Love, Marriage, Children, and God

What's a person supposed to think about at 3am on a Friday night?

Serious questions I'm sure! Nah, maybe not, but sometimes you gotta wonder what else could have been, if I had chosen a normal life.

Being single is an unavoidably selfish state of being. You put in 8 hours a day on your timecard, and got 16 left to do whatever you want. Without distractions, sleeping 8 hours a day is pretty easy to keep up, and 8 left to do whatever you want.

Seems so easy to fill up those hours with nonsense and distraction and wonder where the time, the days, the months, the years went!

Wouldn't it be great to "get a life", find love, marriage and the whole shooting match? Whatever happen to the simple dreams?
I watched a video this week from "TEDTalks" on "Why we love: Thea nature and chemistry of romantic love." by Helen Fisher.

Well, one of many sources, but fun to try an objective scientific perspective.
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=h_fisher

In some ways it seems to reductive to want to admit all the energy and focus of love is merely a biochemical system "designed" to convince us to find a mate and stick around long enough to raise a next generation to do the same.

The CHILD focus for love and marriage is real and necessary, but there must be more than that. Not everyone can have childen. Not everyone WANT children. What is love for for those people - just a failed "organ" we don't need? And raising children, while seemingly a lifetime, really happens overnight almost, at least from the point of view of the parent looking back, and then you're looking at your spouse and saying, "Okay Honey, what's next?"

Since I've not had children, or maybe really been in love, I have to just imagine. If our evolution has created these drives, what do we become with them, and what good are they for us?

I've asked myself why I prefer to stay single. It could simply be I've not met the right person, or the right person who was available. I'd like to think I'd be capable of marriage. There is I suppose a higher social "prestige" to being married. I may put myself above social pressures, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't wish to conform if I could.

Marriage is a funny thing, a public institution of privacy. Within a marriage two people get a chance to work out their rules of proper conduct and those rules may change based on needs.

It is just darn scary from the outside, to see divorces, and wonder what happened to those love birds. And fidelity is the strongest rule that challenges. Even gender issues and the nature of love can be challenged in ways that seem rather scary.

I think of one female friend who divorced her husband after he found himself attracted to a male and wanted to "explore" those feelings within the marriage. Another female friend found her sexuality, underexpressed before marriage, restricted within marriage and negociated some polyamorous relationships with both sexes. I certainly don't know anything, or perhaps don't want to know too much! Mostly I'm amazed it would be possible for her husband to not feel rejected by such an exploration!

It seemed much simpler for the previous generations before people had "options", where you made due. Maybe love affairs were always common, at least maybe for some large minority of men, or maybe women too?

Okay, since I'm safely anonymous here, maybe I can share my loves, but probably not more than the faintest reflections. Love for me is my married friend, my long time beautiful friend, let's call her Rosie, whom I met some 12 years ago, while my then girlfriend was away at at school, and Rosie had her boyfriend die a year before I met her, and she found out after he was sick, after he was critical of her previous sexual activity before he even met her, and all along he was seeing someone else. I don't know anything as always, but I put myself out as a friend, just asked if she wanted to go for a walk sometime, and meant nothing more, but thought she was rather wonderful. And things got complicated when my yet theoretical girlfriend returned from school, homesick, and was a bit jealous of my new friend Rosie, even for her own "socializing" at school, and frequent crushes all around. So I basically waited a couple months and found my theoretical girlfriend asking to see other people, which I was okay with, whatever exactly that meant, since we sort of said the same thing when she left! A bit later I took Rosie to a dance and asked to kiss her goodnight and did, and of course wanted to again another day, while the first kiss was a safe ambiguous friendly.

Being stupid male, I talked to theoretical exgirlfriend of my interest in Rosie, offered as a warning that I couldn't continue playing theoretical kind boyfriend between her love interests. So being stupider male, I told Rosie this before I kissed her again goodnight, again safe friendly kiss, thinking this frankness would help. And this lead to a cascade of her thoughts, being worried her friend, my theoretical exgirlfriend would feel she "stole" me from her, so she was angry at ME for putting her in this situation. We were taking a dance class together and somehow we managed to finish the class, but I was heartsick lost, having her so close, and feeling she was so angry at me, but mostly I had to guess anything.

