What is Conscious Marriage?

Do you want to feel good about your relationship?  Love can dazzle us – baffle us!  We often learn about love in film, music, and books.  We talk about love a lot, but we are typically only discussing infatuation or falling in love.  Love is complex, mysterious, and happens in every society on earth.  Love is far beyond mere romantic infatuation or sexual attraction.

Amancer

“To wake up and see your smiling face
is such a pleasure and a privilege to me

To seek the light in the brilliance of your gaze
(the way she looks at him)
is to awaken with love

To see the sun nestled in your hair
and daybreak hiding in your smile

To see that my verse now has rhythm and color
is such a pleasure

To awaken with the importance of knowing
that I am yours that I only belong to you
that never again my dreams will feel cold
It’s to have a future now
To wake-up and see that I have you next to me

To wake up and see your smiling face,
that which I have for so, so, long, sought to have
It is a pleasure, a privilege to me”

Recorded by Luis Miguel
Written by Manzanero

 

When the woman I love calls, I feel wonderful.  When she doesn’t call, I feel sad.  I would call this experience of falling in love, a positive projection.  We often idealize people as teens, seeing them as more powerful, charming, or talented than they actually are.  One can worship a public figure (actress, singer, politician, teacher) or older family member, wanting to learn all about them.  I remember falling in love and thinking that I would feel exactly the same bliss – forever.  Yet over time, we begin to see that the one we love is imperfect – has flaws.  Our feelings change.

With the process of falling out of love, I have a chance of changing.  I can see the person whom I love more accurately.  I may still feel deeply connected to them and even joyful, yet I can see their faults, more clearly.

When we fall out of love, we gain the opportunity to take our projection back.  For we see exaggerated in others that which we fail to see in ourselves.  The very things we love about the other person are qualities ripe to be developed in us.  I fall in love with a socially gifted and funny woman and, in time, may find it important to develop my own social skills.

This is where conscious love begins.  Then we can see each other more as we are, we can choose to love even though we both have faults.  I can learn about the brokenness of my beloved as well as my own with respectful communication.  In this reality lies the great potential of love and intimacy to help us become more mature.  In this video, Manuel Costa, MFT, author of “A Path to Life’s Fullness: A New Perspective on the Teaching of Jesus,” describes healthy marriage.