Partnership In Marriage Quotes

Marriage in its truest sense, is a partnership of equals, with neither exercising dominion over the other, but, rather, with each encouraging and assisting the other in whatever responsibilities and aspirations he or she might have.

Obama’s next words captured the attention of the world and the amusement of those present. As he wagged his finger at the crowd, he scolded, ‘So stop it, all of you. I know you have to find something to report on, but we have more than enough problems out there without manufacturing problems.

Marriage as a long conversation. - When marrying you should ask yourself this question: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman into your old age? Everything else in a marriage is transitory, but most of the time that you're together will be devoted to conversation.

Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy.

By all appearances, Hillary made a deal with herself over Bill’s philandering. She’s a private person who hates campaigning, so her marriage to a charismatic “people person” in Bill created a dynamic partnership.

It is better to stay single and wait for the one that makes sense then to marry someone that makes absolutely no sense. The moment you settle is when the one person that makes all the sense in the world shows up and Satan sits back and enjoys your spiritual meltdown.

Blessed is a mother that would give up part of her soul for her children's happiness.

Then, in an unusual moment, she grew emotional, which left little doubt about the level of profound respect and admiration Merkel had for her American colleague: ‘So eight years are coming to a close.  This is the last visit of (President) Barack Obama to our country…I am very glad that he chose Germany as one of the stopovers on this trip…Thank you for the reliable friendship and partnership you demonstrated in very difficult hours of our relationship. So let me again pay tribute to what we’ve been able to achieve, to what we discussed, to what we were able to bring about in difficult hours.

I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison. Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful.

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we’re lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.

A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same.

He who has a partner has a master.

Each time he suggested they get married, she said no. They were too happy, precariously so, and she wanted to guard that bond; she feared that marriage would flatten it into a prosaic partnership.

Never invest in any kind of relationship with anyone who is not willing to work on themselves just a little every day. A person who takes no interest in any form of self-improvement, personal development or spiritual growth will also not be inclined to make much of an effort building a truly meaningful connection with you. A relationship with only one partner willing to do the work ceases to be a relationship. And as anyone who has been there will tell you - it's pointless to try and dance the tango solo.

A relationship that is truly genuine does not keep changing its colors. Real gold never rusts. If a relationship is really solid and golden, it will be unbreakable. Not even Time can destroy its shine.

A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.

The most important quality in the man you decide to marry should be the ability to make you laugh. Beauty fades, careers end, money comes and goes, religions change, children grow up and move away, spouses get sick, struggles happen, family members die, senility sets in when your older, but the ability to make you giggle every day is the most precious gift God can give you to get through all of it.

An ideal marriage is a true partnership between two imperfect people, each striving to complement the other, to keep the commandments, and to do the will of the Lord ["Our Sacred Duty to Honor Woman," Ensign, May 1999).

Don’t make the mistake of looking down on your partner. You’re only on that pedestal because they put you up there.

You are curious and quick, you have a deft mind, and for some unaccountable reason, people tell you things -- useful things.

The Trump marriage veered furthest away from my concept of the union — and surprised me most as a student of American politics. Donald and Melania seem to inhabit separate realms and to come together when necessary, when one could not move forward without the other. The presidency was one instance in which they were forced into a joint undertaking. If my choice of language sounds businesslike, that’s because that’s how I’ve come to view the Trumps. Having learned more about each partner’s history, I believe they are two highly ambitious individuals who benefit from their partnership. It’s a transaction: he gains a beautiful woman on his arm, a solid-seeming marriage, a son, and a savvy adviser. She gains wealth and international cachet.

You know, marriage is marriage, a partnership. You aren’t the only one who needs to step up and keep one of us safe. It’s my job as your wife to do the same if a time comes when I have to and it’s my job to do it however that might need to come about.

Do you really want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you anymore?" I have to think that everyone has to ask this question when trying to deal with a failed relationship--whether it's a marriage, a friendship, or even a business partnership. If someone has changed their mind about you--that person no longer laughs at your jokes, no longer likes to hear you sing, is no longer interested in hearing about your day--you should probably take it as a sign that you should be reevaluating your commitment to that relationship and to that person.

What makes for a good marriage isn't necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way.

For me, marriage should be about partnership. How can you love someone you have to take care of like a child all the time? A wife is supposed to be a partner, and yes partners help each other when they need it, but they are supposed to be together because they want to in my book, not because one needs the other.

a real partnership in which all parties help all others to be more fully themselves

Every marriage is a partnership of two broken assholes with good intentions and varying degrees of ability to deliver.

