Transcript:Hossain Danesh/Healthy Communication in Marriage
| Transcript of: Healthy Communication in Marriage by |
 Proofread onceDownload: mp3, Source: bahaimp3.narod.ru
|
[0:05] In order to understand the process of a healthy communication in the marriage, I feel we should first briefly discuss what is healthy, what is marriage, and what is it that we are trying to communicate. Now, the whole idea of a healthy type of a communication, or a healthy type of a marriage, is something that usually is overlooked in our manner and way of thinking. In our society, we are inclined to think of normality rather than of health. We try to be normal rather than healthy. There are many reason for this, and I would not be able to go into those causes, but what is different, the difference between normalcy and health. When we are talking about normalcy, we are talking about what is the norm in a given community or in a given society. For example, if you are a patient in the hospital, it is normal to be sick. It is abnormal to be healthy and be hospitalized in a hospital. Or if someone is an inmate in a prison, it is normal for that person to have done something wrong and criminal that they have put him in the prison. It would be abnormal if he was innocent and was put in the prison.
[2:40] So you see, normalcy doesn't connote health, doesn't connote that you have done something that is in keeping with the totality and completeness of your being. While health is exactly that process which indicates the individual or the institution that you are talking about functioning at his optimum level. So when we are talking about a normal marriage in North American society, then we can say that a normal marriage is a marriage in which there is a lot of fighting, a lot of argument, a lot of disagreement, considerable amount of displeasure and discord. Because many marriages in North America, partners in the marriage become involved in extramarital affairs, therefore it is normal in the North American society to have extramarital affairs, and so on. These are the characteristics of a marriage which is a norm in our society. But if we talk about health, we are talking about a totally different type of marriage. So today, we are going to talk about health in that context, not in the context of normalcy as usually it is used in our society.
[4:34] Now, what is marriage? Can we give a definition of marriage? Because of the time limitations, I would not review for you the kind of definition that are usually given in different books and circles, rather would try to define marriage as I understand it, and this understanding has come as a result of my studies on the one hand of the writings of the Baháʼí faith, and on the other hand of what is available in the literature of this field. It seems to me that marriage is a union and is an organic social entity. Union refers to the process of coming together, of the man and woman, in the institution of marriage in such manner that would create a union, a togetherness. The whole idea of union is a very interesting concept. Union is the cause of life and is the cause of growth. For example, when the sperm and ovum come together and they create a new entity, a union has taken place. The result of that union is more than the sum total of the sperm and ovum. The sperm by itself could live only for a few hours. And the ovum by itself can live only for a few hours. Their characteristics are such that it can grow only to a very, very limited level. The outcome is death, after few hours. Now when the sperm and ovum come together as a result of their union, a third entity comes into existence, the fertilized egg. Now this fertilized egg then grows, matures, becomes an infant, becomes the child, becomes a beautiful, complete human being. It discovers realities. It becomes a creative being. It becomes all of the people that are here. A far, far removed stage from what the sperm was or the ovum was. The reason that we exist, and the reason that all that is here exists because of that union that has taken place.
[8:20] Likewise, when the husband and wife, the man and woman come together in the union of marriage, a third entity comes to existence, a third entity which is more than the sum total of the husband and the wife. So if we were going to show it in a schematic way: we have an individual, a woman, and another person, man. And they are friends, they can be relatives, they can be friends, they can admire each other, they can be attracted to each other. They can spend many hours together, but they are two different individuals. And they can have fun, they can have all kinds of things, but they are two different individuals separate from one another. Marriage would bring these two together in something like this. [Drawing something]. This is the wife, this is the husband, and this is the marriage. Marriage is a third entity. Therefore, in the context of the marriage, you have three growing entities. One is the entity of the wife. The other one is the entity of the husband. And the third one is the entity of the marriage.
