I have been in love three times. The first two were effortless and painful. The third – the one that bloomed into what is today my marriage – was a very different beast.

The fact it was my most successful relationship also made it anxiety-wracking. With no obstacles in the way and a loving, willing partner, I was racked with the question, “Is this it?”  The moment of clarity never arrived. There was no bolt from the blue, no proof that I would never find someone better. I teetered, tottered, and came close to losing him as a result (rightly so). In the end, I leaped because I had learned a vital lesson not a moment too soon:

Love – partnered love between two individuals – needn’t and shouldn’t be fulfilling in every conceivable way.

Still, this mistruth lays waste to countless relationships that might otherwise thrive. Once these individuals understand there is no such thing as a “soulmate”, many of them give up the search for love altogether.

The problem is that the truth about lasting love is counterintuitive and unflattering. It’s simply this: we’re not as special as we thought. And this, believe it or not, is a wonderful and liberating thing.

“Spaces in your togetherness”

“Love,” wrote the intellectual giant Iris Murdoch, “is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.”

It’s easy to gloss over Murdoch’s words at first and blow them off as some sort of Zen koan. But Murdoch does not mean “real” in the literal sense; she’s referring to the fact that the flesh-and-blood person standing across from you who delights you but also sometimes annoys you has an existence apart from you.

This means they also have their own feelings, opinions, and experiences that will vary from yours, sometimes to an uncomfortable degree. And just as they can never fully plumb the depths of the well that is your mind, you will never be able to fully know theirs. This unresolvable separateness is one we must embrace, even if we live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed for as long as we’re both alive. Especially if we live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed.

The poet Khalil Gibran gives the following advice on marriage, but it applies to any partnered relationship:

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness. And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” ¹

Since we can’t share souls or read minds, the best thing we can do is to recognize each other’s aloneness.

In a similar vein, in a letter his young poet-friend Rainer Maria Rilke claims that love is “comprised of two lonelinesses protecting one another, setting limits, and acknowledging one another.” ² The word “loneliness” here is flexible. Some of us may think our well is deeper and harder to fill than our loved one’s. Maybe it is. What’s just as likely is that we find our thoughts and interests more logical or meaningful than the other’s, if for no other reason than we spend so much time in our own minds.

This sort of introspection makes it easy to feel alone; no wonder the idea of a soulmate who “gets” us is so alluring. But there’s a danger of self-absorption here. Who is to say our partner is not as lonely in her or his own way? Since we can’t share souls or read minds, the best thing we can do is to recognize each other’s aloneness. In a way, this is far more powerful than being soulmates – it means choosing to love a person who is not you, who can never understand you in every way, who never will, and who also – miraculously – loves and accepts you, too.

“A recognition of singularity”

There’s an insidious connotation to the word “acceptance.”

Too often people use it when they really mean tolerance or worse, resignation. It’s a kind of ho-hum attitude that sees each other from a distance.  “He has his hobbies, I have mine.” It’s a civil way of coexisting, but a pale imitation of true love because it lacks vulnerability.

It’s not enough to make peace with each other’s differences and our own loneliness. We need to respect the qualities in our partner that are different from ours, and love those qualities if possible. The differences between us of course shouldn’t be so great that we lack a foundation, but they should be enough to humble us and make us curious and grateful.

The novelist and classicist Robert Graves describes this as “a recognition of singularity”:

“Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person’s integrity and truth in a way that is compatible with – that makes both of you light up when you recognize that quality in the other. That’s what love is. It’s a recognition of singularity, I should say. And love is giving and giving and giving…and not looking for any return. Until you do that, you can’t love.” ³

There’s a beautiful double meaning here to “singularity.”  In one sense, of course, it’s the particular quality that the two of you share that attracts you to each other in the first place. But singularity also means uniqueness. It’s easy enough to love someone who’s like us. A true marker of love is to embrace someone different from us — sometimes in challenging ways — and to be glad that they are different.

Choosing to tether your life to another person – someone who is not us, not even blood-related – and to take a genuine interest in what they think and feel is the ultimate gesture of love.

When Graves adds that “love is giving and giving,” it’s no random afterthought. False love asks, “What’s in it for me?” Real love understands that this person who is different from you also accepts and loves you and your differences. It’s a trust fall. For love to flourish there must be no looking over the shoulder, scrutinizing and doubting at every turn if we’re seen and appreciated enough.

Now that I’m entering my second decade of being married, I’m learning something that may strike you as obvious but is dawning on me for the first time: the key to maintaining a lasting love requires the exact same qualities that make us a good listener, a good friend, a good world citizen. Love is curious and not threatened by an experience or a point of view that’s different from ours. Choosing to tether your life to another person – someone who is not us, not even blood-related – and to take a genuine interest in what they think and feel is the ultimate gesture of love.

There never will be someone out there who believes and wants all the same things we do, who reads all the same books and loves the same pet topics and laughs and cries at all the same things. We can choose to see this as a minus, or dedicate the rest of our lives to loving the mystery and the otherness, and coming to understand each other better in whatever small ways we can.

To exist is to be lonely in some way; how much more bearable is life if two people can love each other for their loneliness and not despite it?

***

Read Next:  4 Reasons to Not Get Married →

1. Gibran, K. (2019). The Prophet. Wisehouse Classics.
2. Rilke, R. M. (2017). Letters to a young poet: Translated, with an introduction and commentary by Reginald Snell. Vigeo Press. 
3. Kersnowski, F. L. (Ed.). (1989). Conversations with Robert Graves. University Press of Mississippi.