Exposure to erotically inclined stimuli immediately activates parts of a male brain that are associated with sexual desire. Being attracted to other women, however, doesn’t mean men would betray the trust they are given and harm the partnership with the women they love.

My husband says spring will be early. He says this every year, And every year I disagree. He needs me, the dark side of the planetary equation. Together we make the equinox.

Marriage is sanctified when it is cherished and honored in holiness. That union is not merely between husband and wife; it embraces a partnership with God (see Matt. 19:6).

Marriage is a financial partnership. Marriage has nothing to do with love. Love is a choice we can make every day.

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.

The language of marriage is often a language of ownership, not a language of partnership. We

Some years ago, I read an article about two people in the arts (alas, I can’t remember who they were) who’d been married for many, many years. Asked for the secret of their long partnership, they said: “We fell straight into conversation when we met, and we haven’t come to the end of that conversation yet.” I can’t think of a better model for marriage than that. Or of a narrative more romantic . . . .

All the vital components that make a relationship successful, without any of the emotional messiness to drag it down. It's about respect, caring, and commitment. Shared goals and compatible priorities. It's about treating marriage like a partnership instead of some romantic fantasy. It's about two people liking each other.

It had evidently not occurred to her as yet that those who consent to share the bread of adversity may want the whole cake of prosperity for themselves.

I was acting like a child. Wanting his full attention. His declarations of love. I wanted to be his little princess, I guess. The one he worshiped and adored. Well, life's not like that. And after thinking it through, I actually wouldn't want it to be. We aren't put together in a marriage to stroke each other's ego. Marriage is a partnership. A blending of two lives working together. That's where the commitment comes in. It's a determination of the head - not the heart. No, I shouldn't say it that way. It still involves the heart. It still is based on love, but it's new kind of love. A mature love. One that doesn't ask, "What will you do for me?" but rather "What can I do for you?" or "What can we do for each other?

In marriage, those who persevere are rewarded with the most precious thing this earth has to offer: Marital love--a partnership that conquers the years. It takes time, but those who persevere are rewarded with, falling in love with their spouse. pg v

Something that’s bothered me for a while now is the current profligacy in YA culture of Team Boy 1 vs Team Boy 2 fangirling. [...] Despite the fact that I have no objection to shipping, this particular species of team-choosing troubled me, though I had difficulty understanding why. Then I saw it applied to Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy – Team Peeta vs Team Gale – and all of a sudden it hit me that anyone who thought romance and love-triangles were the main event in that series had utterly missed the point. Sure, those elements are present in the story, but they aren’t anywhere near being the bones of it, because The Hunger Games, more than anything else, is about war, survival, politics, propaganda and power. Seeing such a strong, raw narrative reduced to a single vapid argument – which boy is cuter? – made me physically angry. So, look. People read different books for different reasons. The thing I love about a story are not necessarily the things you love, and vice versa. But riddle me this: are the readers of these series really so excited, so thrilled by the prospect of choosing! between! two! different! boys! that they have to boil entire narratives down to a binary equation based on male physical perfection and, if we’re very lucky, chivalrous behaviour? While feminism most certainly champions the right of women to chose their own partners, it also supports them to choose things besides men, or to postpone the question of partnership in favour of other pursuits – knowledge, for instance. Adventure. Careers. Wild dancing. Fun. Friendship. Travel. Glorious mayhem. And while, as a woman now happily entering her fourth year of marriage, I’d be the last person on Earth to suggest that male companionship is inimical to any of those things, what’s starting to bother me is the comparative dearth of YA stories which aren’t, in some way, shape or form, focussed on Girls Getting Boyfriends, and particularly Hot Immortal Or Magical Boyfriends Whom They Will Love For All Eternity. Blog post: Love Team Freezer

This is a—a proposal of marriage?” he asked me, and there was the very smallest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth, something I had never seen before. “I suppose so,” I said, blushing again. “And, as you see, I’m doing it properly, on my knees.” “This would, however, be a partnership of equals you’re offering, I imagine?” “Undoubtedly.” (448-49)

What is a marriage, if it is not a partnership born out of affection, respect, and a closeness that makes life more navigable? Anything else feels lonely.

You never have to suffer because of, or be denatured by, another person, even someone you love.

Another often-asked question when I speak in public: “Do you have some good advice you might share with us?” Yes, I do. It comes from my savvy mother-in-law, advice she gave me on my wedding day. “In every good marriage,” she counseled, “it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.” I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through fifty-six years of a marital partnership nonpareil. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court of the United States. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.

