On Love and Spiritual Affinity

"It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations." Kahlil Gibran


I was still a child when I fell in love with my husband, a child himself. First I was attracted to his handsome and cheerful face, then to his musical talent, his values, and gradually to his tender and generous sexuality. We spent countless hours literally gazing into each other’s eyes, trying to discover the depth of our spirits. We talked endlessly about our hopes and fears and dreams, our love for our country and our families, our desire to impact the world in a positive way, our faith, and our spirituality. We seemed to be a perfect match. We had a common calling and a vocation for marriage.

So after many years of courtship we considered ourselves fully grown adults that knew each other to the bone and we got married. Marriage changed our relationship practically overnight. Perhaps it was the nature of our lifestyle, cultural expectations, familial pressures, personal anxieties and shortcomings. Who knows? The fact is that we started to drift apart right away and it caught us by surprise and unawares.

He immersed himself in his career, I in taking care of him and our children. We led parallel lives and on occasion found time to be together and be good friends. Most of the time he was emotionally distant and spent long hours away from home. I pursued him in any way I could imagine and assumed responsibility for all household and childrearing activities and even for our sexual encounters. He found other loves and I forgave him because he chose me instead. His family of origin drove a wedge between us, but I was convinced that, in time, I could get them to love and accept me. His career sucked the life and joy out of him, but I believed him when he said that this or that change coming up in a couple of months or a couple of years would bring us back together again.

We experienced much joy and pain together. We were a great team in a crisis, but we didn’t seem to be able to enjoy daily life’s routine together because he was hardly ever around on a consistent basis. When he was he was a surly and exhausted stranger, alienated from our family routine. I was so strong and self-sufficient that I survived without him and our children did too, but our love didn’t.

Not that we began to hate each other; we remained close friends. But the intimacy of our childhood days disappeared and we gradually became strangers to each other. We fought and argued, went to retreats and marriage counseling every so often, did intensive couple’s counseling, learned better communication skills and the difference between aggression and assertiveness. We traveled together; we prayed together; we went to parties and hosted parties together. We took care of our ailing parents and rescued our grown children from financial catastrophe. We even remodeled our house “together”: I did all the designing, hiring, supervising, and management of the project and he made sure there was always enough money in the bank for me to pay the vendors. We were great business partners and horrible lovers. We didn’t know how to love anymore. Our spirits had not been in synch for many decades.

One day I opened my eyes and realized I had gone many extra miles trying to fix my marriage, but he was married to his career. That lover he refused to leave. I was always playing second fiddle to her and that would never change. There was no spiritual affinity between us and who knows if there ever was any before or if there would ever be any in the future. All I knew was that I was dying inside, becoming bitter and depressed. I had to leave. And I did.