I was discussing the other day that Galadriel and Celeborn are such a refreshing pair among Tolkien's ships.
You have Feanor being a wife-guy UNTIL Nerdanel disagress with him. Which is when he becomes awful to her.
Then you have marriages that work and endure: Thingol and Melian loved each other deeply until the end, and YET Thingol closed his ears to Melian's advice when his passion took the best of him. But this is not how it goes for Galadriel and Celeborn. When Galadriel talks Celeborn listens and even as his emotions threaten to overtake him, his trauma still apparent, he controls himself.
There are of course the unions of elves and men and Earendil's relationship with Elwing. All of these are loving, but ultimately the female character ends up following the male character.
Galadriel and Celeborn are different. Galadriel sets the path they follow most of the time. She precedes and Celeborn follows, sometimes immediately and sometimes following his own pace.
They are the only ship that epitomize the way Tolkien imagined an elven marriage in Morgoth's Ring:
The union of love is indeed to them great delight and joy, and the 'days of the children', as they call them, remain in their memory as the most merry in life; but they have many other powers of body and of mind which their nature urges them to fulfil. Thus, although the wedded remain so for ever, they do not necessarily dwell or house together at all times; for without considering the chances and separations of evil days, wife and husband, albeit united, remain persons individual having each gifts of mind and body that differ.
This all happens while Galadriel remains the most prominent and more powerful of the two. In Numenor, where women COULD have power and become queens, there are too often examples of men feeling threatened and trying to dominate and to supplant. But this is never the case when it comes to Galadriel and Celeborn.
They have it all: A beautiful love that endures, their days of happiness with Celebrian, trials and grief that they faced together, but they also followed their individual desires, each knowing that at the end of it all the other would be there; being aware that they would be reunited and their pursue of their needs would not estrange them. And in Tolkien's work their ability to maintain this relationship both by being together and by being apart is not a show of emotional distance, but a testament to their love.
And one might assume that such a love is not too exciting, but I don't think this is the case. Galadriel is the one character in the legendarium who chooses to be known by her epesse. Her lover gave her a name and she felt so loved and seen that she wanted the entire world to perceive her as he does. This shows adoration, but also certaintly that their love was IT for her. And centurles later, Celeborn still considers Galadriel his treasure and is bereft of her. But he manages to treasure her without objectifying her. And that's so beautiful. These two were down bad for each other.