I know it’s not popular to say. I know everybody’s looking for some sexy marriage nowadays. But I was really happy with your father. I really loved having someone look out for me, having someone to look out for. Having someone to share my days with.

Marriage is a partnership, not a corporate venture.

Vulnerability creates unimaginable space to build each other up, as much as it creates ample room to tear each other down.

Significantly, romantic friendships can coexist with the fact of partners' marrying because their reason for being is not to replace marriage but to open the possibility of sustained, committed true love existing among friends, and not just same-sex friends. No matter that our chosen relationship commitments change. Those of us who have long-term romantic friendships, some that have lasted longer than any of our marriages or partnerships, do not fear that these commitments will falter if we create primary bonds.

He knew himself well enough to know his own faults. Impatient and judgmental and stubborn and often too quick to act: he would try never to crush her, never to overwhelm her or bend her to his will, but if she did not demand only the best from him, it would happen. It might happen. Possibly.

The idea that love is something magical, almost supernatural, in your heart, that has nothing to do with the day-to-day encounters with a real person--- that understanding of love has probably created more unhappiness and ruined more marriages than just about anything. Love is what happens between people living their lives together, becoming close through contact and actual partnership and it's what survives through difficulties and imperfections. An idealized, imagined, faraway person in your heart---that's not love. That's a daydream.

One of the great truths of the Bible is that whenever God gets ready to do anything in the earth, He always works through a person or a group of people whom He has called and who have willingly responded to Him. The human factor is key for God’s activity on the earth. When God prepared to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, He called Moses. When He got ready to rescue His people from the Midianites, He called Gideon. When God wanted to warn His disobedient people of His judgment and call them back to Him, He called Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and the other prophets. When God was ready to send His Son into the world, He chose Mary, a humble peasant girl, to be His mother. When Jesus Christ prepared to send His message of salvation throughout the world, He called and anointed men and women—His Church—and commissioned them for the mission. This illustrates an incredible principle under which God operates: Without God we cannot, and without us God will not. For everything that God desires to do in the earth, He enters into partnership with those to whom He has already given dominion.

....though modern Marriage is a tremendous laboratory, its members are often utterly without preparation for the partnership function. How much agony and remorse and failure could have been avoided if there had been at least some rudimentary learning before they entered the partnership....And that statement is equally valid for all relationships.

I want to marry you, Jenna. And marriage means a partnership. A partnership means we take the good and the bad.

Marriage is supposed to be a partnership. Good-looking people marry good-looking people and the others take what's left.

For families with larger amounts of wealth, marriages in the ancient world were the equivalent of today’s business mergers or investment partnerships.

I will spend my life believing in you so that you will someday commit to doing the same.

...this is the first time in the history of humankind where we are trying to experience sexuality in the long term, not because we want 14 children, for which we need to have even more because many of them won't make it, and not because it is exclusively a woman's marital duty. This is the first time that we want sex over time about pleasure and connection that is rooted in desire. So what sustains desire, and why is it so difficult? And at the heart of sustaining desire in a committed relationship, I think is the reconciliation of two fundamental human needs... So reconciling our need for security and our need for adventure into one relationship, or what we today like to call a passionate marriage, used to be a contradiction in terms. Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it's a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.

The social institution of marriage is first and foremost a covenant relationship in which a man and a woman pledge themselves to each other for a lifetime partnership. In the biblical account of creation, God’s expressed

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal partnership.

marriage is an arrangement between like-minded parties. It’s a partnership, not a love affair. I never lied to you or kept anything of importance from you.”She looked at him then, almost stunned, as if she didn’t recognize him. He didn’t like it. Not at all.

Marriage isn't a motion-picture close-up with slow fade-out on the embrace. It's a partnership, and what's the good of a partnership if your heart's not in it?

May their having each other make more of them both.

It seemed that the marriage had reached the traditional truce, the point at which so many resign themselves to cutting both their losses and their hopes.

No one knows anything about infinity. Perhaps 'unconditional love' can also be placed in this category.

Your spouse is not a possession you attain, but a friend in which you trust & adore.

In successful relationships, perfection is the acceptance of imperfection.

Marriage is not the end of the search for love. It’s the end of the search for a person to love. The search for ways to love that person has just begun.

