"True, big, undeniable love exists"
"...authentic love and happily-ever-after are not constructs of some myth-making machinery, as some authors would have us think. They are out there."
When you feel it, it is confirmation that the world has order beyond the ways we try to impose it... it is best, and perhaps truer, when it feels like it was arranged by the stars. How you met becomes part of your narrative, a description of how the universe conspired to bring you together. Best of all, when love happens, it messes with your molecules and doesn't feel like a choice. It just is"
Here is the whole article. I sent it to some of my friends that day...and of course - it came back to haunt me today... and was sent back... to remind me...
Big love does exist
SARAH HAMPSON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
June 26, 2008 at 3:19 AM EDT
I once explained to my divorce lawyer that I figured every marriage lives with the shadow of divorce. However happy you think you are, you know that dissolution is there as a possibility, an option, if either of you wants it.
My lawyer looked at me with an expression I had come to know - a grin of gentle bemusement that preceded some expensive bit of advice.
"No," he pronounced. "You are wrong."
That a highly successful divorce lawyer wants me to know that marriage can be bliss is a bit rich, I know. Then again, maybe his clarity is great cause for hope. If anyone should be disillusioned, he should be. He has even been divorced himself - twice, in fact. He knows what it is like to be unhappy. But now, well into his third marriage, he is boyishly delighted with his wife. When you are in a good marriage, he says, the thought of divorce never occurs to you. "Happy marriage is possible to find," he told me.
He spoke like a doctor reassuring a patient that the back pain will pass.
And so, as it is the "I do" season, let us remember that while almost 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, the other 50 per cent do not.
Go ahead, fuss over your garter belt and your shoes and whether the groom should wear a tiny rose on the lapel of his tuxedo, and what monstrosity you should require your bridesmaids to wear. Be a princess. Read all the bridal magazines and attend the consumer shows and try on all the wedding dresses you can. And tune out those who say that a woman who wants an elaborate wedding really just wants to be the centre of attention.
It is not about wanting attention. It's about preparing to make the chambers of your heart - such a private, intimate place that is usually guarded - public. Which takes courage and strength of character. And who wouldn't want to look good for that?
"I think of [marriage] as jumping into the deep end," a male reader said. "It is a moment you are proud of," he continued. His wife of 31 years had recently died, and he initially wrote to me to point out that I was ignoring the fact that for many people, marriage is everything they hoped for and, not only that, easy.
"I am sure that there are many people who, like me, found marriage to be wonderful and no trouble at all," the father of two grown children wrote. "In fact, I can honestly say that I never, ever, thought it was hard work - quite the contrary - it gave me (us) strength, comfort and joy."
Later, in conversation, he elaborated on how the love he experienced in his marriage was effortless. They were young when they met and from different backgrounds. But the desire and the love that followed were overwhelming, he said. In describing the nature of their relationship, he shrugged slightly and said simply, "I wanted to do things for her, and she wanted to do things for me."
Months ago, a reader named Bill who lives in Nova Scotia sent me a long, handwritten letter in which he described what he called "a mixture of life and love." He had been married three times. "In my first marriage we had seven children, four of whom were still home when Mary Ann died from a massive stroke at the age of 48, and four days before our 25th wedding anniversary," he wrote. "I had never before nor since felt such demanding feelings, pleasures, desires for warmth and closeness of a loving spouse." His second marriage ended in divorce, but his third was happy as well, although after 16 years of marriage his third wife died of cancer.
At 83, with his humour and kindness intact, Bill had sat down at a table to write to a stranger about the women in his life. Some encounters had been disastrous, and as he aged he experienced erectile dysfunction. Still, near the end of his life, he wanted to tell someone that there had been two "true loves."
That is a good thing for us all to remember. True, big, undeniable love exists. My friend, Pier Giorgio di Cicco, Toronto's poet laureate, is a priest who often officiates at marriages. "I know it when I see it in people's eyes," he told me once, when we were on the subject of true love. "I understand the human heart," he said under his fedora and behind the smoke of his cigarette. He admits that he also witnesses its absence. But the point is that authentic love and happily-ever-after are not constructs of some myth-making machinery, as some authors would have us think. They are out there.
Arguably, we are better at discerning true love than ever before, if only because we can openly discuss (and write books and columns about) emotional bonds that are unhealthy.
"I needed to step away from the addictive aspect of it - love addiction and, frankly, co-dependence, and all the muck and mire of the version of commitment that I was entertaining," said singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette about her breakup with Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds in a recent interview with this paper. "The kind of marriage that I aspire to is not what I was doing."
Talk about "kinds" of marriage is progressive. You don't just do it any more because it is expected of you. That's what many did in the previous generation. And I don't think the women then discussed the "kind" of marriage they had, except that for many, the long-term relationship they could describe consisted of gin-and-tonics at 6, children in Peter Pan collars, and brittle dinner conversations. It is our generation that has picked apart the strands of attachment in an effort to understand, and even pinpoint, what is the stuff of good marriage.
Get thee up the aisle then, if you have searched your heart and found it shouting "yes". Believe in the random beauty of love. It comes when you least expect it. As everyone who has experienced it will tell you, you cannot look for it. Some people cannot bring themselves to go online to search for the man or woman they will love. A plan for love is too calculated, too much like a business decision or a search for the right investment property.
When you feel it, it is confirmation that the world has order beyond the ways we try to impose it. Sure, love can be arranged by your parents and your friends and your church and questionnaire-requiring dating sites that promise to match you with your soulmate. But it is best, and perhaps truer, when it feels like it was arranged by the stars. How you met becomes part of your narrative, a description of how the universe conspired to bring you together. Best of all, when love happens, it messes with your molecules and doesn't feel like a choice. It just is
"...authentic love and happily-ever-after are not constructs of some myth-making machinery, as some authors would have us think. They are out there."
