My ‘arranged’ marriage

Christine Driessen | from the Christian Science Sentinel

No question about it. I’d seen the power of prayer in Christian Science to comfort and heal sickness and pain when I was a child. But as a young adult, when it came to relationships—dating, sex, sensuality, marriage—I suddenly felt as if I were alone on another planet.

I can’t really mention these topics to God, I used to think. He’ll just say, “Shame on you for thinking about this—just pretend you don’t feel that way!” Somehow I was convinced that when it came to human attraction and love, I had a big decision to make—a choice between God and man.

Yet the desire to share my love with someone in a deep, committed way seemed right. And the strong feelings of attraction I felt on various occasions for particular guys seemed very natural. But how could I know which guy, and whether he would feel the same way? There was also the question of physical intimacy. When was it right? What role did it play in a relationship? Could I control it if I began to give in to it? The answers eluded me.

For years I struggled to “be good.”

For years I struggled to “be good” (in other words, do what I felt was morally right) and still fit in and have fun. But I wasn’t always sure how to do that. I felt very strongly in high school and college that sex should be reserved for marriage. Still, I wasn’t sure what kind of affection was OK in a dating relationship, or what love between a man and a woman was even supposed to look like.

After college I married a wonderful, talented man whom I’d been dating for a couple of years. Prior to our marriage, something told me that although he was wonderful, the relationship wasn’t right for us. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that “something” is what I now call “the still small voice of divine Love”—a Christ-message of divine guidance that is constantly speaking to us all. But in this case I gave in to the urging of others to go forward with the wedding. Soon after, the marriage suddenly ended.

Divorce left me feeling like such a failure. I’d been trying so hard to do what was right, but I still resisted turning completely to God to guide my decisions.

Love and sensuality were still confusing to me.

I continued dating, but love and sensuality were still confusing to me. As a young woman, I went through a period where I began listening to all the sensual talk around me. And the pull of sensuality seemed so strong that it left me feeling almost hypnotized, as if I was losing the ability to be in control of my thoughts and actions. Even worse, the pleasure that came with it always seemed so empty and fleeting.

On the one hand I still felt that it was important to reserve sex for marriage—partly because giving in would make it that much harder to resist temptations to be unfaithful. But from conversations with friends and things I’d read, I also believed that men were basically driven by sensuality and that women needed to appeal to this in order to attract and hold on to a man. It was hard to reconcile these two points of view.

It seemed that “Listen to your body; let it guide you!” was the constant buzz phrase. But that didn’t fit with what I was learning spiritually. I’d already discovered in sports and ballet that I was able to express more strength and beauty by turning thought away from my body and a material basis of health and wholeness, and instead pray to understand the spiritual nature of health, strength, and beauty.

In Science and Health, one passage really helped me understand what makes true spirituality so attractive: “Love, redolent with unselfishness, bathes all in beauty and light ” (Science and Health, p. 516). Spiritual qualities such as purity, unselfishness, compassion, and integrity not only give us strength and beauty; they’re lasting and satisfying, in a way that sensuality is not.

Deep down I knew that only love based on a spiritual foundation could really hold a couple together.

I began to see that building a relationship or marriage on the basis of sensuality and a material view of ourselves, even if coupled with love and friendship, undermines our efforts to find a love that is committed, lasting, and faithful. Sensuality is based on the gratification of one’s own physical sense of pleasure. And if age, accident, or disease seems to interfere with a couple’s intimate sharing, sensuality doesn’t have the staying power to keep the relationship together. Deep down inside I knew that only love based on a spiritual foundation could really hold a couple together.

I realized that the same confidence I was finding in my God-given immunity from injury and pain, as well as my ability to express health and strength in sports and dance, was the same confidence I was searching for in relationships. Spiritual qualities and an understanding of man’s true spiritual nature as God’s image and likeness were what formed the foundation of true love.

Then how do you put that into practice?

A unilateral decision against physical intimacy in a marriage is just as selfish as sensuality.

For a while I thought that spirituality in a relationship must mean rejecting anything physical in marriage. It wasn’t until after yet another divorce that I learned how important respect, tenderness, and compassion are in intimate relationships—and that a husband or wife making a unilateral decision against physical intimacy in a marriage is just as selfish as sensuality. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy devoted a whole chapter to the topic of marriage that discusses how “tender words and unselfish care” promote happiness (Science and Health, p. 59).

My former husband and I remained good friends, but I was now a single mom yearning for a happy marriage. The years passed, and I found myself trying to outline or control the direction of my relationships. Yet I knew deep down that self-centeredness, manipulation, and willful control don’t foster tenderness and attraction but actually extinguish them.

