“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man. And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love. Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.”
This means that when a man weds, his woman is a kind of savior in countless ways. Just as a husband is like her personal messiah. This is the where the foundation for spouses to have inexpressible gratitude for one another.
Oneness between a man and a woman is relative. First, they have the deal with the inherited legacy of conflict between men and women. Then there is the inherent contradiction between partner's words and their actual deeds that makes true love itself a great struggle. This is why when masculine and feminine become one, it remains a grand challenge as uniting the mind and body.
The Rewards of Commitment
In a husband and wife relationship, research supports the power of having continual investment. A study found that couples whose relationship was distressed that almost 8 out of 10 reported being content in their marriage after they persevered for five more years.
Those who gave up on their marriage and decided to divorce, they were not any happier the ones who stayed married in their peer group, or those who even remarried.
This information reveals the importance of sticking things through and staying commit meted. If people remained through the ups and downs, this investment will surely yield fruit.
“One advantage of marriage,” notes author Judith Viorst, “is that when you fall out of love with each
other, it keeps you together until maybe you fall in again.”
The heartbreaks and hardships that accompany any long-term relationship can turn into an element of deep bonding.
“I did not even want to deal with all the difficulties in my marriage. It was easier just to put on a game face, have a few drinks and dive deeper into my job,” one man remembers. “But my pastor forced me to say some things to my wife that needed saying, and to face what I was doing wrong too. Now I look back at that time as a period that made us a lot closer.”
The Bible encourages couples to love each other in a proper way - as “joint heirs of the grace of life..in order that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3.7 RSV)
The oneness between spouses is a lightning rod for divine blessing.
At the same time, when a man and woman unite in deep abiding love, the joy that is created and prosperity they share from the blessing will spread to their children, all who know them, the greater human community and the Creator Himself.
Identifying with their gender community
Societies used to have rites of initiation when a boy was transitioning into manhood aor girls into womanhood so that they youth could solidify their gender identity.
In modern society, boys and girls still participate in single-gender team sports, or clubs like the Boys and Girls Scouts, to give challenges and opportunities to win respect among their elders and peers.
The military still serves in this traditional way for young men.
Even after marriage, men and women both continue to receive empowerment and comfort when they are in the company of their same-sex friends.
When they are joking around together, this characterizes the banter of male buddies. They give silent respect and honor one another which in turn renews them.
Likewise, the “girl talk’ between women is a reassuring reinforcement of a sense of connection and support in their lives.
This is why both sexes need to enjoy the company of same-sex company on a regular basis to ‘retreat and regroup’ to strengthen their ability to give to the opposite-sex individuals in their lives.
Unification through Marriage
The ultimate unification of masculine and feminine takes place in marriage and in making a family.
When a husband and wife hold each other, their children will understand and appreciate the opposite sex.
To the woman, her husband and sons represent masculinity in all phases of development.
Similarly, the man embraces all femininity through his love for his wife and daughters. Thus marriage and family life provide the fascinating ongoing adventure of bonding and integration between masculinity and femininity.
Marriage and family life thus makes men and women into a better mirror of the divine.
“In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them,” the Bible reminds us; man and woman together echoes the Creator’s own “wedded” nature (Genesis
1.27).
Hindu scripture speaks of the original Self, the Creator, splitting in two to make man and woman. Thus each is “like half of a split pea” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.3).
Such a couple is a full mirror of the Godhead. Indeed, Reverend Moon characterizes the married couple as the smallest unit of humanity, in the sense of fulfilling the purpose of human creation as God’s complete reflection and love partner.
The love between a man and woman can be uniquely edifying because they are complementary in physique and psyche. They can feel ‘as one’. They can feel knit together in mind, heart and body the same way same-sex friends never can.
When man and woman give into marriage in heart and body, their “humanity is rejoined and fulfilled,” in the words of philosopher Michael Novak.
The result is a certain “distinctive honesty, realism, and wisdom taught by each sex to the other.”19 A man and woman learn through their union things about themselves, humanity and the Creator that can be known no other way.
“Man is born to meet woman and woman is born to meet man,” says Reverend Moon. “And man and woman together are born to combine with a higher level of love, God’s love.
Neither man nor woman can touch God’s higher love by themselves.
In this sense, a man’s wedded woman is a kind of savior in countless ways, just as a woman’s husband is like her personal messiah. This is the basis of the inexpressible gratitude spouses often feel towards each other.
Potential for oneness
Because men and women are indeed made for each other, given sufficient time and effort, the unity of heart between a man and woman is to be expected. The magnetism between masculinity and femininity can overcome differences. Since their Origin is an integrated whole, they too can integrate into wholeness.
Even though such an idea is hard to reconcile with popular notions of romance, it is the ordinary experience of the millions of couples over countless generations who were strangers when married and who grew to deeply love each other.
This is captured in the memorable lyrics of the song from “Fiddler on the Roof,” when Tevye reminisces about his arranged marriage to Golde, his wife, and says to her,
But my father and my mother said we’d learn to love each other
And now I’m asking, Golde, ‘Do you love me?’
After protesting that for “Twenty-five years my bed is his; If that’s not love, what is?,” she concedes that indeed she does.
And so between two people who may not have been attracted to each other at first.
Recalls Ann Meara, half of the long-married comedy team, Stiller and Meara, “Was it love at first sight? It wasn’t then—but it sure is now.”23 This may not be the self-conscious and passionate ardor of young lovers, but it is a deeply rooted, comfortable kind of caring and unity not unlike the attachment a person has to his or her own arm.
Continual Devotion
For this reason, a sixth principle for true love is Investing towards Oneness.
Ultimately the Creator represents the highest and original purpose. Those who center their relationship upon God invite Him to manifest Himself and His beauty, truth and goodness in the partnership and its fruits.
Examples are endless, since this is the dynamic behind all productive
relationships, even in the inanimate world.
Protons and electrons have opposite charges that attract each other. They interact
as subject and object partners, driven by atomic law that contains a higher purpose, and create a new existence, a hydrogen atom.
A professor as the subject partner engages in give and take with her students as object partners, based on the curriculum as their shared purpose, resulting in an enriching learning experience for all.
A band comes together to express their common vision of music, and the members interact with one another in lead and backup roles.
Their degree of unity is directly reflected in their music. A coffee shop manager in the leader position hires counter help in the supportive role.
The manager treats the workers well and the counter servers are diligent and loyal, resulting in a productive business that realizes the shared goal of profits and service to the community.
A pastor prays with his youth ministry staff as his helpers and together they craft a marriage preparation ministry that leads many young people through purity into matrimony and a deeper commitment to God.
Implicit in this observation is that whenever any relationship is unfruitful—or destructive, as is possible in the case of human relations—certainly there is a problem with the nature of the urpose or the interaction or both.
“My high school football team was undefeated in our state,” one young man recalls. “But sorry to say, the victories went to our heads.
We lost our focus on doing our best and got complacent.
At the same time, a lot of us starting worrying about showing off for the college scouts and we forgot about the team.
When we got to the regionals, we blew every game.”
In other words, the team lost its vertical purpose and the horizontal interactions also deteriorated.
Return for Tomorrow's Post:
This post was rewritten and derived from the religious textbook “Educating for True Love” written by a team of writers to explain the philosophy of Reverend Sun Myung Moon.
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