Before an immense sky

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all its boundaries, on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."
-- Rilke

Quoted from Laura Munson's excellent book, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is