[10:29] Because the world of creation is hierarchical in its nature, and is developmental in its nature, therefore growth takes place at all times, and it takes place at a higher level of sophistication as we observe the creation. For example, at the level of the union of the sperm and ovum, once they come together the sperm and the ovum lose their own individual identities. No longer they exist, but at the level of human beings, because we are more sophisticated, more complex, we are at the higher level of existence, then at this level what happens is that although a third entity comes into existence, namely the entity of the marriage, the husband and wife would not lose their own identity as distinct individuals. And that's where the challenge of marriage lies. Because then marriage becomes a milieu, a situation in which three living beings, two biological spiritual beings and the other one a psychosocial and spiritual entity marriage, they begin to grow and mature. Okay? Now because that's the process and because when people get married is the beginning of development of this new entity, like any other newborn entity, the newly born marriage needs a lot of affection, needs a lot of care, needs a lot of concern on the part of this person, this person, and the community as a whole. And if that kind of attention and care is missing, then this newly born, fragile entity of marriage is going to be under some measure of danger and difficulty to mature.
[13:14] Now, let's see whether we can understand this process of development in a more methodical manner. For those of you who were here Sunday, Bill Hatcher made a statement which is applicable here to a very large extent. He said that any organic being goes through its evolution through three stages. The first stage is the stage of primary integration or primary union. [Writing] The stage of primary integration or union. This is when the husband and wife have just got married. They are completely integrated with one another, completely preoccupied with each other. Their hopes and their desires and their aspirations are totally mixed. Their views are full of hope and full of confusion. They have plans which are fantastic in their outline, but at the same time, not very realistic and well-thought-out. They dream of the castles, of the successes, and of the camels that we were talking yesterday. Okay? All these all exist in that phase of the primary integration, because it is the phase in which the ideals, the thoughts, the feelings, the actions are not yet fully clarified, fully well-thought-out, fully developed. At this stage, if we were going to show the schema, the husband and wife would be something like that.
[15:48] The pre-occupation with the marriage would take, in many marriages, most of the attention of the newlywed. They are very concerned about what kind of food the other person likes, what kind of hats she would like, whether this kind of a perfume should be put on or that kind of a perfume. They both are very careful to cover up everything that is not likable, that is not acceptable to the other person. They are constantly making sure that in this relationship, they in essence walk on eggs because they are not very sure of what is going to come in this relationship. This is the phase also that can manifest itself instead of this way in many recent marriages in recent decades and years, is that the husband and wife getting into the marriage with as little commitment as possible. They go into it like that. The man is preoccupied with himself; the woman is preoccupied with herself, and they pay little attention to their marriage. They share the bed. They say marriage is an economic and social convenience, and that's basically the way they define their marriage. That's the basically they get together and that's the amount of time that they would give to their marriage.
[17:41] [Several references to something drawn or written down in this section] Another possibility at this primary phase is that, and this you would find in many traditional marriages, that here is the big guy, husband, and this is the woman. Okay? This is the part of the woman, the wife, and this is the marriage. In other words, the woman becomes totally absorbed in this marriage and in this man's life. She has very little, if any, life of her own. And this section that it is here is the time that she goes to the fortune-tellers and the palm readers and a psychiatrist to complain about the rest. And this process of course would not allow either of the two mature or grow because the man becomes bloated, and being bloated is not growth, and the woman wouldn't have the chance to grow because it's caught into this limited space and so forth. Likewise here the growth would not be satisfactory for either of the two. And here likewise the marriage would be in jeopardy because of the difficulties. Still, one can think of another kind of marriage can take place at this level, which is related to the type of personalities that we have. That two individuals can marry with each other with totally opposing, differing kinds of personalities. So you have a square man and you have [Drawing] something like that, you have a marriage that is very edgy, okay? So to speak. And then people suddenly discover that there are a lot of difficulties in the context of their relationship.
[20:00] Nevertheless, for people who have the feeling and the knowledge and the realization that marriage is essential not only for their own individual growth but also as an undertaking that has much greater consequences than the economic and social conveniences, people try to go through this stage of primary integration and eventually try to reach to the second stage. Now, we would talk a little bit later about what is the essential ingredient to move from one stage to another stage, but all marriages go through this stage and if the couple do not try to move from this stage to the next, then they are going to repeat their faults in this marriage. They are going to repeat their difficulties. It becomes a circular type of a relationship. They go around the circles, over and over and over, make the same mistakes or their lives become rigid. There is no creativity in it. There is no movement in it. There is no challenge in it. There is no life in it. Or it is chaotic and it just continues that process.
