Is Love Really Essential to Marriage?
Love is Not in Marriage; Love is in you (People). Is Love Really Essential to Marriage? Asking ourselves to fall in love many times, always with the same person. We all have a childhood dream that when there is love, everything goes like silk, but the reality is that marriage requires a lot of compromise. The notion that "love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage" is still widespread, but the arguments against it are gaining strength. Addressing such arguments requires clarifying what we mean by profound love. The Recent Connection between Love and Marriage The older I get, the less time I want to spend with the part of the human race that didn't marry me. The prevailing ideal that passionate love is essential in marriage is actually recently new. I read her book on the history of marriage, Stephanie Coontz (2005) shows that this ideal became prevalent only about two centuries ago: "People have always fallen in love, and throughout the age...