True Love - G-dly Space

There are two kinds of human love:
1. Intrinsic, calm love; that we feel for people, to whom we're related by birth.
2. The more intimate, fiery love; that exists in marriage.
This is why a husband-wife relationship, is very different, from the parent-child relationship.
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1. The love within a family, between relatives who are born of the same flesh, is innate. The love between a mother and child, a brother and sister, two brothers, two sisters, comes easily. Since they're related by nature, they feel comfortable with each other.

There's an innate closeness between them, so their love is strong, solid, steady, predictable, and calm. There's no distance that has to be bridged; no difference that has to be overcome.

2. The love between a husband and wife, isn't like that. Their love wasn't always there; they didn't always know each other; they weren't always related. No matter how well they get to know one another, they aren't alike.

They are different from each other: physically, emotionally, and mentally. Yet they love each other, in spite of their differences, and also because of them. But there isn't enough of an innate commonality between them, to create a casual, calm love.

Their differences remain, even after they are married; and the love between them, will have to overcome these differences.
After all, husband and wife, were once strangers. A Man, is different from a woman; so in essence, on one level they are strangers. But because of this, the love between them, can never be: casual, consistent, or calm.

This acquired love, is naturally more intense, than the love between brother and sister. When love has to overcome a difference, a distance, an obstacle, it needs energy, to leap across the gap.

This is the energy, of fiery love.
Like the opposite poles of a magnet, positive and negative; the attraction is extremely strong.

Because the gap between husband and wife, will never completely close; their love for each other, will continually have to cross it. There will be a distance, a separation; and then a bridging of distance; and then a coming back together; repeated over and over again.

But specifically, this strong feeling of distance, intensifies their desire to unite. To come together, man and woman, have to overcome certain resistances.

A man has to overcome his resistance to commitment; a woman has to overcome her resistance to intimacy. So, in coming together, husband and wife are reaching across great emotional distances, which in turn intensify their love. The absence of innate love, actually makes, the heart grow fonder.
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1. If a brother and sister were to have a fiery love, their relationship would suffer. This is not the appropriate emotion, for a brother and sister to have. Their love thrives, when it's, unchallenged, constant, and calm. Not that they can't have disagreements, but those disagreements don't disrupt their love.

2. On the other hand, if a husband and wife develop calm love for each other, their relationship will not thrive. If they are too familiar with each other, too comfortable with each other; then like a brother and sister, their love will not flourish. True intimacy in marriage--fiery love--is created, by constant withdrawal and reunion.

If a husband and wife are never separate, their love begins to sour; because they are not creating an environment, appropriate to that love. The environment of constant togetherness, is not conducive to man-woman love: it's the environment for brother-sister love, or parent-child love.
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That's why the ideal blessing for a married couple is, "Your honeymoon should never end." A honeymoon--when two people who were once separate, come together for the first time--should never end; because that's what a marriage thrives on.

The love between a man and a woman, thrives on withdrawal and reunion, separation and coming together. The only way to have an environment conducive to that kind of relationship, is to provide a separation.
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This similar to the difference between a, Baal Teshuvah and a Tzadik.

(A Baal Teshuvah, is an average person, who has to fight to be one with G-d; whereas a Tzadik or Tzadekis (woman), was born a completely holy person. He/she has no Yetzer Hora, their only desire, is to do G-d’s will. They have no lusts or desires, apart from G-d.)

A Tzaddik’s love for G-d, is like that of, parent and child, and brothers and sisters. It is constant and innate. It is strong, solid, steady, predictable, and calm.

But the love of a Baal Teshuvah, is a like the love of a husband and wife. It is a fiery love! And the fire has to be continually fed, or it will die down, into only embers.

There are many kinds of separations. A couple can live in different places, or have differences of opinion; or get into arguments, and be angry at each other. Often, the arguing isn't for the sake of arguing, but for the sake of creating a distance; so that husband and wife then can feel the power, of coming back together.

