Devorah Tarrow, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

In becoming a wife, a woman says in a big way that she needs her spouse. Yet the very idea that she needs someone besides herself troubles many a wife: she can feel that in needing her spouse she is somehow curtailing her individuality, losing her autonomy. (Men can also have such a feeling.)

“The Mix-Up in Wives about Need & Independence—& the Practical Answer” is the title of the Understanding Marriage! class that will take place on Saturday, May 11th, from 11 AM to 12:30 PM. Each one of these monthly classes is thrilling, with cultural instances and lively discussion. They’re conducted by Barbara Allen, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman, and other Aesthetic Realism consultants. The basis is this explanation by Eli Siegel, founder of Aesthetic Realism: “Marriage is a means for liking the world through a person. Too often, though, marriage is a contemptuous exclusion of the world.”

At the May 11th class, the following deep and illuminating sentences by Mr. Siegel, from an Aesthetic Realism lesson, will be discussed:

Love has been called by Aesthetic Realism “proud need.” Every person would like to be secret, sequestered, alone, do things for oneself, and every person wants to be loved without limit. It can make for great trouble. When we’re involved with a person and we’re not proud that we need that person, there has to be anger. There’s a certain false pleasure we have in showing we don’t need anybody. Aesthetic Realism says good sense is the needing more and the being proud of it.

The class will show: a woman will be proud of needing the person to whom she’s married if she uses their being together to care truly for the world and people—which includes wanting passionately to understand that person she’s close to. And she’ll be honestly independent because she will be going after her own deepest purpose as a self: to know and find meaning and value in the world.

The fee for the class is $10. For more information, call 212.777.4490.