What is Critical for Marital Happiness?
Post created: Dec 15, 2008
Filed under: Dating and Marriage Tips
Updated: Dec 28, 2008
Filed under: Dating and Marriage Tips
Updated: Dec 28, 2008
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Which of life’s three levels, or components, lay the most significant role in creating marital happiness – the physical, and emotional or the spiritual? Since happiness is an emotional state, we might assume that the emotional plane holds the key.
The truth Is that a healthy emotional relationship in marriage depends on a proper spiritual orientation, i.e., where the couple have learned to overcome their selfishness. This is because happiness in marriage depends on a basic element: each partner’s feeling that the other is devoted to him/her. Such a relationship cannot exist between two self-centered people. It is therefore impossible for them ever to experience full material happiness. The spiritual side of marriage, which teaches us to be concerned with another human being, is therefore what determines it emotional side. Only by learning marriage’s “lesson” of increased selflessness can a couple achieve “happiness,” an emotional state.
The physical relationship in marriage, of course, also plays a vital role in creating marital happiness. Besides enabling the creation of a family and the control of the sex drive, it also fosters an emotional bond between husband and wife. Marital relations awaken feelings of closeness. Indeed, the Sages have clearly indicated that the sex drive was created in man in order to provide marriages partners a means of generating love.
Marital relations, however, can only arouse temporary feelings of closeness. Their capacity to generate permanent closeness depends upon the spiritual orientation (i.e., the degree of selflessness) of the marriage partners. Like a signature on a document which is valuable only in proportion to the force of the document which it endorses, marital relation have a significant effect upon the marriage bonds only in proportion to the emotions backing them up.
When the physical side of marriage is not an expression of emotion, the contrary is true: damages to the marriage results. Lust fulfillment is nothing more than selfishness; consequently, using sexual relations for the sole purpose of physical gratification will undermine the very basis of marital happiness. This sort of “love” is therefore love destined to turn to hatred – and will ultimately destroy any marriage.
Thus, on both the physical and the emotional planes, everything ultimately depends upon utilizing marriage’s spiritual capacity to overcome self-centeredness.
Clearly, the “manufacturer’s instructions” for marriage require that a person commit himself to developing other-centeredness, the true original goal of marriage. This is the key to marital success.
TAKEN FROM THE SEFER "THE RIVER, THE KETTLE AND THE BIRD" by RABBI FELDMAN
What is Critical for Marital Happiness
Which of life’s three levels, or components, lay the most significant role in creating marital happiness – the physical, and emotional or the spiritual? Since happiness is an emotional state, we might assume that the emotional plane holds the key.
The truth Is that a healthy emotional relationship in marriage depends on a proper spiritual orientation, i.e., where the couple have learned to overcome their selfishness. This is because happiness in marriage depends on a basic element: each partner’s feeling that the other is devoted to him/her. Such a relationship cannot exist between two self-centered people. It is therefore impossible for them ever to experience full material happiness. The spiritual side of marriage, which teaches us to be concerned with another human being, is therefore what determines it emotional side. Only by learning marriage’s “lesson” of increased selflessness can a couple achieve “happiness,” an emotional state.
The physical relationship in marriage, of course, also plays a vital role in creating marital happiness. Besides enabling the creation of a family and the control of the sex drive, it also fosters an emotional bond between husband and wife. Marital relations awaken feelings of closeness. Indeed, the Sages have clearly indicated that the sex drive was created in man in order to provide marriages partners a means of generating love.
Marital relations, however, can only arouse temporary feelings of closeness. Their capacity to generate permanent closeness depends upon the spiritual orientation (i.e., the degree of selflessness) of the marriage partners. Like a signature on a document which is valuable only in proportion to the force of the document which it endorses, marital relation have a significant effect upon the marriage bonds only in proportion to the emotions backing them up.
When the physical side of marriage is not an expression of emotion, the contrary is true: damages to the marriage results. Lust fulfillment is nothing more than selfishness; consequently, using sexual relations for the sole purpose of physical gratification will undermine the very basis of marital happiness. This sort of “love” is therefore love destined to turn to hatred – and will ultimately destroy any marriage.
Thus, on both the physical and the emotional planes, everything ultimately depends upon utilizing marriage’s spiritual capacity to overcome self-centeredness.
Clearly, the “manufacturer’s instructions” for marriage require that a person commit himself to developing other-centeredness, the true original goal of marriage. This is the key to marital success.
TAKEN FROM THE SEFER "THE RIVER, THE KETTLE AND THE BIRD" by RABBI FELDMAN
