The Path before Partnership

Listen with Your Heart : Seeking the Sacred in Romantic Love
by Eileen Flanagan

(Page 5 of 5)

Late one night when I was in graduate school, my friend Tracy and I sat in my room, our minds exhausted from lofty intellectual pursuits, tittering about the men in our departments. Sprawled across my floor, we each took a piece of paper and wrote out the ten most important qualities we were looking for in a man. I was amazed by how specific Tracy was, down to the preferred lip thickness of her ideal partner. My qualities were much more esoteric. Sympathy with oppressed people was high on my list. So was sense of humor.

I now believe that having a shopping list keeps us from seeing others, no matter what qualities are on our inventory. Several years ago, I began dating Alix, and during our first lunch together, we each indicated we were potentially in the market for marriage and children. We spent the rest of our eight-month relationship running down our shopping lists, checking off required qualities as we found them. Physically attractive, check. Good sense of humor, check. Sympathy with oppressed people, oops! Only after several months did I realize how different our values were. In retrospect, I don't believe I ever knew this man. I was so busy weighing his assets and debits I never stopped to listen to who he really was.

After my relationship with Alix, I realized I wanted to do things differently in the future. First, I revised my checklist; then gave up the list altogether. I began to trust that I would be given all I needed, even if it wasn't in the form I had wanted or expected. I even began to let go of the idea of looking for a partner, trusting that if I was meant to marry, it would happen when the time was right.

Thirty-seven-year-old Betsy has had a similar experience. A professional teacher whose colorful apartment is full of books and dried flowers, Betsy explains how studying A Course in Miracles has changed her perspective on looking for someone to marry. "I sincerely believe that if God intends me to have a husband-whatever God is, that numinous unknown which to me is sometimes as real as the cup I'm holding-then that person will come into my life." Betsy says often a person she really needed to learn from has appeared in her life at just the right moment. "I've had many situations where this has happened, so why not in love too?" she asks. Learning to trust that she'll meet a partner if she is meant to has brought more peace into Betsy's life. "It may or may not happen," she says, "so I really don't worry about it. I've just let that go, and I'm quite calm about it."

Reaching this attitude of calm-what Buddhists call nonattachment-is not always easy. Loneliness, social pressure, and the desire for children can all add to our anxiety about singleness. Yet these factors also offer opportunities to face our fears and come to know ourselves more deeply. For me, a period of being single and hoping for partnership helped me to learn patience. I learned to let go of my agenda and trust in love's abundance. While waiting, I focused on deepening my relationship with God, spending more time in quiet than I would have had I been with a man. Not only did this period of spiritual growth lay the foundation for my marriage, it helped me to learn important lessons that enrich other aspects of my life as well.

Seeking the sacred dimension of romantic love changes our whole approach to relationships. Fiona, a dynamic Englishwoman in her twenties, is animated as she explains how her recent spiritual awakening has changed what she is looking for in a partner. "Their spiritual self would now be a lot more important to me," states Fiona. "I can't say, ?Tom Hanks is my ideal man. I wish I could meet somebody like him.' Neither can I say, ?Well, I'd like A, B, C qualities in my perfect person.' I'm much more willing to wait and see what comes my way and then work out if that's right."

Just as waiting offers many lessons, working out if a relationship is right for us also presents opportunities for spiritual growth. Choosing a partner may help us learn spiritual discernment-the practice of listening within for divine guidance (discussed in the next chapter). Instead of consulting our shopping list, we consult our hearts to see if a relationship brings a sense of peace and rightness. Choosing a partner may also force us to see ourselves more clearly, giving us unique insight into our beliefs and values. "My major relationships have been very influential in my spiritual formation," reflects Helen. Before she married, Helen seriously dated several men whose religious backgrounds were different from her own Lutheran upbringing. These relationships challenged Helen to explore her faith more deeply, spurring her search for a church that fit her beliefs more closely than Lutheranism.

Now a teacher and writer on contemporary mysticism, Renee first questioned the teachings of her Roman Catholic church while dating a Jewish man in college. Although her boyfriend thought the church's prohibition on premarital sex was foolish, Renee adhered to it for over a year. When their relationship ended almost two years later, Renee was devastated. "When Evan broke up with me," she recalls, "I realized I had substituted Evan, or my relationship with him, for God. When that relationship wasn't there, then the question ?Is there a God?' suddenly became very, very important again." Renee notes that questioning church teachings and learning to trust her own direct experiences of God were crucial steps in her spiritual development.

Romantic relationships, their giddy beginnings and painful endings, can force us to confront difficult but profound questions: Who am I? What is the purpose of my life? Is there a God who cares about me? Experiencing ourselves in relation to others may give us new insights into the answers to such questions. Dating need not be just a method for finding and selecting a spouse; it can also be a way to learn about ourselves and the art of loving.

Although making a commitment to one other person offers unique opportunities for growth, we may discover that our growth is fostered by some other way of life. Any form of love that extends us, that demands that we grow, that pushes us out of our selfishness can tap us into the source. We do not need a partner to begin the work of loving. Although discerning a call to marriage is the focus of this book, marriage is not the only way people are called to love. Ultimately my concern is not with finding a partner but finding the path that will unleash the great love within us.

© 1998 by Eileen Flanagan

About the Author

I don't know if this book will change anyone else's life, but it certainly changed mine! The process of writing about the spiritual nature of loving helped to open me up to love in my own life. Chapter topics presented themselves as I moved from singleness to dating to commitment. My writing and my life enriched each other along the way. The fact that I now am able to share that story with others through this book is an added blessing.