What most people are looking for in a relationship, whether inside or outside of marriage, is someone who is totally attached to them: completely committed and passionately in love.
While we tend to think of detachment negatively, as disinterest, aloofness, or lack of feeling, exactly what we would not want in a relationship, if we look at it in a different way, it is an important virtue in any relationship, whether with God or another human being.
Detachment in most world religions means “inner freedom.” Jesus never used the word but it was implicit in his spirituality: the ability to let go and let God. Detachment is about “not my will, but Thy will be done,” surrendering to the divine, putting your life in God’s hands.
Detachment is a key Buddhist virtue, and Meister Eckhart, the great Christian mystic, believed that in relationship to God, detachment was more foundational than love. We cannot love God fully and unconditionally as long as we are clinging to our ego. Like the rich young man who chose not to give up his wealth and follow Jesus, our ego-attachments can block our love of God.
Detachment is likewise crucial with human relationships. You cannot really love someone if you are attached to your agenda, how they should look or how the relationship or marriage should be. Your list of characteristics of the ideal mate: good-looking, healthy, wealthy, sexy, professional, romantic, etc may prevent you from appreciating someone right in front of you.
The key to any relationship is acceptance, to accept your partner as they are, with all their faults, and to celebrate their differences from you, the things not on your list. Hopefully, they will also be detached from their agenda and accept you as you are with your faults and differences.
The most important thing is to be attached only to God. The first of the biblical Ten Commandments is that we should put God first in all things, nothing should come before God. It is crucial to put God before everything, including human relationships. Then you can exist in the single life, in a relationship, or in marriage in inner freedom.
So many people are stressed-out about their relationships. If they are not in a relationship they are obsessed about when they are going to meet the right person. If they are in a relationship they are obsessed about where it is going or if it is going to end in marriage or not. If they are married they often wish their marriage was better, or wish they were not married at all.
It is very easy to let your attachment to a relationship or marriage get in the way of your relationship with God. I have known people who stopped attending their place of worship or gave up their spiritual practices or compromised their morals and self-esteem and basically sold their soul, all in an attempt to maintain a relationship. At that point the relationship has become an idol, that is, they have put it above their relationship with God.
It is important to do your part to make a relationship or marriage work, but it is far more important to put God first, keep your integrity, not make the other person into an idol, and detach from the outcome. If you let go and let God, the outcome will always be better than if you cling to a relationship out of fear of being alone or some ego-need.
The relationship is going to end at some point anyway. Even if you get married it may end through separation, divorce, or death of your spouse. Besides that, God has called some people to be single, it is not God’s will that they be with someone. God has something greater in mind, some charitable work, social justice project, or mystical marriage, that is, marriage to God.
Bruce Tallman is a London spiritual director and marriage coach. www.brucetallman.com
Intelligent Christian Spirituality 