What if we never had that “honeymoon phase” of being in love?
A common refrain from many couples therapy clients from certain backgrounds is:
“So many of the marriage books and articles are predicated on the idea that we’re trying to rekindle that infatuation and passion we used to have for one another when we were dating, engaged, or newlyweds. They assume that we were obviously head over heels for each other, and then stuff got in the way, and now we just need tips to get that spark back. But it’s so frustrating to read that stuff, because it’s not relevant to us. We didn’t know each other so well when we got married, and there was never a ‘spark.’ It makes me wonder if it’s possible to ever have romantic feelings and pleasure with someone if you got married either without knowing each other so well, or from a place of logical compatibility, rather than lustful attraction. Where’s the help for couples like us?”
Not only does it feel irrelevant, but it can even feel demoralizing- like at least the other struggling couples have some frame of reference; we don’t have that.
How can we recreate, rebuild something we never knew, never saw, never felt?
How can we access connection and intimacy if we’ve only ever known shame, loneliness, disappointment, confusion, sometimes even betrayal and trauma?
How can we generate love and joy when we might not even know what the words really mean?These are some of the agonizing questions of some who were deprived of the opportunity to choose authentic commitment with agency.
And for many, they are the same questions of the Jew being taught to yearn and pray for salvation.
Unity? World peace? A centralized temple for worship in Jerusalem? Healing for humanity? That sounds like utopian fiction- we can’t imagine what that would be like.
Similarly to so many couples who never know what they’re missing, because they’ve never had the joy of autonomous love and desire, we as a nation, as humanity, have only ever lived in this broken world of strife, pain, war, illness, suffering. Some of us were privileged, born into a bubble mostly shielded from the worst of it, cushioned by localized blessings. But even then, we can’t picture exactly what we’re praying for.
Yet. Sometimes, in a relationship or a historical, collective reality, things get so bad, that the crying morphs into heartfelt prayer.
The despondency becomes hope. The desperation becomes action.
The pain is so great that it forces us to beg and create the possibility of something better.
Many of us can’t even visualize what that is, but we only know it includes an exhale, a repair, a reprieve.
Maybe that’s what it means when it says that everyone who mourns Jerusalem is meriting and seeing her rebuilding. Present tense. The feeling is the fixing.
The fact that we cry and grieve so much is a statement of faith that this isn’t in fact how it should be, but that it will get better, and we can do things to make it so.
Individually, maritally, nationally, globally. Word by word, deed by deed, hug by hug, prayer by prayer.
Hopefully soon.
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