[21:42] However, if the couple are aware of the process of growth of their marriage, then they move from the primary integration to the second phase, which is the phase of individuation or separation. This is the phase of individuation or separation. Now this is a frightening phase on the one hand, an exciting phase on the other hand. Let's go back to the analogy of the fertilized egg. At the beginning the fertilized egg simply starts dividing and multiplying, becomes so many cells that are basically the same. But there comes a crucial time in the life of the growth of this fetus that the cells have to specialize. And some cells are going to establish the nervous system. Other cells are going to establish the digestive systems. Others are going to become eyes. Others are going to become legs, and so forth. They differentiate from one another. And through this differentiation then they allow a much more complex, much more sophisticated, much more complete being come into existence. Now this process of individuation is essential if that mass of the cells is to change into a human being. Likewise, this process of individuation and separation is essential if this [?aformace], lovey-dovey, beginning of a marriage which is full of confusion and hope, fear and certitude, anger and love, and so forth, if that mass is going to eventually take shape into a much more complete and sophisticated organism, social organism. Therefore, the phase of individuation starts.
[24:14] The husband becomes preoccupied with his own development. He becomes involved more and more with his work outside. He becomes involved with many, many things that are primarily involved with his own education, with his social progress, and so forth. Likewise, the woman at this stage, in a healthy marriage, goes the same process, becomes involved with her own development, with her own growth, with establishing her own identity. And as they do that or if one does and the other one doesn't do, what happens is that while one is growing, if the other one doesn't grow, then discrepancy takes place. The time that they spend in the marriage gets less and less. Or even if they both grow, the same process takes place. And at this stage, the couple think and feels that they are growing apart. They are afraid that the relationship is deteriorating. They are afraid that initial love that they had, that they had fallen into is totally gone. And here is where the anxieties comes in. Here is when the couple they says, "The other person doesn't love me. What happened to our initial love? What happened to our candles? What happened to our roses? What happened to the poetry that we had, where it has gone?" And many couples at this stage decide that their marriage is dead, and there is no love in it, and they grow apart. Here is where really the teachings of, for example the Baháʼí faith, of marriage being an eternal union becomes so important because by that concept that this is an eternal union, by concept that we allow our marriage to grow not according to our own wills but according to the will of God, by that process we do not allow ourselves to get overwhelmed with this process of individuation that is taking place. Rather, we would help one another to move out of this stage to the next stage that has to come. Many of the contemporary marriages break down here, many of them.
[27:13] Now the third stage is the stage of secondary integration. [Writing] Stage of secondary integration follows this stage. In this stage, gradually, the husband and the wife have been able to establish their own identity, their own being, who they are, and what they are. They are beginning to feel more comfortable about themselves and each other. And consequently they are not afraid of again getting intimate and close with one another and establish a relationship that is profoundly meaningful to them. At this stage then while both have grown, then they also give much more to their marriage. Consequently you have a mature, a much more mature wife and a much mature husband, and much more strong and grown marriage at work. It is at this stage that this kind of a marriage becomes capable of giving life, of growing children that are totally healthy and alive, and full of life themselves. Now, this process need not to take a very long time, or would take a very long time depending on how the individuals relate to one another and how aware they are about these processes.
[29:15] Therefore I like to talk briefly about the essential ingredients of the relationship, of the communication in marriage, in order to allow it to move from the primary integration phase to the secondary integration phase. There are two fundamental ingredients needed here. One is love, and the other one I let you wonder about for a moment. Now, I cannot go into very long details of definition of the love and I would go very fast over them. First of all love, like any other human quality, is developmental in its nature. In other words two individuals can have a love that manifests itself at a very primitive childlike level, or as a very mature type of a relationship. Basically we can identify four stages in development and growth of love. The stage one is one-directional love. This kind of love is self-centered. This is the stage that lovers in the marriage think that by giving love he or she is establishing himself as really important big person. And if he or she receives loves, it means that he's weak and he's not the macho that he should be and all of those kinds of things. Or the other person feels that only he can receive love, and therefore as long as you take care of that person and cook for him and all of these, he's fully happy. One day he comes home and his socks are not matched, he just really blows up and goes all over. What happens in this place is that we are talking about the individuals who either can give love or receive love. But in either case, either giving or receiving, it is for the purpose of establishing their own identity. That the person who receives love, he says, "I am important because I'm receiving love." And the person who gives love says, "I am important because I am giving love." It has nothing to do with either individual. You can give him a dog and they would do the same thing. It doesn't matter who is involved because they are primarily preoccupied with themselves. This is the stage that also the child is in. The child shows his love to his parents by receiving love. At that level it is healthy. At the level of marriage it should move very soon and very fast to the next stage.