So with a convenient circle of friends I could still see her in company, and slowly things smoothed over, mostly, and she dated various guys and we went for walks again and talking and everything seemed safe as long as one of us was unavailable. Only one other time did I try to ask for her to be my girlfriend. I got a bracket from another female friend and planned to give it to Rosie, and when the moment came I sat tongue-tied trying to ask her, and she interrupted, "Are you sure you want to ask me?" and I said yes, but apparently I didn't since it was too hard to ask a question that demanded a response that I didn't want to hear.

So our friendship strengthed even more, even as she finally dated a good guy and even moved in with him for a year before they got married. Before they got married, I had my annual spring joke to her asking if she'd be my girlfriend, and she'd say she can't, and I'd understand, you know. At least I'm getting rejected in favor of a real person, rather than over no one.

So she got married and we stayed friends, working close and we'd go for walks regularly. Finally things changed and her husband applied for school and she had to move to another state, and yet our friendship remains, from a distance by email, and also renewed in times when she returns "home" to see her family. She says I'm like family, and when she's in town I get to be invited to her parents home for dinner.

It's all sort of strange to feel important. I mean it would almost seem safer if I was married to Rosie, and then her family would be obligated to be nice to me, but no they make me feel welcome, just because I'm her friend.

I imagine if I were to marry anyone it would have to be Rosie, and how could I marry anyone else? But she says if she ever got divorced, she'd never marry again, although maybe live with someone. Well, not that my reality could paint a scenario where we could get married - I agree it would be too painful to try to "replace" her Sam.

The only story I can tell is one she told back to me. Apparently long ago I told her we could get married when Halley's comet returned. I'm sure I figured that was a safe promise, of course we both had to be available then too! Well I forgot I offered, but she reminded me, so that gave me hope. 2061 wasn't that far away, I mean when you're waiting for true love, right? You gotta be patient with love!

Funny games romantics can play, to break the limitations of reality and live in eternity where perhaps everything is possible. Until then we just write "Love you always", or the more subtle "lya". And I believe it began with "ilywtcm", which looks like a dirty phrase there, but just means an innocent "I love you, whatever that could mean".

And when she came into town last winter, we planned a walk, but it was much too chilly for much, so she brought us into a quiet little club and we just sort of sat in the corner cuddling a good fraction of 3 hours. I merely suggested the walk so I'd have a chance to take her hand, but not much fun in the winter, so how could I dream for something nicer? I mean that and an invitation for two dinners at her parents house!

And last June she returned for something like 8-10 days and she admitted to me that she didn't tell many people of her return, partly for more time with her family, and partly to see me! I think I got to see her 4 days!

The first night we went for an exciting walk around como lake in a rainstorm! I knew the rain was coming, but didn't expect it to START right when we arrived. So I said let's take off our shoes (my only pair!) and we walk anyway, and I had an umbrella. We hid out around the side of a building and watched the rain come down, and then decided to try walking abit as the rain lightened some, and it felt nice so we kept going all the way around the lake barefoot, hiding under the same little umbrella, and holding each other close to stay drier. She's shorter, but somehow we managed to find a good stride for both of us to move together step for step.

Is it possible to find anything more romantic that that, to have my love arm in arm, in a wild and warm thunderstorm, just hoping the moment didn't have to end?

The next day we shared a 5k race together. I ran with her for the first mile and then sprinted ahead, a very good compromise for me since I was intimidated by my first 5k race, so glad to avoid the front rush. And we went for a couple more walks and I tried to soak up as many memories as I could, not wanting to let her go. In fact one night after our walk by her parents car, I picked her up and carried her to a park bench a block away so she couldn't get away, and cuddled a bit longer, she sat sideways away from me so I faced her back and held her and breathed in the scent of her hair, hoping to remember it. Finally I carried her back like a proper reformed robber and let her leave freely.

Okay so romantic love is just stupid chemicals in my brain that are trying to convince me to have children or something? Hmmmm... they don't seem very smart chemicals I guess, or maybe I'm not the bride-stealing Viking my ancestors were - wife stealing may be romantic, but I still want people to like me, so I have to be nice.

Well, I don't know where this story will lead. Maybe unattained romantic love lasts forever? Mostly I just find myself in state of deep peacefulness thinking of my Rosie, and nothing else really matters, as long as I know she loves me.

