What to do if you haven’t met “that” person yet?
What is usually advised in our Orthodox church environment to those who really want (or who are long overdue) to get married, but are not yet in love or have not yet met “that” person? Most often, two directly opposite pieces of advice are given.
First: “Wait, pray, actively participate in church life, ask God. When you need it, you will meet me. If you don’t meet me, then it’s not necessary.” And the second: “What difference does it make who you marry or who you marry, because in the end the main thing is to have children, and then if you endure it, you will fall in love.” In my opinion, both of these tips do not quite work. Moreover, I would rather agree with the arguments in their favor than argue. For example, with regard to the second approach, then, of course, in the depths of every person the image of God is hidden, and if we set the goal to “get to the bottom of it,” then by and large there is no difference who to marry and who to marry. Because when you reach this image of God, you will definitely feel good. And if another person also looks for the image of God in you, then it will be just an ideal, happy marriage.
But it seems to me that these two pieces of advice should be preceded by one more:
Before you look for your chosen one, you must first find yourself.
What I mean? A person must break through to that depth within himself, which I would liken to a deep, deep well, at the bottom of which lies a small mirror. This small mirror reflects those celestial stars that on a normal day we cannot see due to sunlight. And in our case, it reflects something Divine. And when a person catches at least a little of this reflection and begins to build a life in fidelity to it, then, I have no doubt, certainty will come into his life. He will understand what he really wants, he will understand whether he is conceived, first of all, as a family man, or as a person who must live alone, without a family. Both are possible.
When a person finds this light within himself and understands what is most organic for him, he will also see the obstacles that prevent this light from breaking through. And then he will begin to break through everything that blocks the radiance of this light in him. But all this is very painful, because this is not some abstract well, but a very concrete well inside the living, sensual, emotional human heart.
There was also a long period of uncertainty in my relationship with my future wife. Despite the fact that already during the first acquaintance there was a feeling that some kind of connection was being established between us, it was not formally expressed in anything for quite a long time. But now I understand perfectly well that this was due to only one circumstance: at that moment I did not yet understand what I wanted from life. But when certainty came into my life, we got married very quickly.
Only in a state of certainty and internal struggle with what prevents this Divine plan from being revealed in us, does a person begin to pray responsibly and fervently. Until a person finds himself, he will wander. And there will, perhaps, be mad, heart-rending screams addressed to Heaven: “Lord, I ask so much, why don’t you give it to me?!” But the Lord knows that if he does what we are shouting about, he will simply harm us. But He doesn’t want to ruin our lives, He’s just waiting for us to grow up, mature, stop screaming, and it’s enough for us to say once in a whisper: “Lord, I really want this. I understand that it will be painful, but I am ready (or ready) to do even that. I understand that I could be wrong, but I still want and ask You: point out, prompt, help me meet.” And I have no doubt that then the Lord will manage everything.
One very famous Greek elder, Archimandrite Epiphanius (Theodoropoulos), categorically refused to answer young people who came to him with questions about what to do: get married, become a monk, or live alone in the world. And this despite the fact that the elder was clearly gifted with foresight - but here he fundamentally did not give advice and blessings. Why? He said that there are issues in a person’s life on which he must make a decision himself.
Because no matter whose answer you receive from the outside, it is someone else’s answer, and you will always have the thought of blaming someone else for your problems: after all, it was not your choice, it was “father who told you so,” and you, a fool, listened - and Now my whole life is awry.
A girl's prayer for marriage
Oh, All-merciful Lord, I know that my great happiness depends on the fact that I love You with all my soul and with all my heart, and that I fulfill Your holy will in everything. Rule Yourself, O my God, over my soul and fill my heart: I want to please You alone, for You are the Creator and my God.
Save me from pride and self-love: let reason, modesty and chastity adorn me. Idleness is disgusting to You and gives rise to vices, so give me the desire for hard work and bless my labors. Since Your Law commands people to live in honest marriage, then lead me, Holy Father, to this calling sanctified by You, not to please my lust, but to fulfill Your destiny him, for You Yourself said: it is not good for a man to be alone, and having created for him a wife as a helper, he blessed them to grow, multiply and populate the earth.
Hear my humble prayer, sent to You from the depths of a girl’s heart; give me an honest and pious spouse, so that in love with him and in harmony we glorify You, the merciful God: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Can falling in love be peaceful?
The girl writes that she has certain ideas about relationships that she gleaned from the movies. But in real life, she herself does not experience such a flash, such special, unique feelings and experiences. The logic here is quite simple. If you talk about a meeting, about a boy and a girl getting to know each other for a long time, an hour and forty minutes will not be enough for you. So the plot is reduced to a quick, bright meeting and a whirlwind romance. It is very naive to think that cinema reflects some real history of human relationships in this regard - this happens, but rarely.
In life, everything happens very differently. Does love happen at first sight? Yes, sometimes. Is there love that appears when people have known each other for decades, and then suddenly, at some point, they see each other and form a wonderful family? It happens too. It happens that people walk and wander next to each other and cannot understand anything, but still get married, and then torment each other and eventually get divorced? It happens too. Yes, anything can happen! In principle, there cannot be any universal templates here. Just as every person is unique, relationships between people are always unique and inimitable.
