"Life is Suffering", is the first noble truth of Gautama Buddha.  Christ speaks of us accepting His "yoke of love".  Neither ever teaches that life is simple, and easy and always fine.

That's the "misery" part.

Human beings don't like being alone.   They often have to be alone, and in a certain existential sense can't not be alone, but we'd rather be alone in the "company" of others, who are also being alone. 

From this we get marriage and long term partnerships and friendships, or misery loves company.

In a recent trial on the anti-gay marriage proposition in California, the question was posed by the judge as to whether or not the only purpose of marriage was to have children.  If it wasn't, he reasoned, the fact that the partners in a marriage could not, or would not, "create" children was of little moment in terms of dealing with the underlying questions.  The law certainly does not say that a marriage must be desolved if there was no issue.

It is the wisdom of life that marriage and partnership and friendship are desired by individuals.  We want company, and because the rituals and emotional element of finding good company are difficult, we like to settle into something - we like to get past the rites of passage, and just set up housekeeping, or whatever social arrangements work for us, and then get on with our way of living together.   We know, in fact, that getting to know another person can be a lifelong adventure, and so being with another person in such an intimate way requires daily practice.   And, considerable flexibility and skill - because we are fundamentally very different from each other.

We all know folks who we recognize as a "good couple".   They fit together, they are at ease with each other, they enjoy each others company, and they have fun with each other.  This may appear easy, but anyone actually in a good relationship knows that it takes a lot of skill, craft and art in order to meet together what life throws at us.

In addition in a certain sense, marriage or a partnership is also a spiritual path.  Something individually transformative is often happening there that can't happen any where else.  This sometimes actually leads to growing apart, and not growing together.

The videos on this theme are about these life questions.

Here is a link to part of the book I wrote about Eros: Seven Dates: erotica* transcending  -  love, sensuality, sexuality and the New Feminine Mysteries of Eros (*adults only).  You'll see there that I left off the x-rated material, or better said the erotica.  I did this because I did not want to make it easy for the young to come too soon to such material, although in our age of Fallen Eros, there is already too much that should not be out there.  Here's a link where one can purchase the whole book, erotica and all the rest.

The book evolved in conjunction with attempt to write about Love in my book the Way of the Fool.   It was while in preparation for the writing of that book that I fasted for 45 days, during which one early morning I had a vision of all the significant women in my life, as if they were a symbolic representation of nuanced and differing aspects of the totality, that is the the Divine Feminine, moving through time in my biography in a wise sequence.   Following this vision I began, in my memories, to explore what each had taught me, and then to think about the meaning that was there being experienced.  The important act was to unite in my thinking-imagination the whole of the different experiences into a single meaning.  After a certain amount of time, I came to recognize the following Cross of Love, which in its current form is expressed this way: