere around you for the remainder of the time. To the newly married, this is great! But how long will the excitedness of constantly 24/7 being around that person last? Will you still be excited when your spouse is sick, throwing up every few hours, and you have to take care of them? Will you be excited, pulling laundry out of the hamper, to put in the washer, to put in the dryer, to take out and put away (weekly!)? Will you still be excited when you open your spouses car hood for the millionth time in the garage to add in the fluids they just never seem to replace? Will you be thinking loving thoughts about your spouse when they use up all the hot water, and your shower is cold? The seemingly mundane things of life will creep in eventually, as they should, and what happens if you are no longer in that sparkly eyed twitter patted state of mind? What will hold you through those seconds, hours, days, months, years? Hopefully, and here is where my point comes in, what holds you through is that you are married to your best friend. Someone you want to go through all these things with.

Not many of us can think of the best friend we have right now as a future spouse, and that is why we shy away from the idea. Usually, but not always, this is because our best friend is the same gender we are! And that’s natural and right. You should definitely NOT marry this friend. Even if we could look past that, most of us are still annoyed by some thing or another that our best friend inevitably does, and we’ll take a break from that person for a while, or even in the extreme, find another best friend. Ok: All gender aside, think with me here for a moment. Think of your best friend. Maybe it’s a sibling that you’ve always been the closest with. Or a friend you’ve known since you were children together. More than likely, in either instance, you’ve known this person for quite some time and they’re not just a fly-by-night casual acquaintance. Now think even further than that, and consider that the two of you just never married, and, being best friends, thought, ‘Hey! Since neither of us has anyone, let’s share a house. We can save on rent, utilities, furniture, kitchen stuff, and it’ll be even better because we can see each other all the time! It’ll be great. Plus, we get along really well.’ Now be honest, could you live with that person, your best friend or sibling, for a long time? I know in my case, if it were my sister, I definitely could! I get along and always have with both of my sisters-- they ARE my best friends, simply because we’ve spent the most time together and know each other very, very well. Sure, we can argue over something trivial every now and then, or tease each other, but in the end it all comes down to them being not only my sisters, but my friends, and I know we’d take care of each other. And that’s what most of it comes down to... you being comfortable with your future spouse, your best friend. You know that they know you and you know them. Picking up facial cues to each others emotions, knowing what pleases and what irks the other, wanting to be there through thick and thin with them to help each other through. The list of best friend qualities that also tie into marriage is virtually endless. Best friends know the other friend intricately, have bonded on a special level with them, and yes, in its own way, love each other.

So next time you hear someone say “I’ve married my best friend”, try not to scoff at them and think the statement is ridiculous. I believe a spouse can and should be a best friend. It may have some different meanings than what comes to mind when you think of your same gender best friend, but that partner and soulmate that is your other half that you’ll live with day in and day out-- that’s a special kind of friend and love entirely. And, I pray, one we should all be so lucky to someday find and share life with.

Reading this morning in C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, I came across a few paragraphs about marriage, which tied in perfectly with what I’d already been thinking of blogging about. The last part especially, really just struck my brain like a bolt of lightning. I’d always wondered at the phrase and meaning behind one ‘dying to yourself’, and understood the basic principles behind it, but never in this light before, and now that it’s become so unmistakably clear to me, I will never again be able to see the words and not think of the true meaning behind it. After the ecstasy and euphoric high of being newly married begins to slightly diminish (but not fully-- I hope it never will!), what we should look for is what Mr. Lewis refers to as a “quieter love”. Not wild and crazy as when you were young and everything was new, but not tame and complacent, either.

“They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be ‘in love’ with someone else. ‘Being in love’ first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it... In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last. The sort of thrill a boy has at the first idea of flying will not go on when he has joined the R.A.F. and is really learning to fly. The thrill you feel on first seeing a delightful place dies away when you really go to live there. Does that mean it would be better not to learn to fly and not to live in the beautiful place? By no means. In both cases, if you go through with it, the dying away of the first thrill will be compensated for by a quieter and more lasting kind of interest. What is more (and I can hardly find words to tell you how important I think this), it is just the people who are ready to submit to the loss of the thrill and settle down to the sober interest, who are then most likely to meet new thrills in some quite different direction. The man who has learned to fly and become a good pilot will suddenly discover music; the man who has settled down to live in the beauty spot will discover gardening.
This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go-- let it die away-- go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow-- and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.”