Love And Marriage: Can You Have A Marriage Without Love?
Last updated on July 8th, 2022 at 06:34 pm
Most people automatically assume that love and marriage belong together. You can’t have a successful marriage without some amount of mutual love and it is only natural that feelings of love lead to marriage.
Yet, there are some progressive thinkers out there who believe you don’t necessarily need love to be married, or you don’t have to be married if you are in love.
The Loveless Marriage
If a loveless marriage sounds like a horrible thing to endure, you are right in line with millions of other people who believe love naturally go together with marriage.
Yet, all over the world today you can find people who are married but who don’t feel a lot of genuine love or passion for one another. They are in marriages of convenience, rather than marriages of love.
Think of the powerful businessman who married a woman who would make a great mother and keep a nice home because he knew he wouldn’t be around much but wanted that family life.
He may not necessarily love his wife as she would want him to, but they both get something out of the marriage.
Another example would be the woman who marries for money. She knows her much older husband doesn’t really love her, but thinks of her more as a trophy on his arm at parties. The husband knows she is only around for the payout in the end, but it works for them!
Then of course you have the loveless marriage that started out as typical loving relationship but disintegrated over time. This is the type of relationship that needs to be revived or ended because neither spouse will be happy.
Those who willingly enter a marriage without genuine feelings of love have to do so consciously and both people have to be on board. If one has feelings of love that are unrequited, unhappiness is to follow.
Unmarried Love
Most people today know at least one couple that has been together for many years without getting married. What was once considered shameful cohabitating out of wedlock is commonplace in most American societies today.
While it used to be that love led to marriage, today love could just lead to years of living together without the ring and walk down the aisle.
There are many reasons that some people who are deeply in love choose not to get married. In some instances, it is a matter of convenience or business, just like those who enter loveless marriages to gain something else.
For others, marriage just doesn’t have the sense of value or necessity that it had in generations past.
Terms like “baby mama” came about because of the growing number of couples having children out of wedlock. The number of long term couples who will never get married grows by the year, showing that love and marriage doesn’t always have to come together in one big happy package.
What are your thoughts on love, relationship, and marriage? Do you think that the institution of marriage has lost meaning and do you want to find love and get married one day? Or, might you be one of those who get married for reasons other than love?
It is not unheard of for couples who aren’t in love to get married because they want the tax benefits that come with marriage and kids. This doesn’t happen often, but it proves that for many people love and marriage don’t always go hand in hand.
