I suspect most women take these quizzes only half-seriously, but their popularity reveals a hunger for guidance in matters of the heart. I know there have been times when I've wished for clear instructions, even a numerical score rating a relationship's potential. Gradually I've learned that instead of outside authorities (whether girlfriends or self-help authors), my own inner voice is the best source of romantic guidance.

This voice, which some call the God within, knows when a relationship is right and when I'm just kidding myself. Yet sorting though insecurities and social pressures to hear the inner guide can be particularly challenging in the realm of romantic love, making us wish for the simplicity of a multiple-choice quiz.

"God told me to marry Peter," laughed Bridgette, recalling her courtship with her husband. "The only problem was, God forgot to tell Peter." Bridgette's comment, amusing several years after their wedding, reveals the painful challenge of practicing discernment with another. When one person feels certain that a relationship is "meant to be" and the other doesn't, it raises profound questions about our ability to distinguish our own desires from the guidance of a Sacred Source.

I became personally interested in these questions several years ago when, as a single 31-year-old, I began to feel deeply drawn toward the prospect of partnership. Did this feeling come from a divine nudge, I wondered, or from social pressure and fear of the biological clock? How could I know if marriage was meant to be my spiritual path? Would God let me know when I met the right person?

As a Quaker, I believe divine guidance is available to everyone through that quiet voice deep within us. Some define it as listening for God's will, while others think of it as following their deepest, truest selves. Although much has been written about discerning the voice of the true inner guide, I have found little in the literature that addresses the particular challenges of applying spiritual discernment to romantic love. While searching my own experience for clues, I began interviewing women and men who had struggled with similar issues.

Renee, a 36-year-old writer devoted to spiritual seeking, observes, "Relationship issues — who to get involved with, whether or not to have sex with someone, whether or not to get married — were the issues in my life which were used to teach me discernment. Those were crucial decisions which I knew I couldn't make just with logic and analysis, as I had been taught. They had to be decisions of the heart as well, so I started paying attention to my feelings and intuition." For example, as a college freshman, Renee had to choose which of two suitors would become her first boyfriend. Although she liked both men, she was hit by a strong feeling that she should choose Evan, a decision that would later be supported by hindsight. Renee recalls that this was the first time in her life she made a decision based on intuition rather than logic.

Many people never learn to trust their intuition. We are taught by our culture to value rational analysis over the promptings of our hearts. We are taught to value busy-ness and productivity over the slow, quiet practices that help to strengthen our inner voice, such as prayer, meditation, devotional reading, or dream interpretation. Even in romance, we are taught to pursue self-interest rather than some greater good.

These attitudes are exemplified by books like How to Marry the Man of Your Choice, How to Get Married in a Year or Less, and How to Marry the Rich, to name just a few. Most such books advocate the shopping approach to courtship: make a list of what you're looking for in a partner, then go shop around. As one courtship manual puts it, "The trick is to have such a clear assessment of the package you are buying that you can feel confident you got the better deal on balance." This approach to romance, where we simply try to get the best deal possible, is surprisingly prevalent in our popular culture.

Applying discernment to romantic relationships requires us to let go of shopping lists and rigid ideas about what we want. For me, it meant letting go of the belief that I could make a man fall in love with me by being sweet, clever, and entertaining enough. Before I could freely discern a call to marriage, I needed to accept the idea that I might not ever marry. I needed to trust that my emotional needs would be met if I allowed God to surprise me.

This type of trust is always difficult, but I believe it is particularly so in the vulnerable arena of love. Since heterosexual marriage is still the conventional choice, a person who remains single may feel left out of the norm, awkward at dinner parties where guests come in twos, uncomfortable with inquiries about her single status. These feelings may be compounded by a desire for children and fear of the biological clock. A person attracted to the same sex will have an extra load of cultural baggage to sort through when considering romantic partnership. In order to hear the God within, we may first need to deal with the voices around us demanding social conformity.

Discernment also requires distinguishing our passing passions from the deeper truths of our hearts. Frankly, I find discernment more difficult when it comes to men, as if my inner compass gets pulled off course by the presence of a magnet. The tug of sexual attraction can be strong, and it is tempting to assume that such emotion must be divinely inspired. Even more than in other matters, I need to be patient in romantic discernment, to wait and listen through the trumpets and cymbals which accompany a new infatuation.

The "Some Enchanted Evening" view of love — the idea that someday we'll see a stranger across a crowded room and know instantly that we're destined to be together — is a popular feature of Hollywood romantic films. For those who believe in a spiritual realm, the idea that we'll have an unmistakable mystical experience when we meet our soul mate is an attractive alternative to the calculated consumerism of the courtship manuals. But I believe there is a danger in equating destiny with instant attraction. Attraction that comes with lightning speed could be a sign from heaven, but isn't necessarily. I know people with strong spiritual partnerships who felt instantly bonded and others for whom love grew slowly, barely noticed. However quick the connection, it takes time and patience to discern the form a relationship should take.

