Marriage is not Love
Marriage is considered a milestone to achieve for most adults in mainstream culture. It occurs when there is a bond and there are feelings of mutual love with another person, whom they wish to spend the rest of their lives with. The legality enclosed the recognition of an agreement between two people. To obtain its certification and to be legally married, they establish rights and obligations for one another.
We know today that marriage does not mean happily ever after. People can fall out of love under the union of marriage. Divorce happens when two people decide to end their spouse relationship or end their relationship completely. In some cases, they continue to love each other but choose not to be life partners.
This acknowledgment propels that one does not necessarily mean the other. Love can happen without marriage and to be married does not mean two people are in love. With that, it proposes two separate categories to love and marriage. For centuries humans have combined these two as consecutive entities to believe that you fall in love and then get married.
Society has been so conditioned to this mentality and has forgotten what love and marriage really means. Here, calls upon to deconstruct and re-examine these disparate concepts.
What is Marriage?
Marriage is an institutional agreement between two people to abide by regulated under the Marriage Act. To official this contract by law, both parties swear on the oath, and vows, to promise the obligation to support each other through the good and the bad, till death do they part.
From then on, the marriage certificate is issued upon agreement, a couple is identified as a spouse — husband and wife. In this lawful union, some institutional matters require both parties’ consent, and decisions made impacts on the other individual.
Furthermore, within this legislation, they have also established marital rights and responsibilities to each other. Rights include legal system matters like,
- Right to control over some portion of a spouse’s labor or property
- Rights of visitation when spouse is incarcerated or hospitalized
- Rights to have control over a spouse’s affair when the spouse is incapacitated
- Rights to establish the second legal guardian of a parent’s child
- Right to inherit spouse’s property upon death
- Right to sue for spouse’s wrongful death or loss of consortium, and
- Right to receive spouse’s Social Security, pension, worker’s compensation, or disability benefits (Lawyers.com)
Responsibilities include but not limited to be faithful, honest, and treat the other person with respect. Failure to conduct standards in the agreement is essentially breaking the law.
Marriage has expectations to fulfill the requirements governed by the institution. It involves dedication and works from two people to sustain it.
Marriage is tangible, its certification holds validation, accountability, or perhaps security for some people, in the bond with another person.
These legal attachments are often followed by a wedding to celebrate the occasion. No matter its representation this ceremony has, it is a showcase of couple’s agreement to the world.
What is Love?
Love is found in various contexts; here we focus on the love between two people. The fundamental to describe love began with an intense feeling one has for another person. Love is abstract. We only know its presence through an individual’s action and behavior towards the other person.
Love develops over time when trust is established in a bond. There are no guidelines to adhere to, only mutual respect and honesty enable love to carry on itself in a relationship. Its effort is intimate and only those who are coupled understand their journey of love, and hence no validation from the outside world.
The love between two people has no expectations, it is free of power to control the other person. Love is not a choice but a necessity. Obligations do not exist as the act of love is innate for one another. Love has a commitment to each other. Understand and acceptance is a natural way to be. All is unconditional and has no room for Egos and personal motives.
The word love is loosely used in our society. Its meaning has been fabricated over time. Only divine, true love can withstand in the test of time. The longer the bond, the love for the other person deepens. Society often has misconceptions of love as passionate feelings or lust. The desire to acquire and possess the other person. It is not to be confused.
Love is not bound by time and it has no time limit. In the realm of spirituality, it travels beyond this lifetime. The term soulmate is used as it is referred to a soul tie with another soul which is inevitable to feel, to cross path with, and that it holds the significant purpose to both individuals. Its connection is much deeper than the physical being.
One who “finds” love will never find it because the sacred union happens in divine timing. However, with societal pressure and certain age limitations it rules out this natural law of life, most people rather rushed to the finish line. People who believe to have met their soulmate, or “the one” is questionable.
People who experience love are likely to get married in today’s world. This conditioned collative act throughout centuries is an ordinary thing to do at a point in most adults’ life. Love comes first and marriage to solidify the love between two people.
It is important to identify the meaning of love and marriage before committed in one, hindsight it is more than what it has become for in our culture. They are both rather quite the opposite in comparison. Love is an intangible substance. Marriage is a physical matter. They are found in completely separate elements.
Marriage is not required in love. For love encompasses unconstrained of constitutional guidelines. It sustains itself than its rules by laws and regulations. On the other hand, love is not found in the requirements of marriage. The agreement would only require consents.
To combine these two together would consider an unnatural way of mankind when love happens in nature, and marriage is made up by man to follow. It is almost impossible to interlock them as a system. Clashes would occur when one goes against the law of nature to integrate love with marriage.
As humans, we should always choose love as it is much stronger to prevails over the act of marriage. When marriage is not the pledge of love in constitutional terms, it should be clear to society that marriage is not loving. A new way to look at marriage would prevent a relationship disaster and a trap to follow societal behavior.
