Yerda
Veteran Member
Aren't we talking about love?
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Is it Wise to Marry Exclusively or Predominantly for Love?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
"Love" is a confusing word because people mean so many different things when they use that word.
Yerda
Veteran Member
This is true. Do you generally take it to mean infatuation?
roger1440
I do stuff
Good or bad common goals by whos standard?
Ignoring your love and marrying someone else is a step against the normality...
You need to have a real reason for taking such a step, as your love won't die, it will jump again and destroy your new family!
Jedster
Flying through space
Love would be the first pre-requisite.
The other, which is more important before committing to marriage. is the answer to the question "Do I want to spend the rest of my life with this person?"
Before making such a commitment, I think people should live together for a good period of time before hand.
(speaking from experience of being married 3 times).
Mycroft
Ministry of Serendipity
We should recognise that the idea of being deeply in love with one special partner over a whole lifetime, what we can call Romantic love, is a very new, ambitious and odd concept, which is at best 250 years old. Before then, people lived together of course but without any very high expectations of being blissfully content doing so. It was a purely practical arrangement, entered into for the sake of survival and the children. We should recognise the sheer historical strangeness of the idea of happy coupledom.
But even now a marriage for pure and deep love of someone is exceedingly rare still.
A good Romantic marriage is evidently theoretically possible, but it may also be extremely unlikely, something only some 5 or 10 per cent of us can ever properly succeed at – which should make any failure feel a good deal less shameful. As a society, we’ve made something normal that’s in fact a profound anomaly. It is as though we’d set up high altitude tight rope walking as a popular sport. No wonder most of us fall off – and might not want to, or be able to, face getting back on.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
Although I am impressed that you are able to peer into my mind, I not sure what kind of "love" you think we're talking about. How many kinds are there?
The distinctions between kinds of love will often depend on what language you speak. I hear Greek makes several distinctions.
My position isn't hard to grasp. Infatuation may be a powerful emotion, but seeking to establish a lifelong committed relationship on the sole basis of an emotion that cannot be maintained for more than a few years (at most) is almost certainly doomed to failure unless other foundations are found. I'm not saying long term emotional bonds are impossible. In fact committed love built over long years of commitment is something I can only praise.
What exactly are you even trying to argue?
Thanda
Well-Known Member
By standards of common sense and decency
Yes and no. Not sure if people really know what love is. Nor is it the defining trait of a successful relationship. ..
Compatability is key
Papoon
Active Member
Is it wise to what ?
So far the thread has not explored the notion and nuance of 'married', so we are talking about the legal institution and/or the mutual sense of a palpable 'us'.
We aren't simple organisms. Stuff happens. Everything we think is significant is just the tip of the iceberg of significant.
Sure, rational choices, shared values, mutual aims...
But that is not the only kind of filter through which to view and orient your experience. A lot of detail can be 'summed up' in symbolic/emotional forms.
If you suspect that falling in love/lust/obsession is a chemical trap laid by the mysterious non-entity called evolution, go with it ! That way you are acting on millons of years of experience, instead of a green second guess based on decades or less.
"No experiment is a failure" - Dr John Lilly
roger1440
I do stuff
"Common sense" and "decency" are arbitrary terms.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
The one thing I never expected in my life was falling in deep love and intense like with two women at the same time, and them having them fall in love and like with me. Unless you've been there, you can't believe the emotional issues that this can create. Sounds like an ideal situation, but let me tell ya it ain't-- at least from my experience anyway.
For example, when I had to break the news to one that I was going to get married to the other, that was the single most painful discussion I have ever gone through in my 70 years of life. I hated to hurt the one I also deeply loved. I even have tears in my eyes writing this even though it took place 49 years ago.
For example, when I had to break the news to one that I was going to get married to the other, that was the single most painful discussion I have ever gone through in my 70 years of life. I hated to hurt the one I also deeply loved. I even have tears in my eyes writing this even though it took place 49 years ago.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
I'm not arguing anything, I'm simply trying to understand what you're getting at and what qualifies you to paint with such a broad brush.
Personally I take the word "love" to have levels of meaning from the physical to the spiritual. In marriage, my ideal is where the happiness of your partner is essential to your own. And someone demonstrates that in action.
BSM1
What? Me worry?
Just a small point, happiness comes from within, joy comes from without. You can never make anyone happy but if you can make your partner joyful you will experience an inner happiness beyond belief.
Wirey
Fartist
My wife and I were best friends in high school. I took her to our senior prom in a purple suit, and she married me anyways. Love is good, but like matters too.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
A purple suit!!!
OK, my guess it that it got thrown away or donated in one big hurry after you two got married, right?
Please say "Yes!"Anyhow, glad she saw past the suit and saw someone who loved and liked her-- that's big.
Thanda
Well-Known Member
Well I have no intention to start preaching so I'll leave it here.