KASAL, KASALI, KASALO

by: Paige Isabela Lim      

There is a reason why getting to know your partner before marriage is the most consequential phase a couple must go through.  It is very apparent in our world today how the most common reason for filing a divorce or annulment is the “irreconcilable differences” the couple has with each other. In my opinion, I do not think that this is a valid enough reason to legally separate spouses.  I believe that such irreconcilable difference rooted from the very fact that the couple did not take time to get to know each other. It is only then that they discover such likes and dislikes—or even how awful the in-law are—only after they have made the commitment to each other. It is only after they get married without really getting to know each other that they find themselves within a mistake that they never would have thought would exist.

            In the film Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo, the perfect example of a hastily done marriage is shown. Both characters, Angie and Jed, only knew each other for four months before deciding to get married. Such time is even less than the prescribed “immediate” stage when preparing for marriage. It was a whirlwind romance between the two—they were so wrapped up in falling in love with each other that they forgot to also fall in love with each other’s faults and even with each other’s in-laws.  It is only after they get married that they discover how married life is not as “happily ever after” as stories or movies would put it.

            I believe that Angie and Jed have gone through the first two stages of preparing for marriage—the remote and proximate stage. However, they were not able to go through the third stage, the immediate stage. The Church does not prescribe the couple to go through this stage to prolong their agony in making them wait for around 6 months before getting married. There is a reason as to why the immediate stage is of great significance, the stage that Angie and Jed should have completed.

            When a couple is engaged, there is a higher level of intimacy between them—not the physical kind of intimacy. This intimacy I am referring to is a sort of closeness between the couple that heightens once they are set to be married. Angie and Jed should have taken the time to first fall in love with each other and with each other’s faults for quite sometime to ensure that they are really right for each other. A wedding, I believe, should never be done hastily; it should be carefully planned and executed in order to be a wedding worth celebrating. Marriage is of the same matter. Marriage is not to be taken lightly and hastened when one pleases. Marriage is something you think long and hard about before committing yourself to someone else in the eyes  of God because it is, as the bible says, indissoluble.

            I am not really saying that Angie and Jed’s marriage should be invalidated. What I am stressing out is how important the “getting to know each other” stage is. Maybe if Angie and Jed had, in fact, taken the time, the new things they discover about each other wouldn’t appall them.