No marriage is fair. It’s complementary. The idea of ‘fair’ is absurd at best, ableist at worst.” We both swivel our heads and look at her. “Ableist?” Freya asks. “Ableist,” Dr. Dietrich says. “Because saying a relationship has to be ‘fair’ implies only a certain balance and distribution of skills and aptitudes is valid. It upholds an arbitrary, damaging idea of ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ as requisite for fulfilling partnership. When in reality, all you need is two people who love what the other brings and share the work of love and life together.

I know nothing about love. But I love the idea of having someone to love. And having someone to love me back. Someone with whom I share my sombre moments. Someone with whom I share my laughter.

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.6

All partnerships fail in the end, just like marriages. The only life after death any human being will ever know is staying in a marriage or a partnership after it’s over. And that’s not life—it’s living death.

Marriage isn't a motion-picture close-up with slow fade-out on the embrace. It's a partnership, and what's the good of a partnership if your heart's not in it? It's like collaborating with a man you dislike....

Ciro had made a bet in proposing to her, and on that same day, Enza made a bet of her own. She was putting all her money, effort and future into a partnership that she believed could not fail. She was going to pour all of herself into her marriage: love would sustain them, and trust would see them through. That was her belief, and that's how she was raised. When she spun the gold ring on her finger, it was as though it was made for her, but it meant even more that her husband had worn it since he was a boy. She was a part of his history now.

For so many people marriage has come to mean a power struggle, and that causes a heap of problems, like one person getting their way and trampling all over the other person’s thoughts or wishes. But partnership is different.

Unlike traditional marriages that are committed to material safety and comfort, the spiritual partnership goes one step further and makes a commitment to mutual spiritual growth. Within spiritual partnerships, the focus is not just on us, our needs, our desires, and our petty grievances – instead, the focus gradually becomes local, national, and global.

Human beings are hard-wired to make relationships. We do so in many capacities, fleeting and long-lasting, between different sexes, both inside and outside of the confines of the almost universally accepted partnership we called marriage.

Marriage is a partnership Phillip, not a feudal kingdom. Until you can accept that I have the right to dictate the course of my on life, I will not marry you. Until you can accept my wishes and my opinions are just worthy of consideration as yours, I will not marry you. Until you can accept that what I would give up to be your wife is just as important as what you offer in exchange, I will not marry you.

In marriage, “two become one,” and this miracle must never be forgotten. Marriage means that a man and a woman must no longer say “mine” and “yours”; they should say only “ours.” If one of them has a ministry, they both have a ministry, whether the other one accepts it or not. Marriage isn’t a fifty-fifty partnership; it’s a 100 percent stewardship in which each mate lives for the other and both live for the Lord.

All this may seem like a terrible tangle. But since partnership is designed to resurface feelings from childhood, it means that most of the upset that gets triggered in us during our relationship is from our past. Yes! About 90 percent of the frustrations your partner has with you are really about their issues from childhood. That means only 10 percent or so is about each of you right now. Doesn’t that make you feel better?

I'm just thinking about marriage," I admit. "How do you know when you've found the right person?" Lee looks up, as if thinking very seriously about my question. "I always felt that the right one will be an extension of you. What you like, they like. What you respect, they will respect. What you value, they will value. I always envisioned marriage to be a true partnership, where one lifts up the other so that everyone wins.

A marriage is a partnership, not a dictatorship of one over the other.” “Oh, my God. I said that exact thing to him, Zane. There were a lot more issues between us than that, but when he insulted my writing… that was the tipping point.” “There’s always something that’s the fucking final straw.

To the young woman I say, This is the moment in your life when he who is wooing you will be at his kindest. And if you do not see kindness in the man you are dating, beware! For the partnership you are looking for will be nourished and nurtured only on the basis of a love that is not arrogant or prideful, but kind.

According to Scripture, the number-one purpose of marriage—more than even the unique, time-honored partnership it creates between a man and woman, more than even the conceiving and raising of children, more than any Prince Charming fairy tale in any little girl’s head—is how it represents the mystery of the gospel in active, living form.

Marriage is a partnership; not a sole proprietorship.

It’s not unlike a marriage, the partnership. All the effort and good intentions in the world can’t make things right if you choose poorly in the first place.

Because men and women in a relationship have many conflicting interests, evolutionary theory does not view love relationships as harmonious partnerships for childrearing; but a universal feature of human cultures is that men and women form relationships intended to last for years (marriage) that constrain their sexual behavior in some way and institutionalize their ties to children and to each other.

That dichotomy, in which the male half of a partnership wants a kitten in the kitchen and a tiger in the bedroom, is incredibly emotionally draining and confusing for women, whether they’re married or not.