I suppose it is reasonable to assume life is always multifaceted - the same symbols being reused for many meanings in different aspects of our being. So one focus thinks of love in regards to marriage and children and says that's what it is about, and it's not false to say there's other aspects as well.

Rosie loves me. She's said it, whatever that could mean. I feel it. I wish I could offer the same love back, or something. That's just this great big unknown mystery. It's almost where God has to come in and sort things out because human life just seems insufficient to explain. Mean psychologists can talk about projection and desires to return to the blissful eden of unconsciousness, or whatever story they'll say, and I won't say they're wrong.

There is SOMETHING hidden behind direct awareness, something close to sleep, like a forgotton song that plays, or maybe even a mother's lullaby if you like, but its there making everything better. Love is something like that, whether deeper or not. It is inner peace. It is a place where action is not needed. It's like sitting on a sea shore seeing the mighty waves splash and swirl and think how wonderful it would be to play, yet be as content to sit and watch and let it be without interference.

A part of me looks at more mature love, love long past raising children, like grandparents telling their stories, reliving their memories together like it was just yesterday. From the view of youth it seems utterly boring and passive. I remember thinking that I'd never want to have my whole live existing in the past, relived in my thoughts.

I still find a sort of repulsion to that passivity. Life is short and there's so much to do, its hard to imagine contentment at doing nothing. Surely its still a incomplete comprehension of the nature there.

But maybe that's also why the thoughts of sharing the later years with Rosie would be so wonderful, in my vision sitting on a bench or swing under a violet sky, waiting for the stars to come out, and the famous comet I saw in my youth.

Somehow Rosie hold eternity for me. It would still be there, even if she didn't love me, but I won't let her take back her words too easily. Hopefully she won't forget them. It is just magical to think she could love me - not something one can ever really fight for. I would bribe her if I could, but mostly I don't consider bribes as effective, since they are made from fear.

I suppose at least, if nothing else, her love brings to me something that is beyond my taking. Every ounce of power I have, nothing could make her love me, and there's a power there. It's a stronger symbol, when you commit to marriage for that love. There's nothing in Rosie's love for me that prevents her from expressing an equal love for someone else, and a greater love for her husband.

Still it almost feels more powerful because it is a gift that can't promise anything more than a moment. I love you right now as I look into your eyes and wish I could kiss you. I can even see her now, even if that moment never happened as I offer it.

A smarter person than me would say this love is unhealthy, and again I won't fight for whose right or wrong. Certainly from the outside it seems wrong. I've seen it before in star struck males - in their bold promises that their beloved is worth waiting for. Of course she is, but the she they are seeing is a reflection of his own Anima. It's quiet obvious from the outside his heroics is trying to impress her, trying to show he is worthy of her attention, hoping she'll come out and play within in the reflections of the woman his eyes are seeing.

Ah, but is that all, even if I understood any of what that could mean? Words are always reductive upon mystery and things great than our consciousness can allow us.

Okay, so my Rosie puts me in touch with my Anima. It's really hard to bring out that which is invisible purely on rational ground. I don't even know if such an inner being will play by ANY rules of my devising. If I see her in Rosie, I acknowledge both Rosie and this being, and just hope I can hold them as two beings.

Why would she, this inner being, allow herself to be reflected in Rosie, if not because it would allow me to see something of her?

Maybe my conscious thoughts will go no deeper, ever. What makes me know there's something more, hidden, is when I question my decisions, and see the holes plugged, and the noise held loud enough to not be distracted often by irrational worlds that may or may not ever mean anything.

I feel impatient for wisdom, wish she would talk to me straight, or the 100 other shadow that hide around the corners of my awareness. Do they talk and I don't listen? Am I ready to listen? There's a safe little place where I can "step back" and see the possibilities, but they disappear again when I try to get close.

Can Rosie help me? Can our love mean something without the romantic destination of marriage? Of course that can be the death as well as projections get cemented into externals that fail to teach any more than the silent voices. Who can say anything at all?

I'm just going to hold my Rosie tight, I mean when I can, and keep letting her go as long as it takes. Halley will be back in only 54 years!

Whatever comes before then, I need sleep!

I am utterly in love, and content to let the love be as it is, whatever it is. So much inner wonders are hard to believe in by light of day, but at least I can hold one believe day or night - that I am loved. God may love me too, and I hope so, but even better I know God made Rosie, and I am glad!