When we are young we are stupid. Most of us realize how stupid we are when younger but don’t know what to do about it besides seeking input from those who already have learned from experience. After all, the ability to learn inter-generationally through writing and media is what fundamentally separates humans from all other species on the planet.
One important thing I’ve learned the hard way is that no one should get married until they truly find unconditional, pure love. Yep, you can make it through life happy and healthy contributing in ways that are every bit as meaningful as being a part of a marriage and family without ever marrying or having children. That’s right, one’s life can be just as meaningful, valuable, and self-less without ever finding “a mate.” But powerful institutions have been established to keep this shining, wonderful truth in the dark mostly for the same reason most evil exists in the world: greed.
Statistically we humans are more likely to marry our opposite when young, and ourselves (essentially) when older. That’s what the science says. This could not be more true in my case. Alicia is almost my polar opposite in all ways, and Doris is so much like me it is scary. I don’t need to go into detail. I just know it to be true. Hell, I was content to never remarry until the Universe threw Doris randomly in my path. Yes, there is a higher power, and that higher power has got your back even in the darkest and most confusing of times.
But what is love anyway? Maybe it’s easier to outline what love is not.
Sexual attraction is a necessary part of love, but it’s the only part and definitely not the main part. Being hornt makes people see all kinds of things that are simply not there in their mates and overlook all kinds of glaring, horrible flaws. It’s almost like nature made it that way so that our brains wouldn’t block our better judgement, like nature has to trick us into procreating because most rational people would never sign up for what a life-long family commitment actually requires.
The more people act like animals, the more you see this truth play out. How many people have gotten married because they had to get married? More than most people would guess.
While it is true that often matchmaking done by a wise, older person will create a marriage that could last much longer than anything we would choose at the time, true love does not begin with being forced into it.
To a lesser extend, this includes being told you cannot reach the “highest degree of glory” in Mormon heaven unless you get married. Or that, as a Mormon man, you are “responsible” for taking a mate on Earth and will have to answer to God if you do not. That is not hyperbole. Mormons teach that regularly in Sunday School. Mormon men are under immense pressure to get married, even if they really don’t feel good about it. Combine this with hormones and 21 years of repressed libido and you get a recipe for disastrously bad marriages that are “for time and eternity” instead of “until death do us part.”
It’s pretty ridiculous when you think about it. In fact, the only way a Mormon man can come to believe that shit is to also believe that “God will provide” creating false spiritual confirmations that a particular woman is to be his bride, even if that bride doesn’t receive that same confirmation.
But, who’s counting, Joseph Smith received spiritual revelations saying that other men’s wives were to become his, and that families should hand over their 14 year old virgins to him, ‘cuz “God said so.”
(How the fuck did I ever actually believe that shit. Joseph sure didn’t deserve the physical violence heaped upon him, but he damn well earned a life-sentence in prison by today’s standards.)
Sometimes we lie to ourselves about love, but when a person deliberately manipulates the situation in an effort to trick someone into loving them, well, it just doesn’t work. This is why long-term relationships never work in Harry Potter from a love-potion. You cannot force someone to love you, no matter what tricks you have.
Two people often come together because they feel vulnerable and alone in a big scary world. Eventually, they come to depend on one another to validate their own self-esteem. Without the relationship they would not feel whole. These people have no self-love to begin with, which is why they seek it in others. “If this person loves me, I must be a good person worthy of love.” This is very fucked up and down-right dangerous. Co-dependent people who collapse are the most likely to murder other people.
You cannot have your identity locked into another individual. We see this all the time. People are very self-conscious and vulnerable. It’s easy for them to come together, two, depressed people who loathe themselves, finding meaning by giving the other person the “love” and validation they don’t have for themselves.
This charitable act of “loving” the other person into feeling good about themselves makes that person also feel good about themself. All these fake good feelings feed off one another and grow into a demented co-dependent parasite sucking the life out of them both. Remove the parasite and you have two empty husks that have no life or love or stability on their own. The parasite has made their fragile psyches even more vulnerable. Take it away and all kinds of destructive craziness takes over.
When two people are completely incapable of letting the other person free to live a life that brings them fulfillment and joy you don’t have love. You might have an unbalanced partnership that can get the two people through life, but not love.
I knew I had found true love (despite my cynicism) with Doris when she entertained the idea of staying married even though I was thinking of living in an entirely different state to be near my boys for a time. “We are still married,” she said. Nevermind the logistics of a long-distance romance, the very thought that Doris could live without me around all the time blew my mind.
While it is true that love has to be nurtured to survive, human history is full of examples of true love enduring beyond any physical divide. Something as trivial as allowing a spouse to sleep in their own bed so that they can get an actual good night’s sleep is a small, but significant, example of this. Not sleeping in the same bed every night has nothing to do with love, provided a couple do the same amount of bonding and “pillow talk” that they might were they together every night. Nothing says, “I love you” more than saying, “I want you to get a good night’s sleep.”
Wedding rings were invented by jewelry marketing professionals to sell diamonds. So why, then, do so many of us require external proof that we are married and in love?
The practical convenience of signaling to everyone all around that one is taken is only minimally useful, and certainly not worth the exorbitant costs financially and to the planet inflicted by the diamond industry.
If a person actually needs a ring to ward off the advances of a potential love interest then there is already no love in that relationship. Walking around in fear that some sexual predator is going to pounce on your mate for not scaring them off with a wedding ring is just silly. The tabloids are filled with stories where no one cared about the wedding right, or the marital status at all. In fact, some predators seek married people with rings.
A person in love can easily bring up the fact that they are married in any random, polite conversation that might startup in a way that is far more significant than a ring. There’s never a need for proof of love and if the person you think you love demands it, you know immediately to run away.