[33:12] And the next stage of love is the competitive love. This is the place that lovers compete with one another, who loves who most? And who loves who the least? And they show it to each other in many ways. They show to each other in giving gifts. They eventually go bankrupt because one gives one gift and the other one gives two, and three, and four, and suddenly they find themselves going in that. Or they don't give each other. You know, the husband receives one gift and says, "Well, what is this? This doesn't mean that she loves me much." So on her birthday, he wouldn't give her anything, just give her a card. And then she forgets his birthday and it just goes downhill like that. But what is happening here is that the couples are involved in the second stage of love which is the competitive love. This is the all-or-nothing type of love. This is a stage that lovers love each other to death. This is the Romeo and Juliet type of love because they are trying to compete about who loves who the most.
[34:35] Then, we move from the stage to the third stage of love. Now before we go that, one point has to be made here: that the human societies and adolescent society, and therefore, the love stories of the adolescent society are going to be in accordance to the level of growth. That's the reason that most of the love stories of society, if you think about them, most love stories either describe this kind of love or this type of love. The Romeo Juliet is a prototype of an adolescent type of love. The lovers literally love each other to death. At this level, the Shirin and Farhad of the Persian literature is a prototype of it. Shirin is this princess sitting there, beautiful. And one day this young man walking by, and he's a stonecutter, looks at the beauty of Shirin and falls in love, literally. And he goes to the king and says, "Can I marry the Princess, Shirin?" He says, "Sure, you go and move that mountain from there to there and she's yours." So poor Farhad goes and starts taking and cutting one rock and moving it from there to there, and two, and three and hot summers and cold winters. In the meantime, Shirin gets married, has her life, has cool drinks, and the whole thing. And as far as we know, still, Farhad is trying to move the mountain. Okay? It's a one-directional love.
[36:27] The third stage of love is what I call the cooperative type of love. This is a sharing type of love. This is a give-and-take type of love. This is the highest level of love that a marriage reaches because marriage involves two individuals. And therefore they have to be involved in this type of love relationship. This is the level that humanity is approaching now to be capable of loving. This is the level in which Bahá’u’lláh says, "Love Me, so I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, in no wise My love can reach thee." This is the level that for the first time God is calling upon man at a very higher level and says, "Look, take the responsibility." Up to this point I said "I love you, you're a good boy." But now, take the responsibility of act of love coming from yourselves, from your side, as well as from mine. This is the greatest honor that has been bestowed upon mankind. And with that honor bestowed upon mankind, marriages have to move out of the other kinds of love that so far has existed to this kind of love. In the world today, majority of the marriages either have one-directional love or they have competitive type of love. Now, gradually we have to move to this next stage. And of course the final stage of this love, the individual being able to give love is the unconditional love. As I said, the unconditional love, of course, doesn't belong to the relationship.
[38:28] I don't think I have much more time. I'm sorry, we started late. We started twenty after, and I intend to go twenty after. Okay? Well I want to finish my theme even if we have no time for questions, that's fine with me. I really like to do that because it wouldn't be right to stop here.
[38:55] So, unconditional love therefore would be a love that manifests itself, for example, the way that the sun loves and gives its rays. The sun shines upon all and it doesn't say, "Well, that one is a thorn. I would not shine on it. And this one is a rose and I would shine on it." It wouldn't do that. It would shine over all. That kind of relationship, that kind of love relationship, is something that we have to aspire at all levels. But in the context of marriage it is the cooperative type of love that is essential. In the context of human relationships, that's necessary. Okay, having said very briefly about different stages of love, we have to see how love manifests itself in the marriage. Of course in marriage it goes through all of those stages, but even something more is important here. And what is important here is that we have to see how people fall in love. What happens? What are the components of a love relationship? The components of a love relationship are: first of all, mutual attraction. Two individuals see each other. One of them says, "I like the shape of her nose." The other one says, "I like the color of her knees." And that's it. They fall in love, okay? He is handsome, she is cute. He has a twitch when he talks, isn't that marvelous? And suddenly they are in love. They don't know what to do, they just think of the other person all the time. They are totally preoccupied with the other person, with the thought of the other person. It is the time of attraction. Many people say, "Let's get married now. We are so attracted to each other, we get married. This is true love." And as soon as they call that "true love" and get married, they suddenly find that my God, yes, it is true that her nose was very nice or his knee was really handsome, but there are all kinds of other things about that person that you didn't know beforehand. And they all start coming to the forefront now that you have to share a bed with them, and this and that, and you realize that the attraction start dwindling and going down. Because you find so many unattractive qualities that you haven't been aware of till this moment.
