“The LORD God cast the man into a deep sleep and, while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib the LORD God took from the man, He made into a woman, and brought her to him. Then the man said, ‘She is now bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, for from man she has been taken.’ For this reason a man leaves his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh” (Genesis 2:21-24).

In his fifth “Theology of the Body” address as Pope, John Paul the Great notes about this passage that it is the first time in this Genesis account of creation in which the man Adam is identified as being explicitly male (and not generic man). It is only after the creation of a woman that the distinction between male and female really makes sense. In the words of Mr Christopher West, “Our bodies do not make sense without each other.” A man’s body does not make sense on his own, without a woman’s, and vice versa.

But there is a build up to the creation of the first woman, and the identity of the sexes. Man is placed in the Garden of Eden, the earthly paradise, and is surrounded by all of the other animals. Each in turn is brought to him, and he gives each its name. But he also finds that none of these animals are quite like him: “The man named all the cattle, all the birds of the air and the beasts of the field; but he found no helper like himself” (Genesis 2:20). Man is alone in the Garden, alone in a manner like he will never again be until the Son of Man finds Himself alone in a different garden. No complementarities yet exist for him, and so he is self-contained, unable to be joined to an other.

Pope John Paul the Great referred to this state of man as “original solitude.” In this state, man was to search for his own essence—a task which would prove impossible without his compliment; he is left with the question “Who am I?” and yet has no outside data on which to draw in search of an answer. In the creation of the first woman, man at last has a second question, the answer to which will illumine his first: “Who are you?”

In his solitude, man was unable to utter such a question. “You” is a term which can only be properly applied to another “I,” a thing which did not exist visibly and tangibly until the creation of the woman. The only other “I’s” existing prior to then were God and the angels. God is beyond man so that only what He reveals of Himself may be known to man; and angels are also unlike men, for like God they are spiritual beings, not embodied as is man.

But if “Who are you?” is to be useful in a positive sense in answering the question ‘Who am I?” the I and the you must have some information which is common to both. It is for this reason that the angels are not of use in answering man’s “Who am I?” They, too, have intellect and will, but they do not have bodies; they are spirits, but of a different type than is man. Hence, in asking “Who are you?” of the angels, man may learn something of himself, but he will not find sufficient information to answer his “Who am I?”

The man was made with both body and spirit, and his body was mean to be an outward sign of the inward reality of his soul, a sort of sacrament which makes visible an invisible grace. It is the first piece of the puzzle, the first answer to “Who am I,” but more pieces are needed. Man needed an other I who had both body and soul; the angels had soul only, the animals body only.

God had formed man’s body “from the dust,” but woman’s was taken from man’s rib. She was taken out of man to form a new person, an other I. She would be like him, a dynamic blend of body and spirit, an other image of God. Her body would not be the same as his, but would complement his. At last, there is an other I to whom an may unite. In this union, “The two become one flesh” and as one flesh becomes co-creators with God.

The metaphor here is more than skin-deep. When a man loses an appendage, he often experiences phantom pains where the appendage existed. A man who places his wrist near an open flame may feel a burning sensation where his hand once would have been. Man here loses a rib to create woman, meaning that he is no longer complete, no longer whole. A part of him is missing, and is found only in the woman; only she can complete him. Similarly, the woman can only complete man, and a part of her can only be found in a man.

Each can only make natural sense of the self by joining with the other. The man’s “Who am I?” is answered by asking “Who are you?” of the woman, and vice-versa. It is in part for this reason that in the Bible the act of sexual union is often named “intercourse” when speaking generically of two people, but is given the special name “to know” when describing the intercourse between two specific individuals. For example, Adam knew eve, Our Lady did not know man, but in the laws recorded in chapter 22 of Exodus, intercourse between a man and a woman to whom he is not married is described with the verbs “seduces” and “lies with.”

When a man unites with a woman, he learns something about her, but he also learns something about himself. Likewise, the woman learns something about the man, but also something about herself. Each carries some information about the other which is not normally accessible to the other, information which is vital to answering the question “Who am I?” So, too, does every man carry some information about himself which he only discovers with the help of a woman, and every woman carries information about herself which can only be discovered with the help of a man. The question imposed by man’s original solitude finds its answer in the creation of woman, the beginnings of the distinction between male and female; “Who am I?” becomes also “Who are you?” and finds an answer when the two become one flesh.