In the middle of this struggle I took my daughter on vacation to India. We stayed with friends in several cities. Some of them told us how much they preferred the “arranged marriages” in their culture over the dating scene they’d witnessed in the United States, with its high divorce rate and pressure to have sex outside of marriage.

One couple explained that Indian families are close knit and that parents generally know the qualities and spiritual values their children should be looking for in a life partner. After their parents chose for them, this couple had the opportunity to decide if they were attracted to each other. But then there was no physical intimacy of any kind until after marriage. They said they knew that in order to make the marriage work, they needed to develop love and respect for each other by expressing patience, tenderness, unselfishness, honesty, and fidelity. They knew they needed to commit 100 percent to making the marriage last.

As my daughter and I flew home, we both commented on how much easier that arrangement sounded than the dating scene at home. However, neither of us liked the idea of having our mothers arrange our marriages!

I wanted my Father-Mother God to arrange every aspect of my life, including marriage.

Then it occurred to me that that’s exactly what I’d been looking for. I wanted my Father-Mother God, divine Love, to arrange every aspect of my life, including marriage. This Father-Mother Love knows each of us intimately; knows our talents, interests, and individuality; knows our divine purpose and who will best complement that purpose. Since God is Love itself, the source of infinite good, and God is divine Mind, the source of all intelligence, then Love must be able to bring right ideas together in a way that blesses each of them.

I needed to drop the material view of love and understand better the divine Love that is the source of true manhood and true womanhood. Instead of worrying about who was the right person or whether I would remarry, my focus shifted to the spiritual qualities of Love that enabled Christ Jesus to heal and are found in the Bible’s Sermon on the Mount. I wanted to be true to my spiritual nature as the reflection of divine Love. To do this, I needed to listen constantly to God to direct my every thought, word, and action by:

1. Purifying my love for others, and recognizing that qualities such as tenderness, unselfishness, goodness, and fidelity were natural to every single one of us as God’s creation.
2. Watching my thinking to be sure I was faithfully expressing those qualities in all of my relationships.
3. Understanding that divine Love fulfilled all my needs each moment, instead of believing I was dependent on another person or on a physical sense of love to bring satisfaction and fulfillment. I was already complete and satisfied.

It took a little while to learn to let go and trust God’s constant care.

I have to admit it took a little while to learn to let go and trust God’s constant care. But as I did, I began to find a profound sense of peace and wholeness as I discovered more about my intimate, tender, and unbreakable relation to God. I began to see how important this relation was. In fact, I was so satisfied with what I was learning about my relationship to God that I let go of any desire to remarry.

And that’s when it happened!

When I met the man I’m now married to, it was unlike any other dating relationship I’d ever had. Even before I got to know him, the thought came to me, “This is a very good man.” I felt totally at peace with him, as if I’d always been with him.

But I told God that I wasn’t quite ready to start dating again. So if He intended for us to get together, He was going to have to take care of all the details. God assured me that that was already His plan!

It was a few months before we started dating, but both of us had been praying to hear God’s will and to follow that. This time when I did start dating, I didn’t push God aside but rather kept affirming that God was working His plan out, not mine.

From our first date on, we had so much fun. In fact, we discovered that we had many things in common that we loved doing together. But number one, we both wanted to be healers for the world.

Although we felt naturally attracted to each other, we both made the decision that sexual intimacy was reserved for the commitment of marriage. So we prayed to develop a spiritual foundation for this relationship that would include friendship, partnership, tenderness, respect, and most important, a love for God and a desire to serve Him in every way.

Three months later we were married. Now, after six years of marriage, the tenderness and fun are still there. But something much more profound is emerging in our love. I’ve learned that marriage will always have its challenges, and that it’s not about trying to find a perfect human being. All of us have things we need to improve. Rather, it’s about my thought and how I’m viewing other people. The spiritual qualities and expectations I bring to the relationship are what enable me to see love being fulfilled.

The most satisfying thing is not what grocery store tabloids would suggest.

The most satisfying thing about our marriage is not what the grocery store tabloids would suggest. It’s the spiritual foundation that we’re building and the spiritual love we share. When I do something really dumb or unkind, or fall short in some way, and my husband responds, not with criticism or impatience, but rather with prayer and seeing me as God’s spiritual idea right now, I think, “Wow! Does that feel good!” That’s what love is really all about.

This whole journey has proved the importance of putting God at the center of my life and every choice I make. He already has all the details figured out. That’s the ultimate relationship.

Christine Driessen is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science in Long Island City, New York. She’s also a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship.