The Way to Love Essays on Man-Woman Relationship in Love and Marriage
Jess R. Volante
PHILIPPINES
THE WAY TO LOVE Essays on Man-Woman Relationship in Love and Marriage Š 2017 Jess R. Volante
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published and distributed by Paulines Publishing House Daughters of St. Paul 2650 F.B. Harrison Street 1300 Pasay City, Philippines E-mail: edpph@paulines.ph Website: www.paulines.ph Cover design: Ann Marie Nemenzo, FSP 1st Printing 2017 ISBN 978-971-590-828-3
at the service of the Gospel and culture
Contents Introduction
1
Getting Ready for Love
5
Falling in Love
21
Choosing a Partner
29
Declaring or Accepting Love
43
Betrothal and Marriage
51
The Honeymoon
57
After the Honeymoon
59
Roles that Husband and Wife Play
65
No-Quarrel Code
73
Who is the Boss?
85
Terms of Endearment
91
The Love Funds
93
The Golden Years and Beyond
101
Introduction “Sir,” a single young lady would ask me, “When do I get to know or meet a handsome young man whom I could love and would love me, too?” “How can I be certain that I am truly in love?” another would quip. “What is love, anyway?” a third young person would join in. I always get these questions whenever I am with my young friends who regard themselves as ‘never been in love’ or ‘no boyfriend/girlfriend since birth’. Bestselling songs, hit movies and tele-novelas, even advertisements in magazines, billboards and internet present love as a thrilling, romantic and emotion-filled experience. Young, inexperienced people who are attracted by this propaganda tend to seek this emotion-filled experience in the arena of love, often unaware that genuine love entails much more.
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Love is at the heart of our origins, as symbolically told in the story of the couple in the Garden of Eden. It is the mystery that keeps us going until now. Generation after generation has woven myths to convey their understanding of it, yet admittedly, it remains an inexhaustible mystery that invites each lover to an adventure of discovery within his/her concrete relationship with the beloved. Pretense to grasp it fully and master it has given rise to self-proclaimed love-counselors in the print media, radio, television, and internet. But true love slips the grasp of those who think they have completely figured it out. The desire to help young people seeking guidance about love, and the impulse to share what I have personally discovered in the long years of being in a love-relationship, are the primary reasons that gave birth to this little book on manwoman relationship in love and marriage. It can be read quickly in just an hour, but the best way to prof it from it is to read it reflectively without rushing, and to return to the various sections as the need arises. If you are still young and unmarried, your immediate concern will most likely be the 2
premarital sections. But later on in your married life, you may feel the need to go back and f ind better enlightenment from the early stages of your relationship. Sharing and reading this little book with your spouse, with whom you have vowed “till death do us part,� may help concretize between the two of you a common framework for your manwoman relationship in love. That may yet be one of the greatest things that can happen in your life together.
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Getting Ready for Love One day I saw my best friend dressed in athletic shorts and shirt, dribbling a basketball as he walked to the covered court. When he got there, he started shooting the ball into the basket from different angles and distances, taking various playing stances. I asked him why he seemed very much engrossed in aping a contemporary basketball star. He said, “I have been practicing two hours daily for the past week, alone or with friends, so that I could be in our village’s basketball team which would compete in the summer basketball tournament. For a simple objective like joining a basketball team, some men devote extra time and effort to prepare themselves. But when it comes to love and marriage, it is dismaying to see how many persons rush in, unmindful of whether they are ready or not to assume the demands. How should one prepare for love? Getting physically fit for a basketball game or being mentally 5
ready for an examination is much easier, because the prof iciency in dribbling and shooting the ball into the basket or answering examination questions is measurable. But love is not just a game or a test. Getting ready for love is bracing oneself to face a mystery which is unpredictable and uncontrollable. One can learn from the experiences of others, but must be prepared for the uniqueness of one’s own experience. For just as every person is unique, every love-relationship is singular and unrepeatable. The best preparation, which does not exclude other preparations but integrate them, is to get connected with the Source of love or Lovein-person—God. If you are disposed interiorly, all other aspects of your person will fall into place. The Author of life knows best how to direct every single life toward the achievement of its purpose. With that as premise, you can then proceed with the other levels of preparation. On the human level, the very first step in the intricate process of preparing for love is a thorough self-examination. This should enable you to assess yourself and recognize your plus and minus factors as a person desiring to love and be loved. Your 6
love-relationship, though something very personal, will have broad social implications. Therefore, you have to think of yourself as a special person who is a member of a social unit. Lovers do not live in isolation. They need to relate with society if their love-relationship is to grow and endure. Therefore, your self-examination, as you prepare for love, needs to bring you to a broader view of yourself as a person-in-love in the social world. Preparation for love should start at the earliest period of a person’s awareness. That is why one of the most important responsibilities of parents is to teach the children how to love. By the time you are reading this booklet, a decade or two would have passed since you reached the age of reason. No one has the power yet to rewind the events of one’s life so that improvement of undesirable parts may be done during the replay. So, begin with yourself. Cultivate an intelligent, pleasing and well-balanced personality. Review your socialization processes and improve on those areas where you feel you have poor ratings.
