Bahá'í Faith/Spouse Selection/Character
IV. Character edit
Questions to ask yourself and your potential spouse: edit
What are your goals in life?
What is your purpose and mission in life?
What are the values and principles by which you live?
How do you live your life?
What do you believe about reality, human nature and relationships, especially marriage and family?
How do you resolve conflicts and deal with difficulties?
Are your views of what are truth, beauty and good similar?
How much do you wish to and are willing to accommodate or adjust to your spouse’s views and character?
Do you bring out the best in one another and will your marriage assist you each fully develop your good qualities?
Introduction edit
Character is the most important individual variable for determining if your union will be successful. Character is who we are. It is our nature, individuality, personality, disposition, temperament, spirit, quality, make up and moral fiber. There are two aspects of our characters: our individuality or basic natures that are given us at birth and develop over time, and our personalities that are acquired characteristics resulting primarily from our environment. Our individuality and personality are formed through interaction with our environment. Though our basic innate natures do not change, our development and refinement of them expresses itself in different ways culturally and can unfold throughout our lifetimes. It is important to find a character that is compatible with yours. Compatibility is related to likeness, but like male and female, some differences are needed and make healthy combinations, much like genetic diversity can lead to richer and stronger creations.
Campbell and Bond (1982) suggest the following factors, from most influential to least, as major factors in character: heredity, early childhood experience, modeling by important adults and older youth, peer influence, the general physical and social environment, the communications media, what is taught in the schools and other institutions, and specific situations and roles that elicit corresponding behavior. Parents play a vital role in the development of their children’s characters. The character children develop in their early years will have an effect on them for the rest of their lives. Signs of our character are manifested in early childhood and are well formed by puberty. After puberty the character can be refined and reformed, but with much effort and generally only through the will of the individuals themselves. Maturity develops over time and experience, but character is a stable trait. If you chose someone to marry who is immature in some ways, you can reasonably expect that gradually they will develop greater maturity. If you chose someone who has a bad or deficient character, it is unreasonable to expect him or her to change much.
It is not your responsibility to change another person’s character, nor should an individual enter into a marital relationship thinking they will be able to do so. Your primary task on which you need to focus all your energy is to perfect your own character and allow your spouse to perfect his or her own. Trying to correct one another’s character is a prescription for disunity and failure. If you cannot overlook the failings and faults of your partner, and you choose to marry them, you are sentencing yourself to a life of needless distress and suffering.
When you are marrying a person, in many ways you are also marrying that person’s family and the influences that family has and will continue to have on your spouse and you. Knowing a person’s background can tell you something of their characters, as our parents and our family life greatly influence our natures and attitudes about marriage, family, responsibility, relationships and self. Our experiences and perceptions are weighed against existing knowledge and values in ways that may either enhance or harm a relationship. Our interpretations will be based on our background knowledge and values.
Character is based on values, but also involves how we live them. There is a difference between your character and your beliefs. Someone might have good beliefs and a bad character. Use deeds not words as your measure when assessing character. You must do a thorough survey of both your own and your partner’s characters with the goal of knowing your true natures. Seek others input, but you yourself must do the necessary exploration needed to know your dispositions and characters and if they are a good match.
It is vital to study and become thoroughly acquainted with one another’s’ characters, which requires spending time together in many varied and challenging circumstances. To be in situations that resemble the tests and circumstances of marriage will help to see how you each deal with them.
You will be sharing your ideas and inculcating your children with your worldviews and your ideas of good, truth and beauty. For harmony to exist, it is important that you respect one another’s views. Many couples do not know each other’s views of reality before they get married and when they find out in the marriage as they surely will, they find they not only do not respect but cannot accept the others views which reflect their character. Then they must either reconcile these differences, learn to live with them or divorce. As character does not normally change easily, quickly and without effort; making such adjustments are usually difficult and a strain on the relationship. It is better to find someone with whom to live your life whose company, companionship, friendship and nature you like, than to spend your days with someone whose person you cannot accept or even disdain. You cannot know everything about each other, but you should know the basics.
Even if you find a mate who only wants to please you and is willing to sacrifice their identities to do the things you want to do the way you want to do them and be they way you want them to be, their characters will still be there and will manifest themselves in many subtle but real ways. Not only is this not likely, though a still cherished fantasy of many, it does not work. Eventually the person either grows up and becomes someone different from the one you married and wanted, or you grow up and find such a relationship, though satisfying on an immature egotistical level, does not bring the happiness you sought. If neither of you grow, then you will continue to maintain an unhealthy relationship for both of you that feeds each of your pathologies, and which will infect your children on some level.
Beauty, good and truth each have subjective (intrapersonal), inter-subjective (group, interpersonal) and objective (verifiable) aspects. Beauty is primarily a subjective view, the good is primarily inter-subjective and truth primarily objective. It is important that you have an acceptable level of agreement in these areas. As you go through life these factors will take on greater importance and define who we are and want to be. The younger a person is, generally the easier it is to make these changes, though some people are more open and amenable to change than others.
