Honeymoon
First!
by
Osho
My suggestion is that
marriage should happen after the honeymoon,
never before it. Only if everything goes
right, only then marriage should happen.
Honeymoon after marriage is
very dangerous. As far as I know, ninety-nine
percent of marriages are finished by the time
the honeymoon is finished. But then you are
caught, then you have no way to escape. Then
the whole society -- the law, the court,
everybody is against you if you leave the wife
or the wife leaves you. Then the whole
morality, the religion, the priest, everybody
is against you.
In fact, society should
create all barriers possible for marriage and
no barrier for divorce. Society should not
allow people to marry so easily. The court
should create barriers -- live with the woman
for two years at least, then the court can
allow you to get married. Right now they are
doing just the reverse. If you want to get
married, nobody asks whether you are ready or
whether it is just a whim, just because you
like the nose of the woman. What foolishness!
One cannot live with just a beautiful nose.
After two days the nose will be forgotten --
who looks at one's own wife's nose? The wife
never looks beautiful, the husband never looks
beautiful; once you are acquainted, beauty
disappears.
Two persons should be
allowed to live together long enough to become
acquainted, familiar with each other. Before
that, even if they want to get married they
should not be allowed. Then divorces will
disappear from the world. The divorces exist
because marriages are wrong and forced. The
divorces exist because marriages are done in a
romantic mood.
A romantic mood is good if
you are a poet -- and poets are not known to
be good husbands or good wives. In fact poets
are almost always bachelors, they fool around
but they never get caught, and hence their
romance remains alive. They go on writing
poetry, beautiful poetry... One should not
get married to a woman or to a man in a poetic
mood. Let the prose mood come, then settle.
Because the day-to-day life is more like prose
than like poetry.
One should become mature
enough. Maturity means that one is no longer a
romantic fool. One understands life, one
understands the responsibility of life, one
understands the problems of being together
with a person. One accepts all those
difficulties and yet decides to live with the
person. One is not hoping that there is only
going to be heaven, all roses. One is not
hoping nonsense; one knows reality is tough,
it is rough. There are roses but far and few
in between; there are many thorns.
When you have become alert
to all of these problems -- and still you decide
that it is worthwhile to risk and be with a
person rather than to be alone -- then get
married. Then marriages will never kill love,
because this love is realistic. Marriage can
kill only romantic love. And romantic love is
what people call puppy love. One should not
depend on it. One should not think about it as
nourishment. It may be just like ice-cream --
you can eat it sometimes, but don't depend on
it. Life has to be more realistic, more prose.
And marriage itself never
destroys anything. Marriage simply brings out
whatsoever is hidden in you -- it brings it
out. If love is hidden inside you, marriage
brings it out. If love was just a pretension,
just a bait, then sooner or later it has to
disappear. And then your reality, your ugly
personality comes up. Marriage simply is an
opportunity, so whatsoever you had within you
will come out.
Love is not destroyed by
marriage. Love is destroyed by people who
don't know how to love. Love is destroyed
because in the first place love is not, you
have been living in a dream. Reality destroys
that dream. Otherwise love is something
eternal, part of eternity. If you grow, if you
know the art and you accept the realities of
love life, then it goes on growing every day.
Marriage becomes a tremendous opportunity to
grow into love.
Nothing can destroy love.
If it is there, it goes on growing. But my
feeling is that in most cases it is not there
in the first place. You misunderstood
yourself, something else was there -- maybe
sex was there, sex appeal was there. Then it
is going to be destroyed because once you have
made love to a woman then the sex appeal
disappears. Sex appeal is only with the
unknown -- once you have tasted the body of
the woman or the man, then the sex appeal
disappears. If your love was only sex appeal,
then it is bound to disappear.
So never misunderstand love
for something else. If love is really love...
What do I mean when I say "really
love"? I mean that just being in the
presence of the other you feel suddenly happy,
just being together you feel ecstatic, just
the very presence of the other fulfills
something deep in your heart... something
starts singing in your heart, you fall into
harmony. Just the very presence of the other
helps you to be together; you become more
individual, more centered, more grounded. Then
it is love.
Love is not a passion, love
is not an emotion. Love is a very deep
understanding that somebody somehow completes
you. Somebody makes you a full circle. The
presence of the other enhances your presence.
Love gives freedom to be yourself; it is not
possessiveness.
So, watch -- never think of
sex as love, otherwise you will be deceived.
Be alert, and when you start feeling with
someone that just the presence, the pure
presence -- nothing else, nothing else is
needed; you don't ask anything, just the
presence, just that the other is -- is enough
to make you happy... Something starts
flowering within you, a thousand and one
lotuses bloom, then you are in love. And then
you can pass through all the difficulties that
reality creates. Many anguishes, many
anxieties -- you will be able to pass through
all of them and your love will be flowering
more and more, because all those situations
will become challenges. And your love, by
overcoming them, will grow more and more
strong.
Love is eternity. If it is
there, then it goes on growing and growing.
Love knows the beginning but does not know the
end.
 This article was
excerpted with permission from
"Maturity:
The Responsibility of Being Oneself"
by
Osho.
Published by St. Martin's Press, NY. ©1999 Osho International Foundation. All rights reserved.
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About The
Author
This
article has been excerpted, with permission, from "Maturity: The
Responsibility of Being Oneself" by Osho, who is one of the
best-known and most provocative spiritual teachers of the twentieth
century. For
more information, visit www.osho.com
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