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Declaring or Accepting Love In matters of love, Filipinos traditionally believed in the effectiveness of an intermediary (“tulay”). Thus, love stories would usually involve three people: the two love-struck pair and a gobetween who kept the lovers in communication with each other. In this traditional courtship, the explicit declaration of love was seldom before the nuptials. Rather, informal messages of love were exchanged through love songs sung in the ‘harana’ or serenade during moonlit nights. The expression of love was only tacitly understood. But today the trend seems to have shifted towards externalizing whatever is happening inside. It has also become a practice to show off one’s boy/girlfriend to everybody. Western influence has emboldened 43
even young Filipinos to adopt the direct approach. Unlike their ancestors who kept the declaration of love until the culmination of courtship or during the honeymoon, modern-day lovers begin their relationship with an explicit declaration of love: “I love you” and “I love you, too”. These are the most abused expressions coming from young people who do not fully understand their meaning. Love does not only concern feelings and emotions but also volition, morals, social behavior, and a host of other dimensions of the human being. Love is not a matter that pertains only to an aspect of a person’s being, but rather concerns the whole personality. However, the young person’s immediate concern is always the physical level, for this is what identif ies us most with other mammals. Thus we f ind young people rushing to express the magical phrases “I love you” and “I love you, too,” even in the early stages of social contacts, when all there is between them is physical attraction for each other. Declaration and acceptance of a love proposal should come much later, after the physically attracted male and female have deliberately assessed every aspect of their relationship. 44
The identification or selection of a lifetime partner from among the many acquaintances keeps the social contacts focused on a single person. Every meeting reveals bits and pieces of information which can positively confirm the choice. And if the feeling is mutual, the relationship builds up toward a climax. The desire to see each other, talk to each other and hug each other becomes intense and more frequent until the lovers express vows of lifelong togetherness. At this stage of more serious consideration of their relationship, the lovers should use their volition to master their emotions. They should broaden their concern to include not only the physical but also the social, moral and spiritual implications of their relationship. The physical involves the bond of affection and tenderness between them. The social encompasses the smooth functioning of marital roles in the household and the community. The moral includes the sanctions of society for a man and a woman united in love and marriage. And the spiritual includes the faith-dimension of their relationship, the awareness that each of them is God’s gift to the other. After careful deliberations, 45
the two young persons will be able to determine whether they are really in love and ready to meet head-on the various challenges and responsibilities that a lifetime commitment in marriage entails. The desire to be together should go beyond the level of mere physical closeness. The partners must come to the point of seeing themselves as the nucleus of a new family. The moment the partners realize that love and marriage have goals that invite them to look beyond the physical act, they begin to understand that they are responding as well to the divine plan of procreation. Physical attraction, falling in love and getting married are part of nature’s mandate for the propagation of the human species. The pleasures in the physical act of love are oriented towards human cooperation in the divine plan. The lovers’ roles unfold in a double dimension: the immediate-temporal and, the spiritual- eternal. By striving to be good partners—husband and wife, and good parents, who, with their children become exponents of an ideal home and community, their union becomes a vehicle through which they will reach eternal happiness. 46
Declaring, “I love you” or responding, “I love you too” means that you are not just focused on what you find attractive in the other person—the smiling eyes, bouncy hair or well-shaped body, etc. Rather, that you have moved beyond the emotional level and have deliberated, as a real intelligent human being, on the different levels of man-woman relationship in love and marriage. Unless you are in touch with love’s social, moral and spiritual aspects you are not behaving as a homo sapiens in love. You can only commit yourself maturely to love someone “till death do you part,” after you have gone through the different stages of personal introspection and self-improvement so that you would be a real asset to your spouse, household and community. Declaring or accepting love should be deliberate. The motive of the one who declares and the one who accepts should be pure realization of the importance of sharing moments for a noble purpose. No personal gain or escapist motives should influence the man’s or woman’s decision to declare or accept proposals of love and marriage. One is not in the right track if he or she opts for 47
marriage just to flee from the unwholesome or unbearable social and economic situation of one’s family of orientation. You are similarly misguided if your motive is simply to prove to someone who jilted you that you are capable of getting an immediate replacement. One last note on declaring and accepting love. The present generation is bombarded by the mass media, especially by one-hour dramas or two-hour movies, by what can be called a ‘oneday love affair’. Many young viewers/audience do not realize that the production staff (producers, writers, directors, etc.) have to develop the story within a strictly given time. Thus in one scene, lovers are portrayed holding hands, and in the next scene they are already in bed. Young viewers bombarded with such ideas begin to consider them as normal so that in real life, after a little social interaction with someone of the opposite sex, they immediately end up in bed together, just as they see it portrayed in movies. Exposure to the mass media must be discriminating and regulated. Become aware of how you are affected by the values presented by mass media. Do the shows/movies 48
you watch help you to tame your emotions or not? Prayer is indispensable in moments of temptation, when you feel that you are losing control.
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