Self-Marriage

What is self-marriage? (I almost called it "autohymenation", but that would have been pretentious and unhelpful.)

I have a theory that everyone wants - indeed, needs - to marry themselves in some sense. It is often worked out literally; tests have been done, I'm told, in which a number of photographs were distributed to volunteers, who very accurately matched them up into married couples, purely on the basis of appearance. People tend to marry people who are a little different, but not too different, from themselves.

Even more extreme is the phenomenon a homosexual friend tells me of (mentioned also in the novel Microserfs), in which homosexuals find partners who look very much like them - fulfilling the legend of Narcissus, the beautiful Greek youth who fell in love with his own reflection (in saying this, I'm not accusing them of "narcissism" in the sense it has now gained). It seems to me that they are looking for an external self to love. (It's only fair to say that my friend disagrees and says I don't understand.)

This is the physical side. We all know, too, the psychological side; and here, often, it can look as if the reverse is happening. People find somebody completely unlike themselves to marry; "opposites attract". Capable women marry hopeless men. Geniuses marry airheads. Introverts marry extraverts. Why is this?

Self-completion

I believe that it is because of the basic principle of self-marriage: People seek to complete themselves. The mythology of our culture is that this should be done through finding a partner who is complementary to our strengths and weaknesses. I personally strive to resist this mythology, holding that "one is a whole number" (as the phrase is). At the same time, I appreciate the qualities in my wife which are complementary to mine.

Jungian psychology talks about the rediscovery of the feminine (anima) in men and the masculine (animus) in women. To be whole, the Jungians say, we need to acknowledge and incorporate the qualities of the other gender within ourselves.

I think this is true. It's also a concept older than Jung, who drew it from the study of alchemy. For example, in Robertson Davies' brilliant novel, What's Bred in the Bone, his main character (who has partially succeeded in this) paints a picture which includes a wedding of a couple who resemble each other (and the artist) closely. Another character interprets this as the "alchemical marriage" of the male and female elements of the soul, one of the higher aims of medieval alchemy. (An interesting sidelight is that the painter had earlier, and unwisely, married his cousin, who had the same "family face" as he did; he also used to look at himself in a mirror, as a boy, dressed in feminine style and moving in imitation of a female impersonator he had seen - though he was never homosexual; many cross-dressers are not.)

I have, myself, a number of traditionally "feminine" qualities, which may be why I have so many female friends. For example, I have always been fond of flowers since I was a small child. I remember in my first year of high school, we were learning the basics of "research" in history class, and had to bring along personal objects such as photographs so that other class members could draw conclusions about us from them. The girl who looked at my photographs concluded, among other things, that I liked flowers, and somewhat to my surprise I realised she was right. Even as a 13-year-old, though, I wasn't bothered by the realisation, nor have I ever been particularly (emotionally) bothered that I have a number of "feminine" characteristics and am not particularly "masculine" (I am physically weak, for example, and have no interest in sports).

The fact that I had a strong, capable mother and a father who, although mad on sport himself, didn't insist that I be so (and encouraged me in my academic and musical interests, which he shared), no doubt helped with this; I didn't see masculinity purely in physical terms, or femininity as weak and to be despised. I have also never had any strong homosexual feelings, which probably also helped me accept what was "feminine" about me without much emotional conflict.

In short, I consider that I have incorporated my "feminine" soul fairly successfully into an integrated personality. I can be totally comfortable in a group consisting otherwise entirely of women (though they usually talk, and switch topics, too fast for me to contribute much). More than half my friends are women, including several quite close friends. Unlike many men, I have never had any doubt that women are, in fact, human beings (even if rather odd human beings at times), rather than some kind of clever animal which can speak. (This is not generally admitted, but a lot of men certainly act as if they believed this.)

And as all this became true (largely in my late 20s and just beyond), I experienced a marked decrease in my felt need to marry. Certainly I needed women, both because (to use a theological metaphor) their femininity is by nature, and hence greater than mine, which is as it were by grace; and also because it is through friendship with women that I continue to develop my feminine qualities (and masculine qualities, if it comes to that). But I felt much less need than I did for a woman, because in a sense I already carried one around with me. It also made my marriage, when it surprisingly occurred, easier. My wife and I joke that we're atypical of our genders: I listen, and she can read maps.

Christian Note

This is not a note only for Christians, but draws heavily on the story of Adam and Eve.

In that story, we are told that God "created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Genesis chapter 1, verse 27). This has a couple of implications.