In discerning a call to marriage, whether or not the other person feels called in the same way is ultimately part of the test, although two people may not reach clarity at the same time. Bridgette says that when she met Peter, "It was almost like I was being told, and I knew on this level that I was going to marry him." Peter did not share her sense of knowing, even after they moved in together, but Bridgette's clear intuition about their future helped her to be patient during their five years of courtship. "Mostly I was OK about waiting for him to decide that he was ready," says Bridgette, explaining that she had "a lot of trust and faith" that someday they would marry.

Many spiritual teachers point out that peace is a sign of true discernment. When our clarity is accompanied by calm patience, rather than anxious striving, this may indicate that we have heard our call correctly. Patience is a virtue particularly extolled by Quakers, who often suggest waiting as a way to test the difference between impulsiveness and authentic discernment.

In contrast, patience and trust are often discouraged by the relationship "experts" promoted in the popular media. Talk shows encourage women to give on-the-air ultimatums to their commitment-shy boyfriends. Magazines offer hints on how to elicit a proposal. "It only takes three months of regular dating or so to get to know someone well," asserts How to Get Married in a Year or Less. "After a certain point it is 'go' or 'no go’." The book assumes that marriage is our goal and anything short of a waltz down the aisle is a waste of time.

If throwing the bridal bouquet is our ambition, pressuring someone into a hasty marriage may get us what we want. But if we hope for a loving relationship mutually discerned, we need to let go of specific goals and the determination to impose our will on another. Like an unfolding butterfly or a blooming flower, love cannot be rushed. A person pressured into premature commitment will feel resentment swell years later during an argument over the checkbook. The person who did the pressuring will harbor doubts that his or her partner ever really wanted to marry. To create a mutual, loving relationship, our decisionmaking must also be mutual and loving. The ends and the means are inseparable.

While many spiritual traditions teach individual discernment, Quakers — also known as Friends — have a rich history of collective discernment. Community business is decided during a "meeting for worship for the conduct of business" based on the belief that divine guidance is available and that if each person seeks to be open to the Spirit, we will eventually be able to find unity on even the stickiest issues.

"Eventually" is an important word here, because it can take years of discussion and struggle before unity is found. Through trust, listening, and patience, and with a good clerk to facilitate the process, Friends believe people can put their individual egos and agendas aside to hear a greater truth.

Recognizing the fallibility of individual discernment, Friends often use collective discernment to corroborate an individual's clearness. A person who feels a leading may ask for a "clearness committee," a group of discerners who, through prayerful listening and supportive questioning, help the person sort out whether the leading is really of God. Meeting with a clearness committee is also part of the process of seeking a Quaker wedding. In some cases, the rightness of the marriage is clear to everyone, and the committee's questions serve as marriage preparation. In other cases, the clearness committee provides a space to seriously question whether or not the couple should wed.

What happens when two people — each listening for God's call — hear conflicting answers? "There's a Quaker answer," replies Rebecca, a Quaker teacher of religion. "You wait. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in that process. Even Quakers today place so much emphasis on the individual, I'm not sure we're really willing to practice waiting and mutual discernment."

Rebecca recalls that 21 years ago, when she and Stuart were preparing to marry in a Quaker meeting (or congregation), their clearness committee had concerns about their readiness and asked them to wait. "I allowed it to push me into my desperate place," she says. "I wanted this so badly I had to have it, and I think Stuart, in a sense, acquiesced." Rebecca believes that her impatience, as well as Stuart's reluctance to acknowledge his reservations, had dangerous consequences for their marriage. "Waiting is part of mutuality," she says, "and speaking honestly is the other part of mutuality. Every one of those little resistances needs to be trusted, every one, just to be brought up into the open waiting, without needing to do anything at first but genuinely hear them."

Acknowledging reservations, our own and our partner's, may be an important part of discerning a call to marriage. We may not feel peace and clarity until we listen to our anxieties and insecurities and sift through what they have to teach us. If we trust that God is at work and that peace will come in time, we can learn to trust the process. By speaking honestly, listening nondefensively and waiting patiently, we help create the space where God's love can reveal itself.

Hearing our partner's reservations about marriage can be painful, however. When we open ourselves to partnership with another, we make ourselves more vulnerable than in most other types of discernment. Allowing fears and doubts to surface in a relationship may feel like dancing on the edge of a cliff. Yet only by listening to both people's reservations can we discover if they are temporary growing pains or serious warnings.

