- Feb 5, 2002
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Probably like most couples, our ideal for our marriage is one of continually being and feeling “in love” with one another. Oftentimes, that’s not an unrealizable ideal! When we were in college, we read A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, a memoir that describes Vanauken’s experience of falling in love with Davy, the woman who became his wife, and of eventually converting to Christianity. Early in their relationship, Sheldon and Davy resolve to preserve their “in-love-ness,” to set up a “shining barrier” against anything that would lead to separateness, to share all experiences, all the books they read and all the interests they have, and to cultivate habits of preserving love. Not long after we read this book, we took a seminar on virtue with Dr. J.J. Sanford. Putting together the ideas of this book on preserving in-love-ness with the techniques of practice and habituation that lead to virtue, we made remaining deeply in love our goal. For the most part, for the last 17 years, we’ve certainly succeeded!
Like the thoughts one thinks and the ways that one perceives the world and the choices one makes, the feelings one feels are largely a matter of habit-formation. If one consciously cultivates feelings, stimulating and endorsing positive feelings and disavowing negative ones, they become habitual, second nature. And yet, for all that, difficulties arise. There come seasons in a marriage when nothing seems to be going well—when, despite a husband and wife’s best efforts and despite each one’s constant will to stay committed to the other, everything about the other is irritating, they can’t stop arguing about things, they neither feel in love nor feel loved by the other, and the whole situation seems bleak. And they begin to wonder where the breach is in their “shining barrier” that was supposed to protect their unity and closeness.
Continued below.
livingwithladyphilosophy.substack.com
Like the thoughts one thinks and the ways that one perceives the world and the choices one makes, the feelings one feels are largely a matter of habit-formation. If one consciously cultivates feelings, stimulating and endorsing positive feelings and disavowing negative ones, they become habitual, second nature. And yet, for all that, difficulties arise. There come seasons in a marriage when nothing seems to be going well—when, despite a husband and wife’s best efforts and despite each one’s constant will to stay committed to the other, everything about the other is irritating, they can’t stop arguing about things, they neither feel in love nor feel loved by the other, and the whole situation seems bleak. And they begin to wonder where the breach is in their “shining barrier” that was supposed to protect their unity and closeness.
Continued below.
The Dark Night of the Marriage
Making the Most of Times of Disharmony and Irritation
livingwithladyphilosophy.substack.com