When you feel it, it is confirmation that the world has order beyond the ways we try to impose it... it is best, and perhaps truer, when it feels like it was arranged by the stars. How you met becomes part of your narrative, a description of how the universe conspired to bring you together. Best of all, when love happens, it messes with your molecules and doesn't feel like a choice. It just is"
Here is the whole article. I sent it to some of my friends that day...and of course - it came back to haunt me today... and was sent back... to remind me...
Big love does exist
SARAH HAMPSON
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
June 26, 2008 at 3:19 AM EDT
I once explained to my divorce lawyer that I figured every marriage lives with the shadow of divorce. However happy you think you are, you know that dissolution is there as a possibility, an option, if either of you wants it.
My lawyer looked at me with an expression I had come to know - a grin of gentle bemusement that preceded some expensive bit of advice.
"No," he pronounced. "You are wrong."
That a highly successful divorce lawyer wants me to know that marriage can be bliss is a bit rich, I know. Then again, maybe his clarity is great cause for hope. If anyone should be disillusioned, he should be. He has even been divorced himself - twice, in fact. He knows what it is like to be unhappy. But now, well into his third marriage, he is boyishly delighted with his wife. When you are in a good marriage, he says, the thought of divorce never occurs to you. "Happy marriage is possible to find," he told me.
He spoke like a doctor reassuring a patient that the back pain will pass.
And so, as it is the "I do" season, let us remember that while almost 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce, the other 50 per cent do not.
Go ahead, fuss over your garter belt and your shoes and whether the groom should wear a tiny rose on the lapel of his tuxedo, and what monstrosity you should require your bridesmaids to wear. Be a princess. Read all the bridal magazines and attend the consumer shows and try on all the wedding dresses you can. And tune out those who say that a woman who wants an elaborate wedding really just wants to be the centre of attention.
It is not about wanting attention. It's about preparing to make the chambers of your heart - such a private, intimate place that is usually guarded - public. Which takes courage and strength of character. And who wouldn't want to look good for that?
"I think of [marriage] as jumping into the deep end," a male reader said. "It is a moment you are proud of," he continued. His wife of 31 years had recently died, and he initially wrote to me to point out that I was ignoring the fact that for many people, marriage is everything they hoped for and, not only that, easy.
"I am sure that there are many people who, like me, found marriage to be wonderful and no trouble at all," the father of two grown children wrote. "In fact, I can honestly say that I never, ever, thought it was hard work - quite the contrary - it gave me (us) strength, comfort and joy."
Later, in conversation, he elaborated on how the love he experienced in his marriage was effortless. They were young when they met and from different backgrounds. But the desire and the love that followed were overwhelming, he said. In describing the nature of their relationship, he shrugged slightly and said simply, "I wanted to do things for her, and she wanted to do things for me."
Months ago, a reader named Bill who lives in Nova Scotia sent me a long, handwritten letter in which he described what he called "a mixture of life and love." He had been married three times. "In my first marriage we had seven children, four of whom were still home when Mary Ann died from a massive stroke at the age of 48, and four days before our 25th wedding anniversary," he wrote. "I had never before nor since felt such demanding feelings, pleasures, desires for warmth and closeness of a loving spouse." His second marriage ended in divorce, but his third was happy as well, although after 16 years of marriage his third wife died of cancer.
At 83, with his humour and kindness intact, Bill had sat down at a table to write to a stranger about the women in his life. Some encounters had been disastrous, and as he aged he experienced erectile dysfunction. Still, near the end of his life, he wanted to tell someone that there had been two "true loves."
That is a good thing for us all to remember. True, big, undeniable love exists. My friend, Pier Giorgio di Cicco, Toronto's poet laureate, is a priest who often officiates at marriages. "I know it when I see it in people's eyes," he told me once, when we were on the subject of true love. "I understand the human heart," he said under his fedora and behind the smoke of his cigarette. He admits that he also witnesses its absence. But the point is that authentic love and happily-ever-after are not constructs of some myth-making machinery, as some authors would have us think. They are out there.
Arguably, we are better at discerning true love than ever before, if only because we can openly discuss (and write books and columns about) emotional bonds that are unhealthy.
"I needed to step away from the addictive aspect of it - love addiction and, frankly, co-dependence, and all the muck and mire of the version of commitment that I was entertaining," said singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette about her breakup with Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds in a recent interview with this paper. "The kind of marriage that I aspire to is not what I was doing."
Talk about "kinds" of marriage is progressive. You don't just do it any more because it is expected of you. That's what many did in the previous generation. And I don't think the women then discussed the "kind" of marriage they had, except that for many, the long-term relationship they could describe consisted of gin-and-tonics at 6, children in Peter Pan collars, and brittle dinner conversations. It is our generation that has picked apart the strands of attachment in an effort to understand, and even pinpoint, what is the stuff of good marriage.
Get thee up the aisle then, if you have searched your heart and found it shouting "yes". Believe in the random beauty of love. It comes when you least expect it. As everyone who has experienced it will tell you, you cannot look for it. Some people cannot bring themselves to go online to search for the man or woman they will love. A plan for love is too calculated, too much like a business decision or a search for the right investment property.
When you feel it, it is confirmation that the world has order beyond the ways we try to impose it. Sure, love can be arranged by your parents and your friends and your church and questionnaire-requiring dating sites that promise to match you with your soulmate. But it is best, and perhaps truer, when it feels like it was arranged by the stars. How you met becomes part of your narrative, a description of how the universe conspired to bring you together. Best of all, when love happens, it messes with your molecules and doesn't feel like a choice. It just is