Firstly, God's image being both male and female implies that God has both "masculine" and "feminine" traits (though, in part because of the dangers of pagan goddess-worship, which always tended to be accompanied by sexual immorality, the Bible sticks almost exclusively to masculine pronouns for God). A further implication of this (not inevitable, but tenable) is that if we are created in the image of one who is both masculine and feminine, we will also each have aspects of both within us (as in fact seems to be the case).

Later, in the second account of the creation of humans, we are told that Adam (the male) was created from the earth, but Eve (the female) was created from Adam. After searching in vain for an appropriate helper and companion among the animals, Adam was presented with Eve, and cried out in approbation, "Now, this one is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh!" (chapter 2, verse 23). He recognised, in other words, the kinship, the likeness, of Eve to him, and this was what he had sought in vain among the animals.

The Lord God had earlier declared (verse 18) that "it is not good for the man to be alone" - the first "not good" thing recorded in the story. A great deal of nonsense has been drawn from this statement, because people (many of whom were married in their early twenties and don't really understand singleness) take it to mean "it is not good for a man to be single," which is not what it says at all. The word for "alone" means just that: alone. By himself. Solitary. Without a companion. Not in social relationship. It does not mean "unmarried".

While Eve was certainly a marriage partner for Adam, she was more than that. She was a "suitable helper" (the word for "helper" is elsewhere used of God). She was a companion. She was another human being, and there are senses in which her gender was unimportant to the relief of his "alone" status. There are other senses, discussed above, in which her gender definitely was significant - though still separate from the significance of the fact that she was his mate (in the sexual sense).

The problem is that the term "alone" has several dimensions, all of which were addressed by the advent of Eve (and also that "the man" is representative to an undefined degree of all males or all humans); and so the statement "it is not good for the man to be alone" is ambiguous to us. It could mean:

It is not good for the man/humans in general to be without human companionship.
It is not good for the man/males in general to be without female companionship.
It is not good for the man/humans in general to be without a sexual partner.

I would affirm the first two and deny the third (I could be wrong in this, but I don't think so, based on other considerations - see my perhaps over-provocatively titled article Family Idolatry - A New Heresy for the 90s? for why I consider the third interpretation to be not just heretical, but blasphemous).

Incidentally, if either 2 or 3 is true then monasticism is not good, and if any of the three is true then being a hermit is not good. (Celtic monasticism wisely had "double houses", where both men and women lived monastic lifestyles - which did not necessarily exclude marriage. My surname indicates that I am descended from a married Celtic monk.)

Personality Completion

It is not only completion of our masculinity and femininity, though, that we seek in marriage. It is completion of our personalities.

One reason that marrying young is often a bad idea is that young people have not usually developed their personalities fully. They are still largely copies of their parents (however much they would be horrified to be told this), and often marry someone either as much like, or as much unlike, their parent of the opposite sex as possible - or (not necessarily alternatively, because the same dynamic may have operated in the previous generation) someone who has the qualities and abilities they lack.

One of the things which triggered this chapter off was a friend's story of a friend of hers who is married to her personality opposite. She remarked that the friend "used to be such a cut and dried [Myers-Briggs] 'J' person. Her husband is just the opposite - almost to an extreme (from my viewpoint). But it's interesting how it's mellowed her and made her more tolerant of others." As they draw closer to each other, in other words, they tend to become more like each other, less extreme (though it seems the husband is still at an extreme), gaining some of the skills and attitudes of the other person rather than relying on that person to deal with entire areas of life (which can lead to tragic inability to cope when one partner dies).

The problem is that marriages like this are always hard work, and frequently too hard for the people involved. They marry because each has strengths that the other lacks, and together they feel they can be a whole person dealing with the whole of life. If they are fortunate, wise, patient and adaptable, they can end up learning from each other enough to be two whole people dealing with the whole of life, but this is, frankly, unusual. More often, they go through years of conflict (if they stay together), or cycles of splitting and marrying other people who have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses and with whom they interact with exactly the same dynamics.

What I am advocating is that we should become whole enough and strong enough within ourselves to be whole people dealing with the whole of life. Then, if we marry (and we do not need to do so to feel complete) we are two whole people rather than one, and the effect of synergy means that we can achieve more together than separately - because although each is complete enough not to need the other as a crutch, each does have more developed strengths in some areas than the other does.

Qoheleth, the wise man of ancient Israel (who may have been King Solomon), puts it this way: "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up! Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes chapter 4 verses 9 to 12, New International Version.)

Or, in the words of Charles Williams in his novel The Place of the Lion:

Much was possible to a man in solitude, but some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these the most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and bigotry and folly.