I'm not an expert on marriages, so maybe it is good to take that into consideration when reading my answer.
There are things that I agree with and there are some others than I don't.
I don't think marriage will free oneself of unpleasant emotions like jealously or insecurities. That's still an inner work that one has to do with oneself, or so I think. Being married will not make one not feel feelings.
Sometimes, one feels insecure or jealous or angry, or whatever, and it is not because of the other person, but because something inside us that we have to work with.
So, I would say that, more than marriage itself, it is the love that must accompany it that can have that liberating effect on the lover.
Because love - and this is my way of looking at love so you may disagree - when it is real, it is detached, it is not as if two people are tied to each other, but as if they are bond together. Then they can feel free and loved.
If you love in such a way that you bind yourself forever, then you are free.
Lovely way to end.
Thank you for commenting. I welcome your agreement as well as your disagreement a lot :)
I would look at it the other way round. If someone doesn't want to recognise marriage as something that is capable of freeing him from the rigours of insecurity and jealousy through its special character, he probably won't find that it protects him from them either. If you understand marriage as the smallest unit in a state, in which the highly personal experiences the greatest possible space for individual idiosyncrasies - as a state within a state - everything that can shake the marriage (jealousy, insecurity, etc.) becomes an opportunity to recognise the pact in spirit as insurance against such disturbances. Contact takes place on the outer boundary of marriage. And since there are things in every human life that tempt, unsettle and cause doubt, recalling the marital covenant and the promise made is important at such times.
Love itself can grow through the officially entered into covenant, because romantic love and erotic love are limited in nature and what remains in the cohabitation of two people when romance and eroticism lose their power, which they inevitably do, is to feel satisfied without these elements in a marriage.
I can let another person be free if they know that they have my loyalty. So I would say that for young, as yet unmarried people, marriage initially exists only as a potential, but for men and women who have been together for many years and have lived through the phases of uncertainty and doubt, the potential has unfolded the moment their marriage has been placed on such touchstones and taken further. Love is the will to deal honestly with oneself and marriage is the training ground in which this is most optimally possible. People who have difficulties with love are given the opportunity through the relationship to experience the loyalty of the other person and can perhaps only be enabled to love fully once they have experienced this in depth for the first time.
Marriage and love are therefore mutually dependent, I would think. There are phases in which a man may not love his wife very much and vice versa, in which case the marital bond is the supporting element. I think loving is an art. It's not something that just stays that way and exists all by itself. Love is something that has to be constantly renewed, because people are constantly changing.
I do agree with you in many things. But I don't think one can control what one feels, not be free of feelings so easily. One can decide to make a vow and stick to it for life, that's under our control. But for it to be able to not feels feelings it is completely another thing. Or at least that's how I see it.
There is a saying in Spanish that goes "El corazón tiene razones que la razón no conoce" (The heart has reasons that reason does not know).
The heart it's a very complex part of us, no matter how much one tries and say "I don't like this feeling, so I don't wanna feel it" or "This feeling is so irrational, I want to stop it" it doesn't matter. Or also, "I love this feeling, I want to feel always like this." It's very difficult for our rational part of us to control the sentimental part. Feelings can be irrational sometimes. Or appear irrational when they are not, too.
But surely you have more experience than me on this, so you probably know more. So be sure to spread your knowledge all around near me so that I can learn something or two about it. :)
Do you believe that every love relationship should end in marriage?
Hm. I think that I have not spoken about something to be able to control ones feelings. You can't. That much shall be obvious. Once you feel jealousy or anger or sadness or joy, you feel it despite whatever relationship you're in. In fact, if one could not feel, then marriage would be obsolete, any relationship would be senseless.
A mature person accepts the emotions under which he comes and tries to live artfully through them. One form is the art of marriage. In other relationships, like for example between male comrades, it needs another form of handling. And so on. Marriage would be no training ground for lovers if feelings weren't there.
If it is love, it is or will become marriage. Just because there is the official act (it is meant to be something for people on the whole to see that there are millions of married couples by a common form of language/symbolic acts, like in Christianity and other religions) it does not mean that you don't feel married already (by the acceptance of living out the highest ideal between man and woman).