Photo by Wyatt Fisher/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
I recently served Sunday liturgy in church and at some point I realized that there was a place in the altar where a powerful resonance occurred during the reading of prayers. That is, I can speak quietly, but I will be perfectly audible. Literally three centimeters forward or backward - a completely different sound.
So, love can be compared to a state of very high resonance, when people are literally on the same wavelength . But the range is very narrow, and it is impossible to “fix” it; it must be constantly found.
Having experience in finding this range, two people will make every effort to return to it again and again.
Any sympathy, any attraction, any love is the first evidence of consonance, resonance. But we must understand that these relationships can further develop in completely different ways. They can be cultivated, or they can be neglected. We know a huge number of loves that ended in nothing or ended in tragedy. We know no less than a number of loves that grew into a happy marriage. That is, to say that falling in love is bad because it ends when there is nothing left of emotions is not true. It would also be untrue to say that a happy marriage is impossible without love. It can be both. Why? Because love is not a static state, but a dynamic one. We cannot somehow fix love, nail it down so that it does not twitch anywhere, does not run away anywhere. It requires nutrition, care, cultivation, education.
Uncultivated relationships inevitably end in disintegration - or a pathological state of codependency, where everyone just plays one role or another, but is not going to change.
When we talk about calm or troubled love (as the author of the letter asks about), we first of all describe the emotional background. When we talk about love, we are talking primarily about the volitional component rather than about experiences - we are talking about our readiness to love. That is, love is my will: I want to love this person. And this desire will inevitably change my heart, too. And even if a person does not have clearly expressed love, but he wants to have it, strives for it, I think, sooner or later his heart will begin to open. And here those two examples that we immediately pushed into the background will begin to work. They also have their own truth, but if you add a third element to this truth - finding yourself - and if all these three components begin to interact with each other, I think this will become a very good approach to solving the problem of how to find a husband or wife, how understand that you truly love.
When two young people meet, it is most often not about love as such, but about what we can offer to the other person. But for this, I repeat, we must understand ourselves what we are, what we have inside. After all, you cannot offer yourself to another person in the form of a bag, inside of which sits an unknown creature of an unknown color, and say: I guarantee you will like it. We must untie this bag, take out this creature, at least comb it, wash it and say: if you like it, take it; if you don’t like it, I’ll move on.
It seems to me that very often the problem of interpersonal relationships is not just that we offer each other tied bags with unknown creatures, but also that we have a dozen of such bags behind us and we think: well, who should we offer something to? ?
Here's a girl: yeah, she most likely needs the image of a self-confident, brutal person who will have this and that... So, this is bag number three - hold it. Someone will believe it, but then it turns out that what this person is and what he tried to appear to be are not at all the same thing.
So when I talk about finding yourself, I mean having an internal mindset of being extremely honest and open about who you are at the moment. Not who you are going to be someday, in 24 years, but who you are here and now. But this is very painful, because we live in a world of images and simulations and constantly create them as a means of protection, as a kind of armor that does not allow other people to get inside us, and for us to open up to them. Because the state of disclosure is a state of defenselessness.
Prayer for Marriage
A true Christian life is impossible without prayer. According to the “Catechism” of Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), prayer is communication with God, communication with Him, the movement of man and the Almighty towards each other. In prayers we can thank God, glorify Him, express repentance and various requests. There is also a petitionary prayer for marriage. Girls who want to start a family come to her.
In the article “What did Christianity give to women?” Archpriest Andrei Tkachev writes: “If the Lord created Adam from unformed material - earth, then the creation of a woman is the creation of the best of the good. For Eve, Adam was both husband and father. Part of this is a woman’s irresistible attraction to marriage, the desire to achieve the fullness of being.” Let us also quote Father Andrei from his book “Our Time. Why are we born”: “A woman needs a man more than a woman needs a man, that’s a fact. A woman needs a man essentially; she is attracted to him not for pleasure, but for life. She simply cannot live otherwise.” So, for a woman the desire to unite with a man is absolutely natural. It is laid by the Lord in feminine nature. This union is blessed by God within the framework of a fulfilling marriage. Therefore, asking the Almighty for help in starting a family is completely normal.
Girl in an Orthodox church
I want to get married according to God's will. But how to understand it?
A person can feel very different about his relationship with God. He may feel dependent on God - a slave whose head will be taken off his shoulders if he suddenly does something wrong. A mercenary who agreed: I am for you, you are for me. Or he may feel like a free son, who has absolute freedom in his Father’s house, who already owns everything that his Father has, and he only thinks about how to increase this wealth and please the Father. Based on these three attitudes, the understanding of God's will will be experienced differently.
As the Apostle Paul writes, the will of God is good and perfect.
What does God want from us? Only two things: that we love Him and love each other. That's all.
And the further question “How?” is entirely at our disposal. “How” to love God and neighbor, we read in the Gospel commandments, in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, “how” - Christ Himself shows us in how He loves us when He gives His life on the cross. But as soon as we talk about the concrete application of these commandments to our lives, everything is completely in our hands. And trying to look for God’s will here is a little naive. Why?
