them there for a time. When they would retrieve them, the branches would be covered with a shining layer of diamond-like crystals that shimmered in the light. Stendhal said that enchanted lovers crystallize each other in this way, their adoring eyes scattering diamonds on every virtue of the beloved.
The more they idealize each other at this phase, the more lasting their marriage is likely to be in the decades to come. Love relies a bit on generous idealizations. Judith Wallerstein, the marriage counselor, observes, “Many of the divorced couples I’ve seen appear to have never idealized each other. I’ve learned to ask myself about a divorcing couple (obviously I can’t ask it directly), was there ever a marriage here? Was there ever love, joy, hope, or idealization in this relationship? Often, I’m hard put to find it. Divorce does not always represent an erosion of love or high expectations; in many cases the expectations weren’t high enough. Idealization of the other is part of every happy marriage.”
The combustion eventually reorients everything.
“There is a lovely disarray that comes with attraction,” John O’Donohue writes.
When you find yourself deeply attracted to someone, you gradually begin to lose your grip on the frames that order your life. Indeed, much of your life becomes blurred as that countenance comes into clearer focus. A relentless magnet draws all your thoughts toward it. Wherever you are, you find yourself thinking about the one who has become the horizon of your longing. When you are together, time becomes unmercifully swift. It always ends too soon. No sooner have you parted than you are already imagining your next meeting, counting the hours. The magnetic draw of that presence renders you delightfully helpless. A stranger you never knew until recently has invaded your mind; every fibre of your being longs to be closer.
Combustion is the phase when you finally see the other person at full depth. Not the way others see, but the way only you can see. He is just sitting at the table, paying the family bills, and you pause with your loving eyes and you see him tenderly, with all his goodness. She is just coming into the living room, home from work, her hair a little frazzled, juggling a dozen bags and things, and she looks up in the doorway, outlined by the light behind her, her mouth half open expectantly, and you just think—I saw you. I saw all the way through.
THE LEAP
At some point in any serious journey toward intimacy, somebody has to take the leap. The act of faith was beautifully captured by W. H. Auden:
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
….
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
Eventually you take a look at the other person in front of you, you consider the possibility of being without that person, and you take a leap. You declare your love. You have the relationship-defining talk. You two are now in the deep water.
Lots of big and small decisions that were once “I” decisions become “we” decisions—even the smallish ones—what movie to see, how to spend your weekends. Independence is replaced by dependence.
You are also adopting a role—boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, whatever you want to call it—that comes with responsibilities. The chief responsibility is to care for the other above yourself. This layer of intimacy is not about warm feelings; it’s about unselfish actions. When the American writer Sheldon Vanauken fell in love with Davy, the woman who would become his wife, they adopted a mutual code of courtesy. “Courtesy” is a word that has lost its meaning, especially as the daily currency of love, but for the Vanaukens it meant that whatever one person asked of the other, the other would do. “Thus one might wake the other in the night and ask for a cup of water; and the other would peacefully (and sleepily) fetch it. We, in fact, defined courtesy as ‘a cup of water in the night.’ And we considered it a very great courtesy to ask for the cup as well as to fetch it.”
CRISIS
Obviously, this is now the time to have a fight.
This phase of intimacy is the perfect moment for a gigantic crisis. You have been around each other long enough to reveal your natural