There’s a section in The Way of Four in which I talk about how a relationship flows through the four elements. This came up in my talk at Halcyon Moon and I’ve been thinking about it.
One way to characterize it is like this:
Air=Crush
Fire=Sleeping With
Water=Romance
Earth=Relationship
Truly, until it’s in Earth, it’s not a relationship.
Now, if you look at those love aspects, you can see how they’re kind of chronological; first you meet and crush on someone, then you sleep with them, then fall in love, then form a commitment. Of course, that’s cultural and individual. Some people fall in love before they
have sex, but I sort of think that unless you’ve gotten down and dirty, your “love” is still partly a crush; it’s still what you imagine your romance to be, and imagination is Air.
In some cultures and religious communities, there are arranged marriages, so Earth comes first and everything else follows. Your crush phase is part of childhood, and is disconnected from the relationship you eventually have. I don’t actually think arranged marriages are a bad thing, provided they’re freely chosen (as in the marriages of my Indian co-workers), but they’re based in a culture that has completely different expectations about marriage than our own. You grow up believing certain things about marriage, and then you fulfill those beliefs.
Anyway, I suspect that even an arranged marriage, starting in Earth, will cycle around back to Earth. Getting-to-know-you is Airy, and at the same time you’re discovering your and each others sexuality (Fire) and learning to love (Water), and eventually settling in (back to
Earth).
None of this means anything except as it pertains to self-knowledge. Who am I in my relationships, in my life? What is going on in this relationship? What energies influence it? Certainly relationships need spiritual balance just as individuals do, and using the elements is a good way to achieve that balance.