[42:02] The second ingredient of a love relationship, what people call "love", and it is actually ingredient of love, is mutual-need gratification. People have needs. We all have needs. We have a need of somebody telling us we are marvelous. We need somebody telling us that they need us. We need somebody to be with us so that we wouldn't be lonely, that at the time of fear, somebody would help us. At the time of illness, somebody would assist us, that we would be able to prove ourselves by assisting somebody. We all have needs. We have many other needs and therefore two individuals come to each other, they find that they are mutually attracted and they can satisfy each other's needs. And when they reach to that level, they say, "Lo and behold, we are absolutely in love. There is no doubt about it. This is truly a love." And therefore, they get married. The problem with this is that these two are mutually attracted and mutually gratifying each other's needs, but this is not the whole story of love relationship. This process usually is predominant in the primary phase, but as soon as the secondary phase, the phase of individuation arrives, suddenly, these two individuals have to focus on the third dimension of love, which is mutual growth. And this is where they fall apart. They cannot suddenly focus on the mutual growth, because growth is painful. Any kind of growth is painful. And therefore what they do instead of focusing on their own mutual growth they start remembering the need this time and how marvelous it was. They leave the marriage and they start relationship with somebody else. They fall in love again. And then again they have a mutual attraction and mutual-need gratification and they are in absolutely good shape, it is marvelous. This is what is called now, in professional circles, as the serial monogamy that is so common in our society. What is a serial monogamy? You go through these two stages, reach here, leave it, go back to those two stages. And you just go on and on and on until nobody would look at you, and then you wonder what happened.
[45:00] Okay. For mutual growth to take place, a number of dimensions are involved, I wouldn't go into that, that we eventually, for a marriage to take shape, you need not only these three but you need forces that would help the growth to take place, and one of those forces is mutual purpose. If you think for a moment, you would see that all marriages work very well when the husband and wife have a purpose shared together. They say, "Let's buy a car." So they work like dogs, day and night, and they eat very little, and they didn't go out, and they tired and exhausted, and all of those things, but they are happy because they are going to buy a car. So then they buy their cars and they say, "Now, let's build a house." And they spend ten years of their lives doing that. They build their house, they have their car. They move into their new place and start fighting with one another. And soon enough, they get separated or divorced. We see so many people that come, after they have finished their houses and they have raised their children, and they have nothing now, no mutual purpose, and therefore they have fallen apart and they don't know what to do. Because when people have objectives together and do things together, they communicate all right, they relate to each other all right, they are understanding toward one another. But that's not enough.
[46:59] Now what we should do so that this mutual purpose wouldn't focus only on material, inconsequential, limited aspects of life? And here is when the mutual point of adoration would come in. Mutual point of adoration simply means this: that human beings are by nature, lovers. We are created as lovers. We constantly strive to achieve an object of desire. We constantly want something. There is no one time that we sit there and say, "Okay now I am fully satisfied." This never occurs in human beings because the human soul strives on an ongoing basis. This ontological quest, this ongoing striving, this ongoing quest, is the love that the human being has. The site of that love is the human heart, so to speak. Now, the human heart can focus on a piece of gold and say, "This is the object of my adoration, I'm going to spend my life to get bigger and bigger pieces of gold." Or, the human heart can be focused on power and say, "Okay, I am going to have greater and greater power and completely give my life to it." Or it can be to discovery of knowledge and the person would spend all his life in a laboratory doing that. So what has happened is that the human heart, if it is turned to gold, would get gold. And is turned to power, would get power. If it turned to destruction, would get destruction. If it's turned to one individual, what it would does, it would get that individual. That's the way that the human heart is. And that's the reason that it can go wayward. It can go in the wrong direction. The same way that the human mind can go to wrong direction, the human heart can go in the wrong direction. Now in the context of marriage, even that becomes far more important because the only way, we have to see what is the only way that two individuals really can love each other.