If concerns persist and we feel led to say no to the possibility of partnership, we may still feel a sense of clarity and peace about our decision. A few years ago, when she was in her late thirties, Helen struggled to discern her future with Carl, a man she deeply loved. Helen very much wanted to marry and have children, and Carl was the first man she ever seriously considered marrying. Although they greatly enjoyed each other's company, they had very different values, and Carl didn't share Helen's sense of spirituality. "We did so well together that it was hard to figure out if our very different values were that big a deal," she explains.

Eventually it became clear that values were a big deal. On a New Year's Day walk with Carl, Helen felt the words come to her clearly and strongly: "This has to be it. We can't do this." Helen says the breakup wasn't that painful for either one of them because they had reached the same conclusion. "The words came to me," she recalls, "but either one of us could have said it, because we were that close to discerning where we were." With hindsight, Helen notes that during her relationship with Carl, she drifted away from her faith community: "It wasn't until after that relationship was over that I could see how it pulled me away from my own spirituality."

Helen's story is a reminder that not all loving relationships are meant to be lifelong. An old song claims that "every happy plot ends in the marriage knot," but we must shake this assumption in order to listen with openness to the guidance that emerges from within.

Being willing to say "no" to marriage may be especially difficult when our partner has proposed. We may feel loved and validated, knowing someone wants to marry us. We may feel that rejecting a proposal would be cruel or unloving. We may fear this is our "last chance" before the biological clock hits midnight. Accepting our partner's "no" is not any easier. Because we feel so vulnerable when making this decision, we may not come to mutual clarity as smoothly as Helen and Carl. Saying "no" to the possibility of marriage, even when we feel clear that it is the right thing to do, may cause pain and sadness.

Mutual discernment can move quickly or slowly, with ease or with struggle. It is a process as unique as each couple, so there is no model of how to discern the form a relationship should take. For me, the call to marriage emerged gradually, growing from a friendship which was initially platonic. My meeting with Tom was not like a bolt of lightning, an electric flash of recognition. It was like a seed hidden in the soil that only showed signs of life months later. When that seed began to sprout, I felt a calm sense of rightness about it. Unlike in past relationships, I did not feel a need to impress him with my superior qualifications as a girlfriend. Predicting our future was not a constant source of distraction. Instead I felt a growing sureness that our relationship was moving toward the commitment of marriage.

I felt this intuition several months before Tom did, but I trusted that if we were really being led to marry, then Tom would feel the same when the time was right. When, after returning from a weekend silent retreat, he announced that he was getting "really ready," I realized that I still had my own anxieties to work through which I had overlooked while waiting for him to sort through his issues. I had a series of dreams in which I said good-bye to men from my past — letting go of other romantic possibilities as well as the places and lifestyles these men represented in my imagination.

Tom, who is Roman Catholic, suggested that we make Lent a special time to hold our decision in daily prayer. At the end of the 40-day season, if we felt clear about doing so, we would get engaged on Holy Saturday and tell our families on Easter Sunday. This nonbinding deadline turned out to be very helpful. We had a period of time to test our commitment to each other (one of the functions of engagement) before people started asking, "When's the wedding?" and "What are you going to wear?" On Holy Saturday, after a day-long retreat at a local Catholic monastery, we proposed to each other and exchanged engagement presents. Then we celebrated Easter.

Although the day we got engaged was special and important, it was just one in a series of steps. Meeting with a clearness committee from the local Quaker meeting strengthened our sense that we were moving in the right direction. Meeting a wider circle of each other's family and friends did the same. Gathering people for our wedding ceremony and making vows in their presence were integral steps in the transformation, although our wedding was in no way the end of the journey. I don't feel that I got married one sunny August day; I feel I became married over a period of months. Our wedding was not the end of our mutual discernment; it was a commitment to continue practicing mutual discernment as we make decisions about our unfolding lives together.

Inward listening is an art, not a science, and it may never be possible to prove that we have heard a call correctly. There are no quiz scores to validate our decisions, no experts to assure us that we've got it right. But when two people practice this art together, there are times when their individual discernment flows together with a sense of peaceful rightness. They are like two musicians, each playing their own part of a duet. They do not play the same notes at the same time, but by playing in sync to the same deep rhythm, they create a harmony more beautiful than either could have created alone.

Eileen Flanagan is a freelance writer, a workshop leader, and a former staff member of Pendle Hill, a Quaker study center outside Philadelphia. Her book Listen With Your Heart: Seeking the Sacred in Romantic Love has been published by Warner Books.
For more on corporate discernment in Quaker practice, see Michael J. Sheeran, Beyond Majority Rule (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, 1983); Barry Morley, Beyond Consensus: Salvaging the Sense of the Meeting, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 307 (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill Publications, 1993); and Patricia Loring, Spiritual Discernment, Pendle Hill Pamphlet 305 (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill Publications, 1992).




From Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Inner Traditions, no. 43 (Spring 1997). Used by arrangement with Gnosis and the author.
Copyright © 1997 by Eileen Flanagan

http://www.eileenflanagan.com