Intensity or Peace in a Loving Relationship?

3 minute read

I could have called this article "Intensity or Peace within a Couple", but the word couple does not properly express what I wish to emphasise.

A couple may exist temporarily or for a long time and may be formed according to many criteria, only rarely through a relationship of love.

The couple is usually possessive. This is why the idea of marriage or a long-term relationship can suffocate people who feel a need for freedom.

The couple creates the idea of a family in which one or more children are required and the partners must marry both legally and in church because this is the custom.

Things are no longer exactly as they were. Most relationships and couples now try and test the relationship for a shorter or longer period. The longer the test, the easier the relationship may become to break - or not, depending upon each person's personality.

Why does a long relationship sometimes end more easily?

Because peace appears over time. Love ceases to be possessive. People mature and begin to understand both their need for each other and their freedom - I am referring to mature people.

The jealousy of the beginning disappears. When excessive, that jealousy already leads either to separation or to a relationship filled with arguments, often about nothing.

Only those who have already tried another relationship reach the conclusion that, however far they search, after many years they still arrive at a quiet relationship founded upon love - a free and peaceful love rather than a possessive one - together with respect and understanding, provided they have found the right person.

Even these are not enough when you enter a lifelong relationship or marriage, because family and children inevitably bring other difficulties. Yet such partners are far better prepared than those whose relationships contain nothing but arguments.

All these difficulties disappear when both partners become conscious of love and recognise its source as divine.

When you possess respect and believe in God, the inner life and understanding of the relationship move to another level. The relationship becomes a spiritual path between souls, in which each desires the other's happiness and the ego is removed, provided they share the same wavelength.

Even when love has only begun to germinate and just one partner is conscious of it, in time those around them will perceive the subtle fragrance reflected by the relationship, because it will not be ordinary or transient.

Many are called, but few are chosen.

This kind of relationship is as rare as the edelweiss, perhaps still rarer.

The path of the lived experience of love, while remaining conscious of its divine origin, is neither desired nor conceived by thought. It is something given by God Himself.

To treat such love as ordinary is like treating God as an ordinary thing.

When intensity has faded from a relationship but peace, understanding, respect and balance remain, do not throw that peace away for countless transient forms of madness. In the end, they will bring only suffering, or worse.

Intensity can grow within such a relationship only through complete devotion to the lived experience of love, raised to the spiritual level. This brings lived experiences and happiness inaccessible to other kinds of relationship.

Such a relationship finds fulfilment in every realm, because all Creation bows before love. Even divinity feels that humanity retains a chance in this way, through a spiritual evolution accessible to everyone.

First published in Romanian on 25 May 2010. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Intensitate sau liniște într-o relație de iubire?.