But the struggle to become a person and to have a genuine relationship can hold people together, perhaps more effectively than a desire for happiness and unbroken togetherness. I’m not saying that a relationship should be painful but that the happiness sought for might be deep and complex, not superficial and simplistic. Therapists who aim at simple happiness for a couple in their care may either feel frustrated eventually or misguide the couple toward an ideal of superficial togetherness.

There is a kind of happiness in a relationship that does not require constant peace. Disagreements and frustrations don’t have to negate happiness but can give it the shadow necessary to be real and lasting. If a therapist feels she has to help the couple create constant calm, she may be contributing to the problem. She needs a philosophy of relationship that is suitably complicated and cognizant of the shadow.

Tarrant paints a vivid picture of how challenging this can be. In one of my favorite

passages, he puts it like this:

If you are used to living in a small room and suddenly discover a wide meadow, you might feel unsafe. Everyone thinks that they want happiness, but they might not. They might rather keep their stories about who they are and about what is impossible. Happiness is not an add-on to what you already are; it requires you to become a different person from the one who set off seeking it.

Clearly, love is not about making you happy. It is a form of initiation that may radically transform you, making you more of who you are but less of who you have been. If you don’t realize that you are walking on coals and running the gauntlet and surviving the wilderness in quest of a vision—all within the confines of a simple human relationship—you could be undone by it. Love gives you a sense of meaning, but it asks a price. It will make you into the person you are called to be, but only if you endure its pains and allow it to empty you as much as it fills you.

Human marriage is part of a larger process of reconciling differences. It has social and cosmic implications, and, when entered deeply, can even contribute to world peace.