"In marriage the loving husband or wife vows fidelity first of all to the other at the same time as to his or her true self . . . the fidelity of the married couple is acceptance of one's fellow-creature, a willingness to take the other as he or she is in his or her intimate particularity. Let me insist that fidelity in marriage cannot be merely that negative attitude so frequently imagined; it must be active. To be content not to deceive one's wife or husband would be an indication of indigence, not one of love. Fidelity demands far more: it wants the good of the beloved, and when it acts in behalf of that good it is creating in its own presence the neighbor. And it is by this roundabout way through the other that the self rises into being a person—beyond its own happiness. Thus as persons a married couple are a mutual creation, and to become persons is the double achievement of 'active love'. What denies both the individual and his natural egotism is what constructs a person. At this point faithfulness in marriage is discovered to be the law of a new life ... But few people now seem to be able to distinguish between an obsession which is undergone and a destiny that we shoulder ...
"Christianity has asserted the complete equality of the sexes, and this as plainly as possible. Saint Paul says: 'The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.' Once she is man's equal, women cannot be 'man's goal'. Yet at the same time she is spared the bestial abasement that sooner or later must be the price of divinizing a creature. But her equality is not to be understood in the contemporary sense of giving rise to rights. It belongs to the mystery of love. It is but the sign and evidence of the victory of Agape over Eros. For a truly mutual love exacts and creates the equality of those loving one another. God showed His love for man by exacting that man should be holy even as God is holy. And a man gives evidence of his love for a woman by treating her as a completely human person, not as if she were the spirit of the legend—half-goddess, half bacchante, a compound of dreams and sex ... When a man is faithful to one woman, he looks on other women in quite another way, a way unknown to the world of Eros: other women turn into persons instead of being reflections or means. This 'spiritual exercise' develops new powers of judgement, self-possession, and respect ... he realizes that he has been desiring only an illusory or fleeting aspect of what is actually a complete life ... fidelity is made secure by the clear-sightedness it induces ...
"It may be objected that marriage must then be simply 'the grave of love'. But it is of course the myth once again that suggests this, thanks to its obsession of obstructed love. It would be more accurate to echo Croce and to say that 'marriage is the grave of savage love', and more often the grave of sentimentality. Savage and natural love is manifested in rape—the evidence of love among all savage tribes. But rape, like polygamy, is also an indication that men are not yet in a stage to apprehend the presence of an actual person in a woman. This is as much as to say that they do not know how to love. Rape and polygamy deprive a woman of her equality by reducing her to her sex. Savage love empties human relations of personality. On the other hand, a man does not control himself owing to lack of 'passion' (meaning 'power of the libido'), but precisely because he loves and, in virtue of his love, will not inflict himself. He refuses to commit an act of violence which would be the denial and destruction of the person ...
"[We must] at last define marriage as the institution in which passion is 'contained', not by morals, but by love."
—from Love in the Western World by Denis deRougemont (309-310, 312-315)
—from Love in the Western World by Denis deRougemont (309-310, 312-315)
Painting: “Sacred and Profane Love” by Titian, 1514, Galleria Borghese, Rome
