Table Of Contents
Why Get Married?The ProblemI Love YouLove Is LeavingLove Is OfferingLove Is VolunteeringLove Is Expecting
Why Get Married?LoveI want someone to love me. I want to feel loved. I want to experience being loved. I think there is a deep-seated desire to love someone, to know that out of all the people in this world, there is one that I love and that loves me back. My life has meaning because I am in love. Love is the ultimate cure for loneliness. Even when you are not together, you are still connected by this mutual feeling of love.When I was dating my wife, we had a long-distance relationship of about 200 miles. But when we fell in love, it didn’t matter how far we were away from each other because we were in each other’s hearts. You get married because you are in love. HappinessBeing in a romantic relationship makes you feel happy. A
2012 study found that during the initial stages of love your body produces elevated levels of the hormone Oxytocin. It gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling. And being in love does make you feel happy. Who doesn’t want to feel happy? Who doesn’t want to be in love? I am happily married but still get ads when I am on the internet about finding someone to love. Single people are searching for the happiness of love. Even married people are looking to fall in love again or looking for it in someone or something outside of their marriage.I think most people see marriage as a vehicle to get you to the happiness that you want. It starts with just being in love, then it becomes having a family, and finally having someone to share your life with, to grow old together.NeedsThis is where it gets interesting because everyone has needs that marriage can facilitate. And it’s those needs that drive us into the marketplace of love. At its base marriage is an exchange of goods. One person needs physical intimacy, while another needs providing for. So they enter into a partnership of love and marriage. In exchange for this, I am giving you this. Those needs vary from person to person, but regardless of what those needs are, they are a part of the exchange that takes place in the marketplace of love. When you are single, you are looking for the best person to meet those needs. So you meet and develop this understanding that you are both capable and willing to meet those needs in that exchange.
I once read this book entitled “His Needs Her Needs” by Willard Harley. I would recommend it to anyone because it was very insightful and helpful. It outlines the needs of men and women and how individuals sort out those needs and how marriage can by design meet them. Love allows you to partner with someone else to have those needs met. The ProblemThings ChangeMaybe you mutually agree to end the whole thing and you file for divorce. “Let’s go our separate ways because we no longer can keep the exchange going and maybe we can find a better exchange somewhere else.” Maybe you both just live with the “lemon” of a deal you got stuck with. Or maybe marriage is about something entirely different.The Real ProblemBut what happens when the reasons you got married are no longer valid? What happens when you don’t feel in love anymore,
