Is it sensible to marry for love?

[aiyla]

Honestly, I think it depends on the type of love. Like many, I can't imagine not marrying for love, even though it is culturally (I speak of my own) acceptable to do so. My grandparents' marriage was arranged when they were 15 years old. Did they love each other at the time? I doubt it, but I can't say for sure. However, after 50+ years of a happy marriage, they've grown to love each other, or at the very least deeply care for the other's well-being.
Anyway, back to types of love. There's an about.com page here that describes most of what I'm trying to say. (There are peer-reviewed articles I have somewhere if you want those as well.) Let me know what you think.

 

[invisible]

[MENTION=1669]pics[/MENTION], in answer to your op, my opinion is that it is not sensible to marry for love. the reason i have for believing this is because love is impossible to clearly define. some people see it as a decision, some people see it as a precious involuntary experience. unfortunately its very difficult to depend on emotional stability for a lifetime of commitment; the nature of emotion is that it is fluid and ever changing. love is a sensible starting point for romance, but not for marriage. marriage has legal implications and it is foolish and naive not to treat it as a business decision as this is one of its most salient aspects. i believe that much more important than love for making a marriage work is mutual respect.

 

[CogentPursuit]

Marriage in love that is established and grown with time is sensible. Marriage because of love that is cousin to attraction, lust, and the feelijg of missing them is sensless.

The first grows and does not go away until death. It is built and refined by actively loving someone, hopefully someone you are compatible with. The second is temporary and is severely diminished after the honeymoon.

 

[Delta]

I wouldn't marry for anything other than love. For us we got married for the blessing and the blessing really is true. It has guarded and refreshed us many times within the inevitable ups and downs. This is the only form of marriage I recognise to be true.

 

[Eventhorizon]

i often question whether humans were ever meant to eat mcdonalds. or paint pictures, or solve equations.

Can you elaborate on this?

 

[invisible]

Can you elaborate on this?

saying "human were not meant to do x" is an absolutely meaningless standard of comparison, firstly because there is no way of determining what humans were "meant" to do, and secondly because humans do or have done many things that we can effortlessly determine to be or to have been worthwhile, for which there is no previous historically established pattern of human behaviour that suggests that they were "meant" to do those things.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Just as we can look at the rest of the living world and see their are patterns in what helps them survive we can apply those same ideals.
Marriage is a religious concept or at least started out that way. Stripping societal expectations away and looking at foundational cause / effect scenarios can lead to informed ideas a d perspectives.
Did cavemen marry? Did cavemen become mognonomus at some point? If it is in human nature to be as such why did marriage ever need to happen in the first place?
With a little open thought its not hard to see the likelyhood that mognonomy is the exception and not the norm. Doesnt matter if people like that idea or not. Its just they way it may be.
McDonald's is stupid. People are meant to eat food so in that capacity, yes of course.

 

[invisible]

Just as we can look at the rest of the living world and see their are patterns in what helps them survive we can apply those same ideals.
Marriage is a religious concept or at least started out that way. Stripping societal expectations away and looking at foundational cause / effect scenarios can lead to informed ideas a d perspectives.
Did cavemen marry? Did cavemen become mognonomus at some point? If it is in human nature to be as such why did marriage ever need to happen in the first place?
With a little open thought its not hard to see the likelyhood that mognonomy is the exception and not the norm. Doesnt matter if people like that idea or not. Its just they way it may be.
McDonald's is stupid. People are meant to eat food so in that capacity, yes of course.

an ideal is not something that "is", it is a conceptual matter, and something to potentially strive for. ideals are "artificial" rather than "natural"; they are goals that human beings have constructed, not out of their animal nature, but out of their advanced human minds. what applies to beings that can be conceived of as very simply "animal" no longer applies to "human beings" in the same way, because we possess very highly developed brains that complicate these matters greatly. a union is not just sex, or reproduction - it has more or less complex emotional facets, depending on the mind of the human who involves themselves in these exchanges, their ideas, beliefs, desires, and "ideals".

actually, at least in the "western" or "christian" world, marriage started out as a mercantile contract - it wasnt instituted as a sacrament until later.

there is no point thinking about what cavemen did, because we are not cavemen. we are men and women existing in a much more complicated state, both in terms of what we think and believe, and also in terms of the range of emotions that surround these things. this is an entirely different context.

whether marriage is statistically more or less common in human or animal populations makes no difference to abstract questions of its validity as a personal decision.

 

[Eventhorizon]

an ideal is not something that "is", it is a conceptual matter, and something to potentially strive for. ideals are "artificial" rather than "natural"; they are goals that human beings have constructed, not out of their animal nature, but out of their advanced human minds. what applies to beings that can be conceived of as very simply "animal" no longer applies to "human beings" in the same way, because we possess very highly developed brains that complicate these matters greatly. a union is not just sex, or reproduction - it has more or less complex emotional facets, depending on the mind of the human who involves themselves in these exchanges, their ideas, beliefs, desires, and "ideals".

actually, at least in the "western" or "christian" world, marriage started out as a mercantile contract - it wasnt instituted as a sacrament until later.

there is no point thinking about what cavemen did, because we are not cavemen. we are men and women existing in a much more complicated state, both in terms of what we think and believe, and also in terms of the range of emotions that surround these things. this is an entirely different context.

whether marriage is statistically more or less common in human or animal populations makes no difference to abstract questions of its validity as a personal decision.

Ok I see now. I dont agree with your opinion. I think my way of thinking abiut this particular matter is more correct. But this is where and why discussion takes place.

 

[invisible]

Ok I see now. I dont agree with your opinion. I think my way of thinking abiut this particular matter is more correct. But this is where and why discussion takes place.

of course you are more than fully entitled to decide for yourself that what you have determined to be a human predisposition to behaving in a certain way, sexually or otherwise, should be a priority in your decision-process for how you behave in this life. the reason why i started this discussion is because your post on what humans are supposedly "meant" to do communicated no understanding that ideas about what humans are "meant" to do may have little priority in the decision processes of others, and correspondingly little impact on what may be involved in the happiness of people other than yourself.

 

[Eventhorizon]

of course you are more than fully entitled to decide for yourself that what you have determined to be a human predisposition to behaving in a certain way, sexually or otherwise, should be a priority in your decision-process for how you behave in this life. the reason why i started this discussion is because your post on what humans are supposedly "meant" to do communicated no understanding that ideas about what humans are "meant" to do may have little priority in the decision processes of others, and correspondingly little impact on what may be involved in the happiness of people other than yourself.

See I believe it is not understanding what you are from a foundational perspective that leads not only to unhappiness but misunderstanding as well.

 

[invisible]

See I believe it is not understanding what you are from a foundational perspective that leads not only to unhappiness but misunderstanding as well.

well i think that involves an idea of "where you are from" that is not only highly debateable, but may shrink massively in importance next to peoples involuntary social and cultural positioning, but also their own ideas about what is important to them intellectually, aesthetically, whatever. it is a highly subjective matter.