Helping marriages progress is the greatest Valentine's Day gift

Happy Valentine's Day! We think it is one of the great holidays of the year — especially for couples — a chance to express love in a special way to the most important person in our lives.

It's also a great holiday for jewelers, perfume-makers, chocolatiers and flower shops. We are afraid this column will be of little help to any of these retailers, however, because we are going to suggest a different kind of gift for Feb. 14.

How about giving the one you love the most a gift that will actually make your love grow even stronger — a gift that will keep on giving to both of you and to your relationship?

We think that marriage can exist on at least five levels, and that it can progress from one level to the next and to the next. Let us try to name these levels and describe them briefly and then suggest a Valentine's gift that can actually help couples progress from one to the other, climbing the ladder of love.

Level one is a marriage of convenience. Two people think they are in love so they decide to live together, with or without an actual ceremony.

Level two is a marriage of contract. Man and wife get married legally — and often religiously — and make at least a pledge of "in sickness and in health" and "till death do us part."

Level three is a marriage of true commitment. Beyond the formality of a wedding, both parties exclusively and completely commit themselves to each other and give the security of knowing that there will never be any other.

Level four is a marriage of synergy, where the man and the woman, the yin and the yang, learn to complement and complete each other so well that the total is greater than the sum of its parts.

Level five is a marriage of oneness in which the commitment and the synergy continue to grow to the point where the couple share everything and where their oneness becomes an entity that supersedes their "individualness." Everything they seek, they seek together, and they are essentially fused into something that swallows up even as it preserves their separate gifts and natures.

Whatever level you perceive yourself to be on this Valentine's Day, you can progress to the next one if you both want to. And while there are many ways to progress, here is a suggestion that we think works for all who really try it.

Have a private, marital "Sunday session" for about an hour once a week where you do four things: