Is finding a partner for life contradictory to the teachings about love, relationship, and let-go?

Beloved master, many of your disciples seem to have found a partner for life. Is this not contradictory to your statements about love, relationship and let-go?

Even if in some way you can catch hold of the same man again, you will find he is not the same man, and he will find you are not the same woman. It is better to become strangers again. What is wrong in it? The day when you were strangers, nothing was wrong. The day when you did not know the woman, did not know the man, everything was good. Now again that has happened, you are again strangers. Nothing new has happened. You should have been aware from the very beginning that something mysterious came in. You did not bring it in -- naturally, it can go any moment and you cannot hold it back. So as a conclusion: all depends on love. If it remains a long time, good. If it remains only for a few moments, that too is good because love is good. The length…

In the east, it has been stressed that one should stay with a person, one person, in a love relationship. In the west, now people float from one relationship to another. Which are you in favor of?

By meeting the woman outside, by really meeting, loving her, committing yourself to her being, dissolving into her, melting into her, you will, by and by, start meeting the woman that is within you; you will start meeting the man that is within you. The outer woman is just a path to the inner woman; and the outer man is also just a path to the inner man. The real orgasm happens inside you when your inner man and woman meet. That is the meaning of the Hindu symbolism of ardhanarishwar. You must have seen Shiva: half man, half woman. Each man is half man, half woman; each woman is half woman, half man. It has to be so, because half of your being comes from your father and half of your being comes from your mother. You are both. An inner orgasm, an inner meeting, an inner union is…

Beloved Osho, would you talk to us about our living partners -- our wives, husbands and lovers. When should we persevere with a partner, and when should we abandon a relationship as hopeless -- or even destructive? And are our relationships influenced by previous lives?

Kabir has said somewhere: I look into people. They are so much afraid, but I can't see why -- because they have nothing to lose. Says Kabir: They are like a person who is naked, but never goes to take a bath in the river because he is afraid -- where will he dry his clothes? This is the situation you are in -- naked, with no clothes, but always afraid about the clothes. What have you got to lose? Nothing. This body will be taken by death. Before it is taken by death, give it to love. Whatsoever you have will be taken away. Before it is taken away, why not share it? That is the ONLY way of possessing it. If you can share and give, you are the master. It is going to be taken away. There is nothing which you can retain forever. Death will destroy…

Question: OSHO, IS THERE ANY SUCH THING AS A REAL MARRIAGE? But now Sagarpriya will follow him; if there is any possibility she will destroy even that. The best thing is to let him go, to say goodbye to him in a nice, beautiful, human way, with no grudge, with no complaint, with no quarreling. If you quarrel too much, if you make such a fuss, then people will start compromising, but compromise cannot fulfill you. And remember, men are so tortured in the outside world, in the office, in the factory, in the shop, everywhere, that at least at home they want peace. For their peace they compromise. Hence almost all husbands become henpecked. And the problem is, no wife can love a henpecked husband, and every wife tries to henpeck her husband! This is how we create misery. In the first place marriage is wrong.

I remember hearing about one man who married eight times -- of course, it must have been in California. When he married the eighth time, after two days he recognized that he had married this woman once before too. And then he started thinking, "What have I gained by changing women? It all comes back to the same rut." Stability in marriage is unnatural. Monogamy is unnatural. Man is by nature a polygamous animal, and anybody who is intelligent will be polygamous. You can't go on and on eating Italian food. Once in a while you want to visit the Chinese restaurant! I want people to be completely freed from marriage and marriage licenses. The only cause of their being together should be love, not law. Love should be the only law. Then what you are asking is possible. The moment love disappears, say goodbye to each other.