I'm reading "Letters to a Young Poet" which is the letters of Rainer M. Rilke to young Mr. Kappus; and in this collection of thoughts on Life, The Universe, and Whatnot the poet Rilke lays out some of his life experience to Mr. Kappus which he feels might balm his youthful feelings of inadequacy.
In my own experience of love I find it to be convoluted, difficult, and a treasure to be born in its weight and its beauty. It's imperfect, and confounding. It's unreasonable, which is why I feel it's important to relate this passage from Rilke's work, because here is a man from over a century ago who gets what it is like to try and embark consciously on the path of love with another wholly separate human being. He says,
..."but this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment...: And what can happen then? What life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come..."
He goes on to say that through each encounter with love do we find our selves, and these selves are alien, and that when we encounter them they require moments of solitude in order to perceive them.
These moments of solitude are not so much selfish and "navel gazing" as much as coming to terms with the suchness of one's own nascent and developing self, which is huge and seeking wholeness: seeking its entirety.
What Rilke is advocating is that, when two lovers come together and seek unification through their mutual suchness, is that each lover respects and understands that coming to terms with one's own self is an arduous and multifaceted task that is not accomplished in the fleeting moments of our youth.
What Rilke is advocating is that love can be true if lover allow each other the necessary moments of solitude to discover erupting peculiarites of self-dom.
What I glean from this assertion and can relate to my own life experience is that lovers must be able to allow each other to grow, and this growth will entail times of solitude away from the relationship: it is necessary to be separate and to feel what it is like to be one's own self. It is a great, delicious fruit which ones brings back from these meditations: for two beings, seeking completion unto themselves to meet again and seek unity in their own fullness (found in their own paths of self-discovery), is gracious, poignant, and a mature way to approach the difficult task of relating in a path that lead to marriage (which means: for the rest of your life).
It isn't wise to rush it. It isn't smart to know what to expect. It isn't going to be easy, and it definitely isn't a "done deal". What is marriage, anymore, anyway? It is, as always, a state-sanctioned economic partnership, and in that light: why rush it when a month can change moods most drastically?