Advice on Relationships
When is comes to getting advice on relationships, how well do you understand the fictions and facts about love?
Most people take it for granted that love is the one thing which really counts in choosing a life partner. “Do I love him?” or, “Do I love her enough?” Many young people believe that the answer to these questions should settle the matter of marriage. Bill might make a far better husband, but if Jill loves Jack more than she loves Bill, she will marry Jack.
In many other cultures, and at other times and places, the idea of what is most important in marriage has been quite different. Before we assume that our ideas are correct, or even better, we should ask ourselves how we have come by them.
So far as we as individuals are concerned, the answer is not difficult. When giving advice on relationships we believe that love is the crucial matter in marriage because this idea has been drilled into us from childhood. The media is partly responsible; most plots are so organized in movies and television. For example, parents who object to the love choices of their children are made to appear selfish and wrong.
Such considerations as differences in family or social position are made to seem unimportant. When young people defy their parents or their traditions and marry for love, we applaud. The picture has been so produced as to make us feel that we should. It might have been so developed as to give the opposite impression.
The novels and stories which most of us read present the same general point of view. The girl is sometimes represented as engaged to some nice, respectable person whom she does not love. So that we will not like him, he is portrayed as intolerably stuffy. Therefore when she runs off and marries the man she really loves, often at the very last minute, we feel that she has done the right thing. The general idea often is that a husband should be someone glamorous and exciting.
Advertisements help to hammer the same idea home. In the soap operas, love and happiness are presented as the only things in marriage which are worth while. Many other ads play up the same idea. Love and glamour – these are the important considerations, so we are told.
Of course the movies, stories, and ads present this point of view because it is in line with what we already believe, and want to keep on believing. Back of it all is the very powerful force of public opinion. The fiction is accepted because that is the way marriage choices seem to work out in real life.
For example, there was Cousin Gussie. All the family thought that her marriage was a mistake. But when she explained that he was the man she loved, that seemed to settle the question for everyone. Our friends have made what have seemed to others very peculiar choices. But we all seemed to feel that if they were really in love, there was nothing else for them to do.
These love matches did not always work out very well. Even in the stories, the glamorous Romeo, whom the girl left all to marry, was sometimes presented as little more than an attractive and exciting tramp. After the marriage he may desert her and their children and leave them without financial or emotional support for months or even years at a time. Yet, according to the fiction, despite all these hardships, the girl had done the only thing she could do; marry the man she loved.
These strange and often tragic choices are often explained on the basis that love just doesn’t make sense anyway. Love is supposed to be some strange mysterious Something which nobody can understand. The only way you can tell it is by the way you feel when your heart goes bumpity-bump, and all that. Furthermore, there doesn’t seem to be anything you can do about it. It just IS, or IS NOT. You cannot make yourself love another, no matter how eager he may be to marry you, or how good a husband he would make.
On the other hand, when it does hit you, you are a goner. Cupid just sneaks up on people, twangs his bow, and before anybody knows it, they are hooked, regardless of how suitable the marriage may or may not be. Such is the fiction upon the basis of which so many young people select their marriage partners. Now let us look at some of the facts.
One of the most inescapable facts is the extent of marriage failure. Hundreds of thousands crowd our divorce courts, often bitter and disillusioned. Yet, these same people were quite as much in love with each other as most young people are at the time of marriage. Obviously something is terribly wrong with this idea that marriages should be based upon feelings of love which people have toward each other.
Even more conclusive evidence is to be found in the speed with which these romantic ideas die out for most people after marriage. Think of the people whom you know who have been married for ten years or more. How many of them still have this romantic glow which is supposed to be the very purpose of marriage?
More on these facts and advice on relationships in the next post.
Posted in Relationship Stages