So for me, marriage is the result of wanting to love fully.
To answer more concrete: No, not every relationship which one thought of it being love, need to end in marriage. There is an engagement period of several months, it can also last longer (but preferably not several years, that would break the rule), during which the opportunity should arise and be sought to get to know each other well. If it's still love after six or so months, then why not marrying?
My man married me before I married him ;)
No, you're right, my mistake. But that's what came to my mind when you say that it frees yourself from jealously and of polish insecurities, etc.
But I do can see how can liberate oneself of a lot of concerns and anxiety on love relationships.
Interesting take. I must say that I have never thought of getting married myself, although I also don't dismiss the idea at all. What will be, will be.
:)
To answer with Chesterton:
Does that mean that one must be responsible for the feelings of others that we provoke?
Sorry if I don't grasp it.
Oh, I am sorry that I did not refer to which sentence I actually was relating my answer.
It was this:
There are always exceptions to a rule. If official marriage is the rule but there are people who live together in true love without having married officially, they actually are married unofficially (because they know the rules by heart from what they grasped from the idealism of religion).
You asked
In the context of this post and what Chesterton wrote, I interpret him like so:
If you do something with pathos, i.e. provoke the passion of a woman or a man who is in a committed relationship, there is a responsibility on the part of the initiator. Of course, he shares this responsibility with the person who responds to the seduction, but it is not diminished by this.
For example, if a seducer, as Casanova became known for, tried to seduce a married woman by every trick in the book because she is married, then his own temptation lies in getting a married woman to commit adultery, for example. So it was something of a sport for him to get those women into his bed who were officially married wives. After he succeeded he lost immediate interest.
For a couple who feel that they are married (without having performed the official act of marriage before the church or registry office), it matters less whether the union is legal or not because they believe in the sacrament of the union. However, an outsider who is after the woman could say that it would be no big deal if he were to seduce her, as she is not married.
I think that might be what Chesterton could have meant with that sentence.
The question remains "When is love real?"
Since one falls into love, as it is, the reality of love needs to find a grip beyond the spontane character of falling in love. Love cannot be detached in my experience, it unfolds its potential within the tie as much as within the bond.
The moment when I feel tied is the moment when the other person gets the opportunity to make me feel the bond. Conversely, the moment I feel the bond, it is not a tie. But nevertheless, the bond co-exists alongside the tie. The two could be described as a "duty" and a "free choice", the one I have to do, the other I want to do. A marriage is never such that I always want to, but also have to.
Being bound to each other requires feeling attached. Since the two are always alternating, the times when marriage is more like a duty than a freedom are definitely a lived experience. The art is to be willing to change it when it appears too much of a tie into a bond.
One must know when love is real because one feel that way, one feel deep care and tender affection towards another person. It's not the mind who is gonna tell if it's love or not.
But I admit that I am very idealistic about it.
And I agree with you, but the way I see it, when you feel the bond, you are acting out of love. And when you feel the tie, you are acting out of other things, can be insecurities, I don't know. But because we are so confused about ourselves, and because we are so attached to that person that we don't wanna lose them, we do another things that have nothing to do with love, but because of fear, etc., and that's when it is a tie.
That is why I say it is detached. We must differentiate between what is born of love and what is born of something else.
But again, you probably know more than me.
Yes, that are good examples you gave. Here is another one:
Let's say that you love your mother.
Then she says or does something that you deeply detest. In those moments you do not feel tenderness and affection towards her but anger (disappointment, you name it).
The tender is the bond, the anger is the tie, yes. Both things happen, within the broad spectrum of acceptance and rejection. Love as an always lasting feeling in general is there, maybe that is what you mean by "detached"? But in particular it's not.
I have just more experience in man-woman-relationships since I am older ;)
Yes, I completely agree with you here.
What I mean by "detached" (maybe that was not the best word either), is that you feel good loving and don't need anything else. Whatever other desire arise like to control, etc., it's not out of love but out of another feelings. But, as we love that person, we think every desire we have about it, it is out of love.
But again, you have more experience than me, I agree on that.