That's not a very happy solution. Making up after an argument, may be good for a marriage on occasion, but not on a regular basis. It isn't a good idea to go looking for arguments.
The separations, can take a more positive form:

The physical separation given to us by G-d for that purpose, is a much happier solution. That separation is created, by observing a collection of Torah laws (deriving from Leviticus 15), called "the laws of family purity," or "the laws of Mikvah." The word Mikvah refers, to the submersion into special water.

Religious Jewish women, since the days of the Bible: have immersed themselves in a Mikva, following their monthly period, before renewing sexual relations with their husbands.

According to the Torah laws of Mikvah, during the time that a Jewish woman is menstruating, and for one week afterward, she is physically off-limits to her husband.

For those days, the physical separation is total: no touching, no sitting on a swing together, and no sleeping in the same bed. They now have to relate to each other, on a much deeper level, a soul level.
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Through the ages, all sorts of explanations have been given for these laws; but all of them, have one thing in common: Separation protects and nurtures the intimate aspect of marriage, which thrives on withdrawal and reunion.

This understanding is not unique to Jews. In most cultures throughout the world, they practiced varying degrees, of separation between husband and wife, during the woman's menstrual period.

Some, such as certain tribes of American Indians, who had separate tents, where a woman would stay during her period. Later in some cases the reasons for this separation deteriorated into rationalizations, in an attempt to make sense, of a very deep subject.

But separation was such a universal practice, that it may be, that human beings instinctively may know, that male-female love, thrives on withdrawal and reunion, on coming together following a separation.
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So too, regarding the laws of Shmita. For six years in Israel, a farmer works his land; but in the seventh year he must not touch it, (work it).

There must be a separation between him and his land, like the week separation between husband and wife.
For six years his relationship with G-d, (through providing food for himself and his family), is one of faith, a natural, family love.

He had faith, that G-d will provide him with rain, sun, no insects, etc, so that he can harvest enough for all his needs.
But in the seventh year, he now has to separate from the land, and create a marriage relationship with G-d.

The first six years, his relationship with G-d is like a family, constant and innate; but in the seventh year it is distant, it becomes a marriage. Therefore it becomes a fiery, miraculous relationship; breaking the rules of nature, and jumping across the infinite gap, between nature and Creator.

He awaits G-d’s to come back, in an open, fiery manner; for G-d to openly appear to him, and provide enough food for the fallow year, and the following year.
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Like everything else that exists in our lives, the cycle of withdrawal and reunion that exists in marriage, is meant to be a reflection of our relationship with G-d. The two kinds of love, calm love and fiery love, exist not only among human beings, but between ourselves and G-d.

When we refer to G-d as our Father, it's an innate and intrinsic relationship. We don't have to work for it; it's just there. It's a steady, constant love, an indestructible love, a love compared to water-calm love.

But we also talk about how G-d is infinite, and we are finite; G-d is true, and we are not; G-d is everything, and we are barely something. Because of these differences, we feel a great distance from G-d, and the need to create a relationship with Him. Establishing a relationship in spite of the differences, in spite of the distance, is more like a marriage. That's a stormy relationship--fiery love.
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When our soul was above in heaven, our soul loved G-d, like a child loves a parent; because our soul, was part of G-d; like a family relationship. That love, was innate and calm.

But when G-d tells this soul, to go down into a body; that's a separation. After the soul is separated from G-d, and it has to descend into a body; then our soul loves G-d, with a fiery love. This love, is then like the love, between a husband and wife. It not automatic, rather it is distant, intense, and fiery.

Eventually in the times of Moshiach, the soul will be reunited with G-d, infinitely more intimately than before; just as the intimacy between a husband and wife, is deeper, when they come together following a separation.
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Rather than wait for a separation to develop, where a husband and wife get into a fight or lose interest in each other, let’s create a physical, rather than emotional, separation.
Everyone is saying, "I need my space," it's true. When a husband and wife, keep the laws of Mikvah, they create a G-dly space!