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Originally Posted by ivorytickler  Marriage is a committment. I think it adds a level of security that can allow partners to relax a bit. It's a pledge to take care of each other in thick or thin, whereas, living together or dating are until I feel like leaving. It's comforting knowing your partner cares enough about you to want a committed relationship with you. |
I can't claim any personal experience here but if you are in a committed intimate relationship, even without benefit of official social sanction (aka marriage) it's still just as true that "breaking up is hard to do". Maybe for some people their attachment to the
idea of marriage influences things, but in reality a relationship is a relationship and a marriage is a contract.
As for marriage as a token of commitment -- I have seen married people who wouldn't know loyalty or devotion if it struck them in the face, so marriage is only as significant as both parties choose to make it. I doubt marriage itself has a reliable influence in stabilizing and cementing a commitment. What impresses me in a couple is not the details or formality of their relationship agreement, but whether they both love AND like each other with some intensity after many years.
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Originally Posted by ivorytickler What's good to have in a marriage? Friendship. You need to enjoy each other's company and have things you enjoy doing together. You're going to be together for a long time and love and sexual desire wax and wane. It's not unusual to fall in and out of love with your spouse several times during the course of a marriage but if the foundation is there, if the relationship works for both parties, you'll weather those storms and become a stronger couple for having gone through them. |
Agreed. I have found that in practice, while love is essential, it's not enough. It's at least as important to LIKE each other as it is to love each other. Love (as it really is, not as the term is widely misused / abused) is just a decision to put someone else's interests and welfare on a level of importance at least equal to your own. There needn't be any joy in that though. It can be nothing more than duty. The other person doesn't have to deserve it because love is a gift.
But if you LIKE each other ... now you're cookin'. That's in my view one of the most-overlooked aspects of intimate relationships -- actively and continuously cultivating and protecting a mutual appreciation. Most couples spend too much time trying to force their personalities on each other.
My canonical example was a woman who was whining in some online forum about how her husband refused to clean the bathroom mirror. Another woman, both older and wiser, said, "Honey, get real. You aren't cleaning the bathroom mirror for him. He doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥. You're doing it for you. You're the one who values a clean mirror, so get off your ass and clean it yourself."
In no time, that older woman had six half-serious proposals from the men lurking in that discussion forum!
--Bob