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Can a marriage continue without the couple being in love?
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| Yes | 55% | 1062 votes | Total: 1947 votes | |
| No | 45% | 885 votes |
Yes
by Susan Norman
Created on: June 19, 2009
Marriages continuing without the couple being in love is probably the oldest kind of marriage in the world.
Many times couples believe that they are in love when they get married. However, each person grows into being exactly who they always were after years and years in a relationship. Many times people grow apart from each other in marriage; their interests change, their children grow up and leave home, their friends change, sometimes one person grows and the other person doesn't and is left behind. A thousand different scenarios as individual as the couple themselves, can occur and the couple can grow apart and yet still stay together as husband and wife.
Relationships are ever changing and changeable. The couple in their 20's may have believed themselves to be "in love" when they married after college, only to find themselves changing their definition of marriage and love many times in the marriage. Their love changes perhaps from the desperate obsessive love of their 20's to a more mature love in their 40's, perhaps a deeper, more forgiving love; regardless it changes according to their own definitions. It ceases being the same relationship but they choose to stay in it anyway.
Perhaps they fall out of love and yet still stay married. Whatever their reasons they stay married. They stay married because they were both children in homes where their parents were divorced and they do not want that for their children. They stay married because they are in a church community that strongly discourages divorce and recommends counseling instead. Sometimes the social prohibitions are so strong for them to stay together no matter what, that they do stay married no matter what. There are couples everywhere that have long stopped loving each other who remain married because they cannot emotionally face divorce. They put up and shut up for years rather than face divorce court.
Sometimes these relationships are very abusive at their core, but the abused spouse cannot leave the abusing spouse for whatever reason. Sometimes the abused spouse has a very serious mental illness, where he or she will set themselves up for abuse repeatedly, rather than venture out into the world and get well and get divorced. People stay in marriages long after the love has gone because they are getting something out of the relationship, even if it is not love. The question has to be, "What payoff is this person receiving in this relationship that causes them to stay in it rather than get help to get out?"
Sometimes women stay in marriages where the love has long been gone because she cannot make enough money on her own, to feed and clothe her children in the manner to which they have become accustomed. So many times the question of divorce is by far overshadowed by the questions of economics. Can the mother and children survive in this society without the income of the father? For some women the answer is simply no and the choice is to stay married for however long, simply to have a lifestyle she deems necessary for herself and her children.
People continuing in marriages without the couple being in love is as old as history. This situation is the stuff of great movies such as "The Lion in Winter" where Eleanor of Aquitaine refuses to give Henry a divorce so he can marry a much younger woman. Throughout history, keeping marriages together with or without love, has been the stuff of politics, religion, history and geneology.
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No
by Gary Maclean
Created on: November 20, 2008 Last Updated: February 03, 2009
CAN A MARRIAGE CONTINUE WITHOUT LOVE
One of the most complicated subjects still open for analysis and discussion is that of Love. What is it, where is it, what do we do with it, what is it used for. There are so many questions related with that one little word and so many variant definitions that at times we begin to doubt our own convictions.
Love comes in so many different colors and intensities also. We use the term to describe how we feel about that great meal Mom just cooked while at the same time we use that same word to express our feelings for Mom herself. What do we love? How many different people and things do we love? However many objects are involved we probably love them all in just a little bit different way.
That's why, when we look at love in marriage, we think of a deep interpersonal emotion. Love in a relationship is something that transcends even our best verbal description. The love we have that brings us together as a couple comes from deep inside. It isn't coaxed, it isn't solicited; the love we have for our partner goes beyond anything we can really define. It is that omnipresent thrill of being in our partner's presence.
Love in a marriage comes before the marriage. That type of unexplainable love is what brings people to consider marriage. What else could possibly convince someone to give up their freedom and their carefree life other than the will to be with and to do for, someone they cannot tolerate even being away from? That is really the love we talk about when we say the love that is associated with marriage.
Marriage is an institution in which interpersonal relationships (usually intimate and sexual) are acknowledged by the state or by religious authority. Marriage is often viewed as a contract. The act of marriage changes the personal and social status of the individuals who enter into it. The marriage, by itself, is no more than the legal action taken to allow us to legally participate in whatever obligations and benefits are reserved for married couples; that is only the legal half of mariage.
The personal side of a marriage is our public admission of having the deepest feelings for the person we are uniting with. The marriage tells everyone that we both are now ready and willing to give up our individual selves for the sake of the much more beautiful and powerful union, our marriage. Our intense love has brought us to this point, our wedding. A complete marriage requires both halves; the legal and the personal. Without either one of them you no longer have a marriage.
The divorce rate today is just over 50%. That means that at least one in two marriages will end in divorce. Usually this end comes sometime within the first four years. There are many reasons for divorce and we won't try to discuss them at this point but one of the most prevalent reasons is "Irreconcilable differences." In other words, we don't get along any more. The couple has fallen out of love so to speak.
The ease with which we can get married today is partially to blame for that elevated divorce rate. It continues to get easier and easier to marry someone, anyone. There is no test for the presence of that all-important, yet elusive emotion, love. Marriages can be accommodated for most any reason up to and including "we were drunk!"
The people involved in these marriages where love is not present will generally seek an escape, and that will probably be through legal channels in the guise of a divorce. They could indeed continue to stay together, live together, exist in the same space but they would not have a life they could enjoy. The love would be gone and the marriage would gradually crumble around them.
I really don't believe that a marriage without the love that I have spoken about can actually exist for any great period of time. Marriage requires a significant investment from both parties; it requires sacrifices and restraint. If a person does not love the one they are with, will they be willing to sacrifice anything for them?
If a couple stays together, and you know the couple I am talking about, without love in their lives, their existence will show it. They may be able to live together under the same roof but that is not the marriage we are talking about. Simply maintaining the legal definition of marriage is not a marriage. Without the personal aspect of marriage a couple is no longer married; they are living together. They may be legally recognized as married but they are not intimately recognized as such.
Without love, the marriage crumbles. There may continue to be the legal arrangement between two people but it is not a marriage, it is a partnership or an agreement, but it is definitely not a marriage. Once love leaves, the marriage is doomed.
Learn more about this author, Gary Maclean.
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