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Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or
rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it
does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes
all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
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One recognises the truth of Saint Exupery's line: Love does not consist in gazing
at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction. For in fact,
man and woman are not only looking outward in the same direction, they are working
outward. Here one forms ties, roots, a firm base....Here one makes oneself part
of the community of men, of human society. Here the bonds of marriage are formed.
For marriage, which is always spoken of as a bond, becomes actually, in this stage,
many bonds, many strands, of different texture and strength, making up a web that
is taut and firm. The web is fashioned of love. Yes, but many kinds of love: romantic
love first, then a slow-growing devotion and, playing through these, a constantly
rippling companionship. It is made of loyalties, and interdependencies, and shared
experiences. It is woven of memories of meetings and conflicts; of triumphs and
disappointments. It is a web of communication, a common language, and the acceptance
of lack of language too, a knowledge of likes and dislikes, of habits and reactions,
both physical and mental. It is a web of instincts and intuitions, and known and
unknown exchanges. The web of marriage is made by propinquity, in the day to day
living side by side, looking outward and working outward in the same direction.
It is woven in space and in time of the substance of life itself.
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