Spanish dentist Pep Borrell Vilanova has a hobby Uncommon: being, as he affirms, an “instrument of God” to change statistics on marriage. Your method? Preach with the example and share a hopeful message: love does not end if you work and take care of it.
Author of the book Dance in the kitchen: the secret of the marriages they enjoy y 100%boyfriends. How to throw the cane with successhe has been lecturing for years and offering tips through his Instagram profile @pepborrellv —Due has more than one hundred thousand followers, “to enjoy marriage.”
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Specifically, your book Cook It is aimed at those couples who have been married for years and who over time seem to have lost the illusion and simply “they endure and throw themselves, but do not have a good time.”
When you work love, feeling returns
“My message is that, when you work love, feeling returns. We have to set an example of families and marriages that enjoy, and transmit joy, which is what most does in this world,” he says.
With the conviction that characterizes him, Borrell – Five of five children and grandfather of five – deducts in conversation with Aci Prensa some of the personal advice and anecdotes, as realistic as fun, which includes in his book about marriage life.
He regrets that, too often, “we make bad jokes and silly jokes about marriage, and when someone wants to marry 22 years, they say: ‘You are crazy.” For Borrell, it is urgent to reverse this vision, “because it is the most important decision” in the life of a person and the vocation of the vast majority, to which – denounces – “we dedicate much less attention than to our professional training or even sports.”
Even so, he clarifies that statistics on marriage, although discouraging, do not always reflect reality. In Spain, it is repeated that more than 50% of unions end in divorce. “It’s not true,” he says bluntly. He explains that this percentage “includes any recorded legal union, of any kind, and not just marriages.”
Share faith in marriage
Although his book is also aimed at those who do not share faith, the author acknowledges that he cannot “talk about happiness, of a marriage that is enjoyed, without speaking of God.” And he explains it with a blunt phrase: “It is not love that saves our marriage; it is the sacrament of marriage that makes our love grow.”
“I think it is essential to share faith in marriage,” says Borrell, who regrets that, sometimes, he is presented as a set of norms, when “being a Catholic is much more than that.” In his opinion, the key is to “speak it thoroughly”, know what the other thinks and always do it from respect.
“We Christians know that there is no Easter without a cross. We know that difficulties can be offered, and that from a evil God he takes out a much greater good. That is an essential idea in marriage and life itself,” he emphasizes.
Remember that not everything in life is “dance”: there are also gray days. “In the bad days, I advise to go to bed early and offer them; that has an incredible potential. Faith is fundamental in my life, and that is why I want to convey it. The Gospel says it: if I find that pearl, I can not keep it.
Confuse love with falling in love
Borrell identifies the root of many marriage problems: confuse love with falling in love and feeling with the commitment to love. “I can commit to love, but I can’t commit to feeling. That is the fundamental idea,” he says.
He explains that, in marriage, the commitment assumed by Catholics is deep and demanding. “However, attraction and crush are pure feeling, and feeling comes and goes.”
“You can fall in love every day: your husband, or another person. Because falling in love is a feeling that then goes through the head, and there you can decide whether or not it is. That is the big problem and many people do not see it. There is much talk about sexuality, but very little affectivity. We give the body long before you really know the other, and that leads to confuse the feeling with the will to love,” he warns.
Borrell adds that, when love matures, “the feeling returns, and with it the attraction”, provided that it is cultivated and takes care of “without neglecting important details: not abandoned, be attentive to what she likes or dislikes the other” or try to see the best possible for the good of the relationship. “
“Love never ends”
“Many people tell me: ‘I don’t feel anything for her anymore, now I feel for another person. After 15 years and four children, I have stopped feeling.’ My answer is clear: strive. Work the love and feeling will come back. Love never ends. What happens is that we neglect it and reduce it to the superficial and sentimental, we kill love. But if you cultivate it with sacrifice, will, intelligence, intelligence, intelligence and the sincere desire. Feeling returns.
The little things of the day to day
Among the tips that Borrell shares in his book to achieve a “cheerful marriage”, there is one that, he admits – requires special dedication: let himself love. “Until I wrote the book I didn’t value it. I always thought about what I should do for the other, but it is essential to let himself be loved, especially when it costs us the most.”
Remember that of many times the marriage success is measured by extraordinary gestures: “It is fine to make a trip, an exit, go to a good restaurant or a getaway. But the important thing is day to day: every small detail, every daily gesture. Always be attentive to what the other wants, what he needs, to what would make him excitely. If we both are in the same wave, it is spectacular.”
It also underlines the importance of avoiding “inevitable discussions” and that anger “neither lengthen or enquist”, although it acknowledges that “each one has their process.”
For the bride and groom, it is clear and always repeats three tips: talk a lot, pray together and touch little. “You cannot marry without having spoken thoroughly of five issues: faith, children, their education, political family and work,” he emphasizes.
A love that comes from God
When citing The book Marriage, the great divine inventionof his friend José Fernández Castiella, recalls that “marriage is not a matter of advice or tips, but the firm conviction of loving a person with a love that transcends us.”
“It is deciding that you are going to love that person forever, whatever happens. That is why it is key to know who I give myself and who gives me to me. The wedding is celebrated so much because it is a delivery without conditions: wanting to happen whatever happens, and that is a pass,” he says.
Without ignoring that serious problems may arise, which advises to face specialists, insists that marriage “is the firm will of something that overcomes us, a love that comes from God, a sacrament that will give me grace for this to work.”
“It is something incredible that people dislodged. A real marriage is very difficult, but with grace everything is possible,” Borrell assured Aci Press.
In the coming months, he plans to travel to South America with his wife Mercé – who fell in love at age 17 – to share the joy of marriage in various conferences. And he confesses, with humor, that he has even become “Celestino”, as several couples have committed thanks to their Instagram account.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú
Graduated in journalism and advertising from the CEU San Pablo University of Madrid. Specialized in religious information in Spain since 2015. It has been a senior correspondent for ACI Press and Ewtn News at the Vatican for two years and is currently a correspondent for Europe based on Spain.