Character can be considered using the same categories as maturity and attraction. We all have strengths and weaknesses among and within the categories of maturity, attraction and character. Sometimes it is helpful if one person is strong where the other person is weak so that they can balance and use each other’s strengths. If one knows a lot about some areas of life and the other knows a lot about different areas, and if one person is good at handling certain situations and the other is good at different situations, together they can know and do more. This will and should happen no matter how similar you may be. The important thing is that there is some equity, or at least perceived equity, in the distribution of these resources between the couple. One may be stronger in this area and the other stronger in that, but overall you have equal strengths. This equity forms the foundation for justice, unity, peace, harmony and well-being in the marriage.
If one partner is clearly generally stronger than the other, an imbalance exists that is the foundation of an unstable and unhealthy marriage. This had been the foundation of the marriage for much of history—the man was to be superior to the woman. The man was to be physically-materially and psychologically-intellectually stronger than the woman, but it was allowed, and often expected, that the woman would be stronger in the social-emotional and the spiritual-moral categories. As physical strength and generally male ways of thinking and feeling were more valued by earlier societies, the males and male values were given a predominant role in marriage and families. This was accepted in those cultures.
The world is experiencing a major shift in values from male dominated toward a balance of male and female. This shift is and will continue to have a dramatic impact on marriages and families, where these values and roles are played out most fundamentally and intimately. More and more one can and should expect equity in marriages to be the healthy and accepted standard. Again that equity does not and cannot mean sameness or equality of capacities and functions, rather equity in overall contributions, rights, privileges and opportunities. More and more will be expected in marriages as societies around the world move more toward a balance of the masculine and the feminine in individual consciousness, culture and society.
Physical-Material edit
Do they have the physical nature and constitution you desire? Do you share similar physical and material values and live comparably similar physical and material lives? Do your families share similar physical and material values and live comparably similar physical and material lives?
We have different values of physical attractiveness, comfort, sex, economics and material possessions. Consider each of these aspects from a personal, interpersonal and verifiable perspective. For example, you both may say you value those things equally but your subjective idea of them differs greatly from your objective description of them. You may both agree that comfort, sex, wealth and material possessions are important to you and that you want a lot of each in your marriage, but when you objectively describe what you subjectively mean, you have very different and incompatible ideas. The physical-material realm is the area that most allows an objective view—use it. You can fairly accurately describe your physical-material values of what is true, good and beautiful to you in objective terms. How much money do you want to make? How many times a week do you wish to have sex? What physical things bring you comfort? What does the style of life you wish to lead look like?
Psychological-Intellectual edit
Do you have similar or compatible psychological and intellectual capacities, values and traits? Your families?
Objective data about your partner’s psychological and intellectual character is worth obtaining beforehand. If you do not do so before you get married, you will be presented with plenty of it during your marriage. You of course will rely on your subjective judgments, but getting some inter-subjective and objective judgments can only help to develop a more accurate and honest picture. What do reliable others and standardized measures say about both you and your partner? Do they match up with your personal judgment? Are you comfortable with them or do you try to explain them away? Do your personality types match? Do you find each other’s psychological profile attractive? Seek some kind of counseling or outside advice before getting married. No one is perfectly perfect. We all suffer from some psychological or mental deficiencies that will impact on the marriage. Some may have serious enough problems to preclude the possibility of a successful marriage. Many of these problems can be successfully treated, but a sign of maturity and character is an awareness of the limitations that these deficiencies will impose on being happily married. A good marriage can assist one to deal with and overcome some of these conditions. If serious conditions exist, one should get the advice of a medical or psychological expert to help in making your decision.
Social-Emotional edit
Do you have similar or compatible social and emotional capacities, values and traits? Your families? Do you encourage one another? What does love look like?
Your dispositions toward service will be an important consideration. Childhood environments that model successful marriage and family life set the stage for positive transfer of that learning to those children’s own marriage and family. Attitudes, emotions, values, roles and patterns can be transferred, often unconsciously, to the new situation. What emotions do you feel? What activates your emotions? How do you express your emotions? What emotion do you feel uncomfortable with? Are you an introvert or extrovert? Do you get energy from being with people or does that take energy from you? What social situations do you like and dislike? How do you each react in various social and emotional situations? What objective data do you have to support your answers?
The closer your ideas and values about social conduct and appropriateness, the more likely you will find the other acceptable and valued. Finding a partner who views these ideals similarly will engender greater love and unity in the family. The concepts of independence, autonomy, unity, healthy relationships, courtesy, equity and justice need to be explored. Justice, fair-mindedness and trustworthiness are essential elements in any successful relationship.
Spiritual-Moral edit
Do you have similar or compatible moral and spiritual capacities, values and traits? Your families? What do you value most? What criteria and processes do you use to make ethical judgments?
Our thoughts, feelings and actions related to questions of beauty, religion, spirituality and morality are part of our characters. Being compatible and united on these issues has far-reaching effects on the marriage and family. It allows you to understand and encourage your partner’s spiritual and moral characteristics and qualities. What are your religious beliefs? What do you do every day that reflects your spiritual-moral principles? What objective data is there to support you spiritual-moral beliefs? What does spiritual and moral look like to you?