The Marriage Creed
- Comfort each other: Provide a refuge and sanctuary for each other from the chill winds of the world. Your marriage is a hearth from whence comes the peace, harmony and warmth of soul and spirit.
- Caress as you would be caressed: Warm your loved one’s body with your healing touch. Remember, as babies can die with lack of touching, so marriages can wither from lack of closeness.
- Be a friend and partner: Friendship can be a peaceful island separate and apart in a world of turmoil and strife. Reflect upon the tranquillity of the many future years you can share with a true friend and beware of becoming battling enemies under the same roof.
- Be open with each other: Bind not yourselves in the secretness that causes suspicion and doubt. Trust and reveal yourselves to each other even as the budding rose opens to reveal its fragrance and beauty.
- Listen to each other: And hear not only words but also the non-language of tone, mood and expression. Learn to listen to understand rather than listening to argue.
- Respect each other’s rights: Remember that each is a person of flesh and blood entitled to his own choices and mistakes. Each has the right to equality.
- Allow the other to be an individual: Seek not to create for each other a new mould that can only fit with much discomfort and pain. Accept the other as he or she is as you would have accepted yourself.
- Give each other approval: Remember criticism divides while compliments encourage confidence in the other. Hasten not to point out the other’s mistakes for each will soon discover his or her own.
- Cherish your union: Let no one come between your togetherness, not child not friend not worldly goods. You maintain enough separateness to allow each other his or her uniqueness.
- Love one another: Love is your river of life- your eternal source of recreating yourselves. Above all else – love one another.
Courtesy ’ Family ‘ (1982–2004), A publication from the community known as The Family International. Used with permission