Denilson Porto
Published: April 26, 2006
In a typical fairytale there is a beautiful maiden who, through her adventures, ends up in some kind of distress. She may be locked up in some tower, under some curse, or just in need of someone to love her unconditionally and share in her endeavors.
But sooner or later, a dashing young hero, usually a knight or a prince, faces perilous danger, many times risking his own life to prove his undying love for the beautiful maiden.
She is rescued, the hero becomes her knight in shining armor, and they live happily ever after, probably in an adventure they both can share.
I do not know of any woman who, when honest with herself, would not like to be this beautiful maiden, and I do not know of any man who does not want to be the knight in shining armor.
But there is a reason why we have such a hard time figuring out how to live this fairytale.
Everyone I know either comes from some kind of broken home or knows of more than a handful that do. I don’t think I really need to explain the pain that divorce causes because most of us have seen it first hand either in our own families or in the families of our friends.
Why is it that we can’t seem to live happily ever after? Why do so many of our country’s married couples end up in divorce?
In order for a marriage to work there must be an unconditional love between the couple. If an individual loves his or her partner because the partner makes them happy, I have some bad news: there will be times when the couple won’t be able to stand each other.
Yet if the individual loves because he or she has an abundant love to give, the love will be there even when the partner is undesirable. This kind of love is not one that comes because of some chemical make up but one that comes from a lot of practice. Unfortunately our society is set up in such a way that we practice selfish conditional love rather than selfless unconditional love. If one really stops to think for a moment he or she may find that they have been practicing for divorce ever since high school.
The pattern goes something like this: the couple meets, find each other attractive for a variety of reasons and go steady, then a few months later something undesirable happens or they just get bored so they decide to break up. Is that really much different from two people who meet, get married, and then get a divorce?
We are taught to taste different people as if they were some kind of hors d’oeuvre, and if we do not like the taste we just spit them out.
This process ends up hurting both parties in the long run especially if sex is involved. We train ourselves into believing that this process is normal so when we finally do get married we justify divorce. The consequences that a divorce has on every member of a family, however, cannot simply be justified or ignored.
We all want someone to love us despite all our faults but we simply cannot force anyone to love us in that way. The best thing to do is for us to truly learn how to love our partners in this respect and not expect anything in return.