Chapter 8: Relationships

I think this post is really for my own benefit (to look back on and remember)…but I guess it means something to me, and naturally I’d like to share it with you. I’m sitting in the RV, currently sheltered from the gentle summer rain, and have decided that it’s a good time to hash some thoughts out.

I’ve been reading this book, A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken this summer, and it’s really made me ponder. It’s an autobiography that, so far, has touched a lot on his relationship with his late wife, Davey. The second chapter was hard to follow, but even after I finished, it held me from going on to the third for a week. I just couldn’t stop thinking about their approach to bettering their relationship. Most of the time as I read on I was just amazed at how much of an effort these two put towards unity in their marriage. Some of their methods seem like they are a bit extreme, but maybe that’s just because it isn’t the norm for me. Or the norm for this society. rOverall, I think it’s good food for thought for relationships- married or not.

Here’s some of their approaches, and well, I’m not really sure how to go about sharing them with you other than in list format. All of the italicized below are excerpts from the book*:

“We considered what we supposed to be the standard problems of marriage: and solved a lot.”

• In-laws: the only possible thing was a completely united front, politely and firmly rejecting any sort of interference
• Going home to mother: for us this must be unthinkable; it would be a confession of failure and therefore, the end. Firm agreement. (Hit home with me. Often during the first year of marriage I wanted to call mom up and cry to her. I had to learn to allow my husband to console me.)
• Money: must belong equally to both of us, wherever it came from.
• Decision-making: decide everything of importance by discussion, discussion until agreement is reached. No laying down the law by anybody, ever.
• Children: Too many people everywhere. No children.
• Jealousy: that’s the worst wrecker of all. We agreed that the only sort of marriage we should even be interested in would be one of such love that unfaithfulness would be impossible.
• Trust: need total trust. If that trust were ever violated, then a quick end; for trust could never be restored.
• Possessions: divisive. Over-valued possessions, we decided, were a burden, possessing their owners. We purchased editions, not originals. Cheap binding instead of brand new. We hit our glossy new car with a hammer to make it comfortably dented.
• Sharing: the secret of enduring love. We both love strawberries and ships and collies and poems and all beauty, and all those things bind us together. But now, we must share everything. If one of us likes anything, there must be something to like in it- and the other must find it. Every single thing that either of us likes. That way we shall create a thousand strands, great and small, that will link us together. (I found this approach very…unique. I hope to implement it in my marriage.)
• The Shining Barrier: the shield of our love. A walled garden. A fence around a young tree to keep the deer from nibbling it. Protecting the green tree of our love. But why does love need to be guarded? We looked about and saw the world as having become a hostile and threatening place… A world where love did not endure. The divorce rate was in the news. It must be that, whatever promise, love does not by itself endure. (That last sentence…never thought of it that way, but oh so true! Love is a work in progress, needing to come from both parties.)
• Creeping Separateness: the killer of love. Taking love for granted, especially after marriage. Ceasing to do things together. Finding separate interests. We turning into I. Self. Self-regard: what I want to do.
• Rejecting separate activities: it led to creeping separateness. We would not even allow a career, unless we pursued it together, to become dominating.
• Sharing: We decided each of us must read every book the other had read, in the name of sharing. If one couldn’t go to a play, neither did. Sharing was union. As I read her books and knew her music, she was in me and I in her; and so for her: the co-inherence of lovers.
• Gender points of view: girls brought up to think like women, boys like men. We therefore commenced an immense effort to see and understand the very different points of view. Our closeness was deepened, incredibly deepened, by our doing so.
• Principle of spontaneity: if one of us had an impulse to stop and listen to a bird, to go for a walk in the night, to cut classes, to do anything- we both followed it always.
• Principle of the affirmative: if one of us arrived at a belief, we both accepted it unless it could be disproved.
• Principle of courtesy: whatever one asked the other to do-it was assumed the asker would weigh all consequences-the other would do. We considered it a very great courtesy to ask for the cup of water in the night as well as to fetch it.
• Talking: We were both willing and egar to talk about anything.
• Altering ourselves: we believed that we could do this if we once saw good reason to do so: our minds were in control. The statement, so common these days of mass psychologising, ‘This is the way I am and you’ll just have to accept it’, would have been quite impossible for either of us. (This is something that I think is often taught or surfaced, but I think it takes a lot of guts to put into action. Looking back, and well, even now, I see areas in my life that are ‘right.’ You know, the way I fold laundry. The way I cook and clean. The way I drive. The way I spend/save my money. The way I react to stress. My music. Having Steffen in my life has definitely helped me realize that even thought that’s how I was taught to do something, it’s not necessarily the right way to do it, or the only way. I hope to continue to alter myself for the benefit of our marriage.)
• Separation: a danger. We decided was that when apart, we would slightly idealize each other, and to that extent lose the real person.
• Navigator’s Council: a truth session. Were we fully sharing/ was there any sign of creeping separateness?
• Appeal to Love; what will be best for our love? Which would be the better for our love?
• Never betray a friend: we held our friends and our families very dear and were intensely loyal to them.
• Love: Those who see love as only sex or mainly sex do not, quite simply, know what love is. Sex is merely part of a greater thing. To be in love, as to see beauty, is a kind of adoring that turns the lover away from self.

Whew. Intense, huh? As I said, I don’t necessarily agree with all of their approaches, but I’m still really amazed at how much of an effort they put towards bettering their marriage. Anything stick out to you?

*Vanauken, Sheldon. A Severe Mercy. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980. Print.