Before each of us was born, say the Sages, we were shown, in heaven, the souls of our respective brides and grooms. Now, when you saw the soul of your future husband in the spiritual realms, you were ecstatic. You were witness to an extraordinary spirit, a towering beacon of light, a great personality. You thought to yourself: "For such a husband, I will do anything; I will be there for him in the deepest possible way; I am ready to 'split' for him any day."
Similarly, when you encountered your future bride there in the sublime plane, you were just blown away. What a profound heart! Will I truly have the privilege of building a home with this human being? How will I ever be able to show enough gratitude for the joy of having a relationship with this woman?
Then, you were born. Twenty, 25, 30, 35, 45 years later, you feel an attraction to your spouse, to that soul that once so overwhelmed you. You take a look... But you do not recognize him or her.
"Him? You want me to respect him?" many a woman says. "He is an obnoxious, egotistical, self-centered man."
"Her?" many a man exclaims. "You expect me to appreciate and honor her? A needy and insecure kvetch?"
Many of us fail to recognize in the face and personality of our spouses what we once upon a time saw in their souls. "To match couples together is as difficult as the splitting of the sea," states the Talmud. Marriage is the ability to recognize your true spouse, beneath the layers of "rubble" that may eclipse his or her true dignity and beauty.
A good relationship stems from the understanding that life is a battlefield in which we often stumble and fail and that the beauty and profundity of human life consist not of a continuous stream of light and perfection but, rather, of the light that emerges from amidst darkness, of the serenity that emerges from turmoil, and of the harmony that sprouts forth from strife.
Or as Eliezar ben Nissan Hakohen put it in Anthem: "Forget perfection. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