In a nutshell, I was looking for meaningful work and meaningful relationships. I quickly learned that the best way to do that was to have great partnerships with great people. To me, great partnerships come from sharing common values and interests, having similar approaches to pursuing them, and being reasonable with, and having consideration for, each other. At the same time, partners must be willing to hold each other to high standards and work through their disagreements. The main test of a great partnership is not whether the partners ever disagree—people in all healthy relationships disagree—but whether they can bring their disagreements to the surface and get through them well. Having clear processes for resolving disagreements efficiently and clearly is essential for business partnerships, marriages, and all other forms of partnership

I oppose same-sex marriage and civil unions but I support domestic partnership between gay and lesbian couples. I have no problem with gay and lesbian couples adopting. I support equal benefits for same-sex couples such as hospital visitation rights

She had grown accustomed to people's responses to her. Many of them assumed that there was a polar choice between marriage and work and that the more enthusiastically she had embraced her job, the more vigourously she must have rejected the idea of children or male partnership. Elizabeth had given up trying to explain. She had taken a job because she needed to live; she had found an interesting one in preference to a dull one; she had tried to do well rather than badly. She could not see how any of these three logical steps implied a violent rejection of men or children.

When you're single, the highs are high and the lows are low. You have opportunities for more excitement and pleasure than any person in a committed relationship is ever going to have, and you may as well enjoy them as much as you can because the rug gets pulled out from under you while you still think you're riding high. ...........I will concede that marriage might very well be as much of a blast, I just haven't had the opportunity to find out. What I do know is that the vicissitudes of dating get boring, or you get too old to partake of them, as I have, or both, and you crave the stability of a permanent partnership. I've been craving it for a while now; it just hasn't craved me.

Significantly, in future feminist movement we will spend less time critiquing patriarchal marriage bonds and expend more effort showing alternatives, showing the value of peer relationships which are founded on principles of equality, respect, and the belief that mutual satisfaction and growth are needed for partnerships to be fulfilling and lasting.

I awaken by the heat emanating from your body. I wash the grapes and eat the bad ones so you don’t taste their bitterness. You place the bowl on your stomach and the cold makes you squeal. I smile. You simper. That is enough for me. I come home and eat my meal in silence. I avoid you. Your hand takes the dish I just placed in the sink and washes it. I rest my head on the wooden table. The dish is placed to dry. There are no footsteps. Then a mouth kisses the nape of my neck. My head sinks deep into the wood and my obstinacy drowns. That is enough for me. I write because of you, about you and for you. I will not perish when you leave for your existence is enough for me.

Marriage is a partnership. Someone has observed that in the Bible account of the creation woman was not formed from a part of man's head, suggesting that she might rule over him, nor from a part of a man's foot that she was to be trampled under his feet. Woman was taken from man's side as though to emphasize the fact that she was always to be by his side as a partner and companion.

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.

Before he got famous for being a sexual degenerate, Louis C.K. said this dumb thing about marriage: 'Divorce is always good news because no good marriage has ever ended in divorce.' The reality is that every marriage is a partnership of two broken assholes with good intentions and varying degrees of ability to deliver. Marriage is as much a mystery to me now as the origins of the universe and the laws that govern the behavior of matter. What makes one work is just as strange as what makes one not. But I possess more information now than I had when this all began. We both do. Lauren has had to come to terms with some difficult truths, such as how her husband has grown a mustache, and I have had to grapple with other truths, such as how my wife left me for the human equivalent of Diet Mountain Dew.

Marriage is a partnership, Phillip, not a feudal kingdom. Until you can accept that I have the right to dictate the course of my own life, I will not marry you. Until you can accept that my wishes and my opinions are just as worthy of consideration as yours, I will not marry you. Until you can accept that what I would give up to be your wife is just as important as what you offer in exchange, I will not marry you.

Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save

For members of a particular religious community, the sense of obligation takes a specific form when it comes to their commitment to each other. In the movie Shall We Dance?, Richard Gere plays a bored middle-aged attorney who surreptitiously takes up ballroom dancing. His wife, played by Susan Sarandon, becomes suspicious at his renewed energy and vitality. She hires a private detective, who discovers the dance studio and reports the news. She decides to let her husband continue dancing undisturbed. In the scene where she meets the private detective in a bar to pay his fee and end the investigation, they linger over a drink and discuss why people marry in the first place. The detective, whose countless investigations into infidelity have rendered him cynical about marriage, suggests that the desire to marry has something to do with hormones and passing fancy. She disagrees. The reason we marry, she insists, is that “we need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet. . . . I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things . . . all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ ” The sacramental bond that unites two people in a marriage or committed relationship is known as a covenant. A covenant—the word means mutual agreement—is a promise to bear witness to the life of another: the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. At its heart, the relationship among members of a religious community is covenantal as well. As with marriage, the relationship also includes other dimensions, such as friendship and perhaps financial and/or legal partnership. But the defining commitment that members of a religious community make to each other arises from their calling—their covenantal duty—to bear witness to each other’s lives: the lives they now lead and the lives they hope to lead in the future, and the world they now occupy and the world they hope to occupy in the future.

