Thomas Moore writes:

Marriage works best not by keeping the contract up to date…but…by doing and saying things that touch the feelings and imagination, not just the mind...like all matters of soul, if works by means of magic rather than by effort….In matters of the soul, a well conceived ritual act, well chosen words, an inspired gesture, a symbolic gift, even a well modulated tone of voice can achieve the desired effect. Often a very small gesture or action will have great consequences…this is one of the traditional rules of magic


I believe we all want and need to be touched emotionally and our imagination stirred, but if we want to receive we must be willing to give...so...think about what small gestures, well chosen words, or symbolic gift you can give to your loved ones and then sit back and watch your efforts weave their magic. Here are some more thoughts on relationships to ponder.

Apparently it isn’t enough to make a human marriage. In order to fulfill its need for divine coupling, the soul needs something less tangible than a happy home…In marriage we may not all need a fully functioning home, several children, a hefty bank account. These human goals may even stand in the way of the more mysterious needs of the soul…and….oddly, the attempts of many married people to create an affluent environment might even be the cause of marital failure, because the point in marriage is not to create a material, human world, but rather to evoke a spirit of love that is not of this world.

Marriage requires of us the slaying of our initial ideals and values about marriage, about our partners, about ourselves. How we do this without developing a cynical view of marriage or without becoming literal victims of the abusive potential in marriage? Perhaps if we widened our image of relationships to include their being occasionally blissful and occasionally mortifying, with a mixture of all possibilities between, we might not be so surprised when challenging difficulties appear….The intimacy we pledge at the wedding is an invitation to open Pandora’s box of soul’s graces and perversities…and…few experiences in life reach such remote and uncultivated regions of the heart, unearthing material that is both incredibly fertile and frighteningly primordial.

The person who cannot listen cannot converse. Conversation involves holding the material the other has taken from their “cabinet”, treating it with attention and respect. People trying to win an argument, make a point, preach a sermon, hold forth a theory, or give testimony to a belief are not engaged in conversation. These agendas are burdened with narcissism and offer little room for soul. Conversation is an inherently soulful activity, and therefore requires that the ego be given limited place…Conversation hovers between two people, takes it time to get in motion, finds its rhythm, and slows to an ending…Conversation is the sex act of the soul, and as such it is supremely conducive to the cultivation of intimacy.

Intimacy doesn’t appear ready-made, it must be refined into something truly valuable…Intimacy and intuition about the soul, is raw, and if we understand this, then, we might forgive ourselves and others for not being quick to handle relationships with grace. We might see that many problems are not due to one person’s maliciousness but to the law that the soul stuff is given in unrefined lumps and requires a long process of sorting, shaping, refining, and even transmuting…
Relationship is not a project, it is a grace…

Loss of love and intimacy can be a profound form of initiation. Paradoxically, initiation means beginning, and yet the most powerful initiation always involves some sort of death…Mircea Eliade suggests that all endings are potential beginnings and that all beginnings carry the potential seeds of ending…The ending of a relationship doesn’t have to be read as literal failure, but can be seen vertically, as a means toward a new level of experience.”

Sometimes at the end of a relationship a person may think, there is something wrong with me. I can’t have a lasting relationship. Other people are happy together, while I am doomed to lonliness…But to sink literally into these feelings could interfere with the initiation that is offered. Rather than say, “I am not able to be intimate---a narcissistic sentiment that goes nowhere---we might say, “My soul is asking more from me in relationship. I have the opportunity now to be close to another in a more profound way”

Love gives life so much vitality, meaningfulness, and purpose that when it wanes, even if temporarily, life can feel unbearably empty, and a person may be tempted to go to extreme measures to fill the void..When we feel a lessening of love, we could enter that feeling and perhaps discover the rhythms of our own soul…a worth goal in itself. This may be a time when the soul necessarily quiets down in the areas of romance, desire, and sexuality in order to accomplish some other project for itself.

Loss of desire is part of the rhythm of desire, and failure in love is one of the ways we experience love. If we protect ourselves from the difficult emotions that accompany the retreat of love, we are shielding ourselves from the soul.

Whenever we imagine a relationship sentimentally as being good only when it is warm, we do a disservice to that element in the soul that wants or needs coolness…We might learn from ancient wisdom to give a place to the cool emotions and to cycles of coldness that visit a person or a relationship.

Couples who sense flat and cool moods descending on them might ask each other not why this is happening, but what is it asking of them…If we can see our relationship problems as signs that the soul is trying to move, we might give them more positive attention, leaving behind attitudes of repair and mendings and our whole feeling about the relationship may remain loyal and attached, even when it seems to be in trouble…Pathology is the voice of a god or goddess trying to get our attention…Dealing with pathology in relationship requires enormous faith in ourselves, and in the process of soul, and in the person we love….

The soul needs true pleasure and genuine joy, just as much as the mind needs ideas and the body needs food and exercise. It asks for abandonment to its illusions, its serious playfulness and its purposeful games.

Our love of love and our high expectations that it will somehow make life complete seem to be an integral part of the experience….It makes little difference that in the past love has often shown itself to be painful and disturbing. There is something renewing in love…So, maybe it is better not to become too jaded by love’s suffering and dead ends, but rather to appreciate that emptiness is part of love’s heritage and therefore its very nature. It isn’t necessary to make strong efforts to avoid past mistakes or to learn how to be clever about love….

Unless we deal with the shadow of love, our experience of it will be incomplete. A sentimental philosophy of love, embracing only the romantic and the positive, fails at the first sign of shadow…Love finds its soul in the feelings of incompleteness, impossibility, and imperfection.

A soul mate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the community and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace. This kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious in life.

The soul wants to be attached, involved, and even stuck, because through it is through such intimacy is nourished, initiated, and deepened…It is also important to remember that it would be a mistake to honor attachment as the “only” inclination of the soul in relationships. As strong as the yearning for attachment is, there is obviously something else in us that yearns for solitude, freedom, and detachment.