Isaac the Syrian has words of amazing depth when he interprets the prayer “Our Father.” He writes that it was only because of the weakness of human nature that the Lord commanded to ask for daily bread. Because a son in his father’s house no longer asks for bread, but longs for the highest and best. That is, the situation in which a son, being fully supported by his parent, gets up every morning and with teary eyes on his knees begs his dad to give him a piece of bread, when a hearty breakfast is already laid on the table, looks somewhat absurd. Another image: you were invited to a wedding celebration in a restaurant, and before entering you ask the groom to give you fifty rubles for a hamburger, because you are really hungry, and there is a McDonald’s nearby. I think that the attempt to seek the will of God specifically, literally, in small things is roughly in the same category.
The very posing of the question of searching for the will of God in the girl’s letter, it seems to me, reflects the very fear of making a mistake, which permeates the entire letter. But fear is the opposite of faith, it is the opposite of the willingness to trust, including God, in this matter. In no way am I calling for crazy, reckless decisions, but when a person hears himself, hears his heart, what is happening inside him, he can overcome this fear.
But when a person does not hear him, when there is continuous noise inside him, through which he cannot hear himself, most likely, no matter what he does, he will later repent. But he will make a mistake not because he has violated the will of God, but because he has not yet heard, has not reached himself.
Prayer to the Mother of God for the family
“Don’t be afraid, little flock! “I am with you and no one else is with you.” Most Blessed Lady, take my family under Your protection. Instill in the hearts of my husband and our children peace, love and intransigence to all that is good; Do not allow anyone from my family to experience separation and difficult parting, to premature and sudden death without repentance. And save our house and all of us living in it from fiery ignition, thieves’ attacks, all evil circumstances, various types of insurance and diabolical obsession. Yes, and we, individually and separately, openly and secretly, will glorify Your Holy Name always, now and ever, and to the ages of ages. Amen.
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Your mind and heart must approve of your choice
Love must be combined with reason. You can't act based on feelings alone.
When they say: “This feeling is stronger than me! I can't handle this! - this is not true love, but a sinful passion:
deceptive, selfish and exalted. Love must be in harmony with reason.
But there can’t be a purely rational choice: yeah, she’s beautiful, rich, humble, meek, she has a good confessor, she has an apartment, her parents are rich, she’ll do! I'm getting married! And the heart is silent.
No, you need to have a feeling for the girl, and your mind needs to agree with it. When there is agreement between mind and heart, this is exactly the right choice.
Photo from the site stepandstep.ru
How to take the first step?
It is better not to start with a decisive step. This is very obliging. Sometimes friends invite single people to visit specifically with the intention of introducing them. In this case, both know what meeting they are going to, and it becomes awkward.
It's better to chat casually. For example, you found out that the girl is a volunteer. Sign up to volunteer, go to meetings, sit next to a girl during a tea party or at a concert, talk casually.
When you take the first step - inviting a girl to a movie or for a walk - you are already imposing some obligations on yourself.
Therefore, it is better to get acquainted casually, gradually. So as not to hurt the girl, do not reassure her in vain if you cannot marry her later.
Who to consult?
I am very afraid when they turn to the so-called. The “elders” easily bless two people unknown to them for marriage. One must be very careful with such “blessings.” In our age, you need to create a family with a girl for whom you have a feeling of love, and not with the one whom “father said” to marry.
Sometimes there is physical hostility towards another person; there is something subtle about him that you don’t like. Someone else may not notice this, but you notice and you feel uncomfortable, unpleasant to be around. Someone sniffles, someone picks their teeth with a toothpick, someone straightens their clothes in an unattractive way...
You need to make a decision by relying on God, by praying, but by yourself. You don’t choose your parents, you don’t choose your children, but you can choose your wife. And this choice is very serious. Talk to your confessor, consult with your parents.
Husband's first duty
Remember that your first responsibility as a husband is to love your wife. Women are different. They know how to love stronger, they are more tender, often more faithful. They have a beautiful, active soul. They are more attentive, more caring. And more fragile, weak.
A man who is going to get married must be ready in advance to protect his wife, understand her weaknesses, tolerate her shortcomings, listen to her experiences, and console her.
She needs to be firm in matters of principle, but in small things - let her do as she pleases. If he wants it differently, please.
A wife must certainly have an area of activity in which she decides everything herself.
With small children, for example, let him deal with it as he sees fit. Don't get involved. When they grow up, you will study with them, tell them, explain, etc. In the meantime, while they are still babies, leave the wife the opportunity to make decisions for herself. Support her.
A good wife is a man's reward
Finding a good wife is the most difficult thing in life! But then, if you make the right choice, there will be a reward for life. There is nothing better in the world than a kind, good wife.
Career, money, football, friends - all this is nonsense. The main thing is a family and a wife who is loving, kind, understanding, sacrificial, caring, affectionate, and a good mother for children.
This is why you can and should work hard. Unless a man has chosen the path of a monk, when for the sake of God he renounces worldly attachments and does not start a family.