When we get down to potential versus reality in relationships, we often see disappointment, not successful achievement. In the Church, if someone creates nuclear fallout in a calling, they are often released or reassigned quickly. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury when we marry. So many of us have experienced this sad realization in the first weeks of our marriages. For example, we realized that our partner was not going to live up to his/her potential and give generously to the partnership. While fighting the mounting feelings of betrayal, we watched our new spouses claim a right to behave any way they desired, often at our expense. Most of us made the "best" of a truly awful situation but felt like a rat trapped in maze. We raised a family, played our role, and hoped that someday things would change if we did our part. It didn't happen, but we were not allowed the luxury of reassigning or releasing our mates from poor stewardship as a spouse or parent. We were stuck until we lost all hope and reached for the unthinkable: divorce. Reality is simple for some. Those who stay happily married (the key word here is happily are the ones who grew and felt companionship from the first days of marriage. Both had the integrity and dedication to insure its success. For those of us who are divorced, tracing back to those same early days, potential disappeared and reality reared its ugly head. All we could feel, after a sealing for "time and all eternity," was bound in an unholy snare. Take the time to examine the reality of who your sweetheart really is. What do they accomplish by natural instinct and ability? What do you like/dislike about them? Can you live with all the collective weaknesses and create a happy, viable union? Are you both committed to making each other happy? Do you respect each other's agency, and are you both encouraging and eager to see the two of you grow as individuals and as a team? Do you both talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk? Or do you love them and hope they'll change once you're married to them? Chances are that if the answer to any of these questions are "sorta," you are embracing their potential and not their reality. You may also be embracing your own potential to endure issues that may not be appropriate sacrifices at this stage in your life. No one changes without the internal impetus and drive to do so. Not for love or money. . . . We are complex creatures, and although we are trained to see the "good" in everyone, it is to our benefit to embrace realism when it comes to finding our "soul mate." It won't get much better than what you have in your relationship right now.

Obviously the most enduring way to make this commitment is through marriage. Yet because sexual liberals deny the differences between the sexes, their explanations of why there are marriages and why marriage is needed and desired ignore the central truth of marriage: that it is built on sex roles. Pressed to explain the institution, they respond vaguely that human beings want "structure" or desire "intimacy." But however desirable in marriage, these values are not essential causes or explanations of it. In many cultures, the wife and husband share very few one-to-one intimacies. Ties with others of the same sex--or even the opposite sex--often offer deeper companionship. The most intimate connections are between mothers and their children. In all societies, male groups provide men with some of their most emotionally gratifying associations. Indeed, intimacy can deter or undermine wedlock. In the kibbutz, for example, where unrelated boys and girls are brought up together and achieve a profound degree of companionate feeling, they never marry members of the same child-rearing group. In the many cultures where marriages are arranged, the desire for intimacy is subversive of marriage. Similarly, man's "innate need for structure" can be satisfied in hundreds of forms of organization. The need for structure may explain all of them or none of them, but it does not tell us why, of all possible arrangements, marriage is the one most prevalent. It does not tell us why, in most societies, marriage alone is consecrated in a religious ceremony and entails a permanent commitment. As most anthropologists see it, however, the reason is simple. The very essence of marriage, Bronislaw Malinowski wrote, is not structure and intimacy; it is "parenthood and above all maternity." The male role in marriage, as Margaret Mead maintained, "in every known human society, is to provide for women and children." In order to marry, in fact, Malinowski says that almost every human society first requires the man "to prove his capacity to maintain the woman." Marriage is not simply a ratification of an existing love. It is the conversion of that love into a biological and social continuity. . . . Regardless of what reasons particular couples may give for getting married, the deeper evolutionary and sexual propensities explain the persistence of the institution. All sorts of superficial variations--from homosexual marriage to companionate partnership--may be played on the primal themes of human life. But the themes remain. The natural fulfillment of love is a child; the fantasies and projects of the childless couple may well be considered as surrogate children.