Reading Notebook #33: Marriage Is About Solitude

I have my friend Nath to thank for this, who sent me a book in the mail with no note, only passages highlighted. From Rilke On Love and Other Difficulties:

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. … It does not occur to anyone to expect a single person to be "happy,"—but if he marries, people are much surprised if he isn't! (And for that matter it really isn't at all important to be happy, whether single or married.) Marriage is, in many respects, a simplification of one's way of life. … Marriage is … a questioning of the strength of and generosity of each partner and a great new danger for both.

… a good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude, and shows him this confidence, the greatest in his power to bestow. A togetherness between two people is an impossibility, and where it seems, nevertheless, to exist, it is a narrowing, a reciprocal agreement which robs either one party or both of his fullest freedom and development. But, once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes is possible for each other to see the other whole and against a wide sky!