"Where there's Marriage without Love, there will be Love without Marriage" - Benjamin Franklin 1734

What is Love, and what is Marriage? Love is a connection, and Marriage Isa covenant. Put another way, to love is to have a connection which cannot be well described in words, for the only word we have to describe it, 'love', is not adequate to the task, but is only used in reference to it, not to adequately explain the idea. Marriage, on the other hand, is something that exists in the social sphere. It is a recognition that two or more people are now bound together, or that two or more families are. Marriage exists on the group level, where it seen from outside by others as a sign of connection between folk, a warning to not pursue the breaking of the covenant without great need, a sign that two folk shall be willing to support each other economically, and it is usually taken as a signal that these folk care fore each other. There is before marriage and after marriage, the dating and the wedding. The fact that Love and Marriage are not equal is shown by the statement: 'Love and Marriage', that we can speak of them as two separate things. In the romantic ideal they are often taken to mean the same thing, and to imply each other, but they do not have to. 

Marriage may also be an internal covenant, not simply a signification or an announcement  in the public sphere. Marriage involves a promise, the swearing of an oath, because it is held to mean something, and not just be a fact of social convention, but a fact of life, of issues that involve the hand and the heart. The hand is involved by the co-mingling of worldly resources, and can be adequately copied through a civil union or the signing of a contract. So much for that - but then why do people feel so strongly about the term, about the idea, about the rights to marriage, the name of marriage, and the oaths of marriage? Because marriage also involves the heart. 

Some people are allergic to the concept, or do not wish to assign a name to their relationship. Some have simply never bothered to make their status formal, or feel more comfortable making commitments which they feel are more meaningful. It seems somewhat strange to me, but I know people who have explicitly made the decision to have children together outside of marriage. It seems strange to me because something like that seems like a much stronger commitment to each other than a simple exchange or rings or a public promise to each other. Why is a name like 'marriage' so avoided then, if you are to be bound together not just by legal means, but also by a particular special and extra life that you have made? As a friend, one does not wish to engage so deeply with these questions, or push too hard for a clearer answer, because when you try to ask why the answers always seem to suggest deep issues. I receive vague answers, changes of subject, aide-ways allusions to long discussions I'm not privy to. So, you stop for fear of offense, but that does not stop you from being curious, from wondering about people. Why do this, why is the situation so intriguing, so full of questions you want to ask? Because while for some marriage seems something less important than we thought it was when we were children on the playground, for others it seems like something more. 

The public purpose of marriage is clear enough, and it remains to talk about the private purpose. For me, it appears that the most important part of the entire process is the oath. The promise to, if not love each other, to at least be there for each other. The traditional vows here in America are about being there for each other in times of hardship. When people write their own vows, from the little I have seen, then the oaths is all about how much the other person means to you, how much you care for them, how much you support each other, and where you are headed from here on out. They are not just statements of fact, or ways of saying your feelings out loud. No, they are promises, oaths for what will come. 

Now I'm not married, nor have I ever been on the cusp of marriage, or deep enough in a relationship to be able to speak very coherently on this topic. I certainly am not set up to give advice or for my opinions to be believed, but though I do not know the issues and the feelings at hand in an intimate way, I can still wonder about them. One thing I wonder about is what an oath is. An Oath, to me, is a promise to your future self. It is a moral stance that one takes, in which you say that for as long as you exist, you will do this thing. It creates a barrier, it puts up a force which makes it harder for you to leave. This doesn't mean that it requires more energy to escape the state, or that you are doing so because you fear that you will fail to keep up what you intend to do without that promise. Rather, it functions more like a reminder, more like a whisper to yourself, like the voice of your conscience. It is a memory cast forth into the future, the result of something so important to you right now that you ingrained it into your very soul. To break an oath, an oath that really matters to you, is to die. It is to become a different person, to go beyond your moral bounds. 

People knowingly enter a bound state, love or marriage, when they are seeking something. To love somebody is to feel happiest with them, or to feel happier when they are happy. To marry someone is to bind yourself to them for a reason, to achieve a goal. Generally speaking, people need love more than marriage. Marriage is a social status with a name, or is a moral state through a vow. Love on the other hand is not an active change - we do not make ourselves fall in love - but something which results from you being in a certain state. We can fall in and out of love just as we may enter and exit marriage, but we do not do so with purpose - rather, we find ourselves in a state of love or not, irrespective of our own wishes on the matter. We may certainly love something which is bad for us and make the conscious decision to leave that thing or person whom  we love, but the ability to choose not to act on feelings of love is not the same as being able to not love that person or thing at all. 

When there is marriage without love, then it so happens that love will still find a way to arrive unto one, if you are in need of it. Maybe perfect monks and angels can survive without love from another, but I think that most of us cannot. Sometimes we imagine this love, as when we can't leave a boyfriend or a husband who is bad for us, or when we feel the love of god, or of our adoring fans. We see what may or may not be there. We can feel love for  somebody that does not reciprocate it, or for an inanimate object, or for an ideal, or a story - but I am not here to talk about all the different kinds of love. I am here to talk about the kind of love which we expect to see in a marriage, the kind of love which is romantic and caring, the kind of love where you matter to somebody else just as much as they matter to you. People need to spend time alone, but rarely are we so constituted as to be healthy when we spend all of our time alone, or when we have no important connections upon which we can rely. When there is marriage without love, there will be Love without Marriage, because that is what we need as people to survive, and to fill well. This love might take many forms for different people and different situations, from the emotional  to the physical or the economic. People might seek someone who can support them, someone who can fulfill them, or someone who they can trust. Seeking for love isn't simple just as marriage isn't simple and has many aspects to it. At the end it boils down to needs and promises, and all the forms which they can take inside the human soul.