[49:46] This process can be shown this way: [Writing.] namely that okay, this is the husband. This is the wife. And this is the distance between them. They try to decrease this distance between them through the forces of attraction. For example, they admire one another. They like each other. They think that there are qualities in the other person that they really appreciate and all of those things. Okay? And these forces of attraction are constantly there. And if only the forces of attraction were there, they would get closer and closer and closer to each other until they meet here. But the problem is that while these forces of attraction are at work, there are always the opposite forces at work as well. [Writing.] These are the forces of repulsion, the forces that puts them apart from each other. There could be physical habits. It could be their way of thinking. It could be the way that they get angry, the way that they break the windows. God knows what, but there are many ways that the husband and wife are repulsed by one another as well as they are attracted to each other. And this is an ongoing process. Now if the forces of attraction are greater than the forces of repulsion, they stay together. If the forces of repulsion are greater than the forces of attraction, they grow apart. If the forces of attraction of one is greater than the forces of attraction of the other, that marriage is lopsided. One wants to stay married, the other one doesn't. And these are the variations that can take place.
[52:03] Now, is there any way that these two individuals really can get close to each other? David Smith has an outline of, he calls it divine geometry, and I understand it is the wrong name, but I'm no scientist so I cannot say but I just repeated it for you. There is one way that a husband and wife can get together: [Writing.] this way. If the husband instead of trying to get close to this person, goes that direction, the mutual point of adoration. And if the wife goes toward that direction, as they go up, the distance gets less. They reach here, they are really close. Get here, you are burning. Okay? This is the mutual point of adoration. A marriage necessarily has to have a mutual point of adoration, if that closeness is to take place. The mutual point of adoration for Baháʼís is God. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says the only way that people truly can love each other is through a love of God. That they can love each other through a love of God. And that's the only way that they can do it. And if the individuals therefore each try to reach God, as they try to spiritualize their lives and they do it mutually with their own agreement, they knowing what they are doing, then automatically the relationship is closer also. Now, one point about getting close to God, I just mentioned this, is that it is said Imam Ali, who is the second most important figure in Islam, an extremely, extremely wise personage, he had a statement that says that the ways to God are as numerous as the number of the people of the world. The Báb changed the word [?] to [?], o to a. And it became, "// a passage from the Báb //", which means the ways to God are as numerous as the number of breaths that people take. The reason I say that here is that somebody can stand up and says, "What about if my husband is not a Baháʼí and I am Baháʼí or something like that? I think the point is the agreement between the husband and wife that they have a mutual point of adoration, that is well beyond their limited selves, and the approaches to the dominion of God. By doing that, then they are indeed on their way to move from primary integration to secondary integration.
[55:37] One more thing and then I stop. And that one more thing is this: that I said there are two things necessary to move from primary integration to secondary integration. One was love, the other one, absolutely essential, completely misunderstood, is encouragement. Encouragement. In the Baháʼí faith there is a concept which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says is very difficult to understand, and therefore I don't try now to understand, namely the concept that the evil doesn't exist, the concept that what we see in other people as evil is not in reality evil, is non-existence of something, that the concept, that what we have to see in other people are their good qualities and not their bad qualities. This is at the very core of encouragement. Encouragement means to see the good qualities of the other person and identify them and pay attention to them. The more you pay attention to those good qualities, the greater the relationship would become. The more you pay attention to the negative qualities, those negative qualities they become prominent. In my opinion, there is no such thing as a constructive criticism. In my opinion, all criticism are destructive. It is awfully difficult to move from the stage that we are in our society, problem-oriented, seeing difficulties, seeing all kind of difficulties, it is extremely difficult to move from that stage to the stage in which you see the good qualities of the other person. But believe me, it is that process that eventually would allow to move from this stage to another stage. It is a lifetime work and hopefully if one when he's dying can say to the other person, "Honey, I really love you" or "You were marvelous", I think then he has achieved that process of encouragement. But that process, that has to continue to go on, we have to try that at all times and not to get discouraged by not being able to do it. Encouragement is a very interesting process. To encourage, you need courage. And for courage, you need encouragement. Once somebody starts, has the courage to start the process, then it goes on and on, perpetually.