Soul Mates

For me, this article shed an entirely new light on dating and relationships.  I’d honestly never looked on marriage as anything but a partnership with a soul mate.  When you find someone that you have this special, deep connection with, and you just know.   That’s when you get married.  This person should know everything about you.  He should know all of your little quirks.  He should always know what to say to cheer you up and how to make you laugh and what to do when you cry. I’ve always taken that idea for granted, I suppose. It’s something happy to look forward to.  One day, you meet a perfect, wonderful boy who absolutely adores you[1] and you fall in love and get married and live happily ever after.  I’m not even kidding…I just sort of assumed that’s how everything would eventually work out for me. That’s probably bad.

  Ingrid Michaelson describes the little intricacies of a perfect relationship, even simply the most mundane aspects of it, in her song “The Way I Am.”  “Cause I love the way you say good morning.  And you take me the way I am.”  That’s simple, but affecting.  It creates a wonderful image, something that I’d love to have if I get married.  And I think I could too, because it’s realistic.  Ingrid is good at singing about these simple, but beautiful aspects of relationships.  She does this again in her song “You and I.”  Set only to a ukulele, she sings with a partner, “You might be a bit confused, and you might be a little bit bruised but baby how we spoon like no one else.  So I will help you read those books, if you will soothe my worried looks, and we will put the lonesome on the shelf.”  So cute, right?!?

  Many of the love songs that are popular today try far too hard to be “romantic.”  This happens to the point where the actual emotional impact and relate ability of the songs are diminished significantly.  Taylor Swift is a big offender here. “Love Story” is a prime example.  “We were both young when I first saw, close my eyes and let the flashbacks start.  You’re standing there, in the balcony in summer air.  See the lights, see the party, the ball gowns.  See you make your way through the crowds to say hello.  Little did I know….”  Ugh.  Please.

But I digress.  Anyway.  Basically the article made me think, for the first time ever, that some people are happily married not to their soul mates.  In other words, you don’t have to marry a “soul mate” to have a good marriage.  I guess this must be true.  And I suppose it’s a good point that constantly searching for this perfect “soul mate” could hold one back.  But to me it still sounds like settling to me, at least the way the article described it.   And that makes me sad to think that some people do that.  But perhaps I’m being far too romantic.

Still, for a marriage to be successful, there must be a basis of some sort of love.  And whether that is an all-consuming, head over heels love, or a more practical, mature, controlled love, I suppose it doesn’t matter.  Love, in the end, is love.  In the words of Jean Val Jean, during the finale of the musical Les Miserables, “to love another person is to see the face of God.”

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[1] Dave Matthews Band’s song “Crush” is a good example of a boy (or in this case, man I guess) loving a girl in the most adorable, perfect, soul-mateish way ever.  “I will treat you sweetly.  Adore you, I mean, you crush me . . . It’s crazy I’m thinking, just as long as you’re around, and here I’ll be dancing on the ground. Am I right side up, or right side down?”  Seriously if a boy ever though that about me I’d just die.

The Domestic Church

There are certain aspects of the church, mentioned in this blog, that are certainly present in my home.  My parents have always fostered faith, love, support and a sense community in our family.  Many of the values that are inherent parts of the church doctrine I certainly encountered for the first time at home through my mom and dad.  In this sense then, I suppose that the “domestic church” has always been part of my life.

As for the changing structure of the family, I don’t think this would have any negative effects upon the domestic church.  The composition of a family doesn’t matter.  Whether a child has two mothers, two fathers, or only one parent, as long as his or her guardians foster a sense of love in that child’s life, the domestic church can be kept alive.  Examples of this can be found in the media. Full House, Gilmore Girls, and Modern Family all feature daughters who are being raised, entirely successfully, not by the conventional mother and father.

I’m not sure how earning a college degree is associated with marriage success rate, but I suppose if that study is accurate then (hopefully) I’ll be more likely to partake in a successful marriage.  Obviously, if I have a family when I’m an adult, I would want to instill love, faith etc. into the family.  But I’m not sure I would call that the domestic church.  Those are just basic values that all children should be lucky enough to grow up with, whether their family is religious or not.

Vatican II on Marriage: Is It Relevant Today?

1. “Marriage, the constitution says, is a ‘vocation.’”

“Vocation” implies a serious commitment; something that is meant to be; a calling.  More and more in our society, marriage is becoming trivialized.  This era of Vegas chapels, 72-hour marriages, and multiple divorces makes the sacrament seem far less sacred than it is.  Our culture as a whole seems to be losing respect for marriage.  It is certainly not always viewed as a vocation.

2. “The council esteemed conjugal love as a sign to others of Christ’s own love for the church. And today it is not uncommon for church leaders to insist that the entire church benefits from the love within committed marriages and that a doubtful society needs to witness the possibility of such love.”

I have never before heard this view of conjugal love.  I think many people, even married couples, want to keep the church out of their sex lives.  So I personally think that for the Church to relate sex as “Christ’s own love for the church” and having the “entire church” benefit from the love within a committed marriage seems extremely strange.  In fact I think it would make many people uncomfortable (it certainly did for me).  Society in general, I think, views the church in a negative light when it comes to sex.  This statement to me seemed like the church was trying too hard to be accepting of sex (but only within marriage of course), but sort of fails epically.  It just comes across as weird.

3. “This marital and familial love finds its complete expression, following the example of Jesus himself, in a willingness to sacrifice oneself in everyday situations for one’s spouse and children.’”

This statement is actually very accurate.  I see this willingness to sacrifice exemplified everyday through my mother’s actions.  My mother is, as my dad puts it, the “nucleus” of our family.  I know that we would not be nearly as happy as we are were it not for her selflessness.

4. “As spouses fulfill their conjugal and family obligations, they are penetrated with the spirit of Christ.”

Ew I’m sorry but what?   This is so weird and creepy.  I keep picturing a bunch of old men sitting in this dark room together writing up this Constitution for the Church.  This makes me really uncomfortable.  It’s cultish and uber Christian and weird and ew.

Dating: What's the Point?

Is dating practice for divorce?  Anti-daters say yes, it is.  However, I believe that dating, like anything else, is what you make of it.  It's a very personal life-style.  If a person chooses to hop from relationship to relationship, never seriously committing, never fully happy with his or her partner, that is the person's own decision (albeit it might not lead to the most healthy marriage in the future).  On the other hand, there are plenty of people who "date" and have a few serious relationships before entering a completely successful marriage.  There  is no set war to measure how people go about dating or how it affects someone--it varies for everyone.

 There are certain pros and cons for both dating and not, but I personally lean strongly towards the pro-dating arguments.  First of all, I think there is truth in the point that dating helps us realize what we would want in a spouse.  It is important to know what qualities you want in a partner before committing to a marriage.  Secondly, I really like boys and would not want to not date them until I got married.  So yeah.

There is no denying that casual "hookups" are prevalent--perhaps too prevalent--in our society.  I'm not sure, though, that this has anything to do with dating.  They are two entirely different vehicles.  As is made clear by Whelan's article on Busted Halo, the majority of people expect nothing after a hookup.  Less than 10% anticipate (perhaps naively) a relationship or a even a date.  In teenage culture, these two things are certainly viewed entirely differently.  Random hook-ups are rather frequent, and generally accepted.  Serious dating and relationships are present as well.  I honestly don't think either are looked upon negatively, but for many people, one might be much more appealing than the other (or so they say).