Romantic Love is a lie! (Quote me!)

OK I must admit, I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about this particular subject. I feel as if there is a nebulous idea lying elusively at the back of my mind that I am struggling to grasp, and then articulate. But it has been coming together for a while now. In this post, I just want to write the barebones of an idea:
The concept of “romantic love” is a lie, pure and simple, in that it is misleading. However, I believe that it encapsulates a number of different aspects, which is why it is useful.

Something about me: You know what? Sometimes my mind can work very, very literally. So when people talk about “love”, I just can’t accept it as a necessarily fuzzy concept. I feel a great need to analyse it, especially if I am supposed to be basing my life on this thing.

I believe that romantic interaction necessarily encapsulates a number of different aspects: These can vary from person to person, from romantic interaction to romantic interaction. So a romantic interaction could for instance involve some or all of the following in varying proportions: (I think that this list is pretty comprehensive, but it is not impossible that I will have missed out important things.)

Commitment
{Attraction
Sexual desire
Emotional intimacy} To my mind, the combination of these three things in any proportion constitute “chemistry”
Admiration, regard, respect, care and concern,
Truly valuing the other person
Compatibility

I am now going to explain why I believe that the concept of “love” is unreliable.
Firstly, when people talk about “falling in love”, to my mind, they usually mean a combination of things where first and foremost chemistry is important.
I believe that this is a flimsy foundation on which to build your entire future. People act as if “love” has some magical powers, as if everything is dependent on love. When you watch movies, they always ask “do you love him?” “Do you still love him?” as if “love” (chemistry) is in and of itself what is needed to ensure a successful union.
It does not take sufficient account of compatibility or my favourite relationship concept, character. People just act as if all you need to do is shake a magic “love wand” – that is not supposed to be a euphemism! – and hey presto, that is the magic ingredient that means that two people should be together. People will even act as if there is something compelling about love (chemistry), that there is an element of “obligation” in the whole thing, that it is almost immoral to not act on these kinds of feelings.

But as I say, this is flimsy! I believe that chemistry is deeply important as a component in a marriage. I don’t want to get married without it, and I am not going to pretend to have deep feelings of anything towards any man if those feelings do not truly exist. However, as I say it is just a component of the marriage, like the first whispers of possibility, or a question dangling in the air. What actually gives the marriage substance, real substance, is the commitment that you build up with one another, the communication, the efforts, the oneness that you work on developing with one another. It is the substance of all these things that distinguishes an actual relationship from mere chemistry.

So this is where all this can become problematic. In life, I think it is clear that it is very easy for any of us to develop feelings for someone, or to feel attracted to someone. I believe that for the reliable continuation of the human race, we each need to be capable of developing attraction or chemistry to a broad range of people. I believe that this is why we are each capable of being attracted to people who can so greatly differ from one another, and also from those of us who are being attracted to them!
If you are going to call each instance of strong attraction or chemistry “falling in love”, and if you are going to act as if this “love” represents some kind of obligation upon you, then obviously that is going to jeopardise lots of existing relationships.

We have got to learn that developing a crush, even a strong crush, is just a fact of life, for married people as well as for singles, and that it does not represent any kind of compulsion or obligation upon us at all, even if we are not already married. If a crush can be considered an open question, and you are already married then that question has already been conclusively and permanently answered by your existing spouse. If you are in this situation, I would advise you to be honest with yourself and remove yourself from this person, swiftly and diplomatically. If you are not married then of course you could explore the possibility with this new person. However that is literally the point of marriage: it answers the relationship question for ever, or at least until death do you part, and when you are getting married, you are making that commitment to not even consider the question any longer, no matter how enticing anyone asking it might look.

Unfortunately, if the original marriage itself was based on this flimsy foundation of “love”, (chemistry) without giving due consideration to character, or commitment, or compatibility, then it would not be very surprising if the original marriage itself happened to be weak. So in that instance, if the original marriage is weak, or clearly poor, like if one of the spouses has really bad character, or there is no real compatibility between the two of you, then it would not be utterly surprising if the following were to happen. Someone else comes along with whom there is strong chemistry AND with whom the new relationship excels in a way that the original marriage is lacking. Then of course the spouse who is eyeing this new partner would be tempted to say: “Actually this new person is my real soulmate! That first marriage was a mistake, that was not or is no longer “true love”, rather this is true love!” But ultimately what is truly a mistake is to base your life on this shoddy understanding of love to start with. Because the truth is, that first marriage was a mistake! But so is any subsequent marriage that is also based on this faulty understanding of “love”. But marriage is obviously such a big thing, the choice of your spouse is the biggest decision you will make in life (after the decision to follow Christ or not, as that decision even transcends this earthly life itself). This is why we need to get marriage right in the first place: because dismantling a marriage is so painful. Even in our times when we are supposedly so sophisticated about relationships, divorce remains devastating. It literally rips apart hearts and lives and families, especially children, and even whole communities. Marriage is literally the foundation on which lives and families are built. Furthermore, it can only hurt to have invested so much time and effort into something, and then to watch it simply crumble before your eyes. Especially if you had a lavish wedding!
I am not going to look back to the “olden days” of eg time prior to the 1960s, and act as if everything was fine with marriages before then, in the days before divorce became prevalent, because it clearly was not. There would undoubtedly have been lots of spousal abuse and women often had little to no rights.
However, I cannot help thinking that the reason divorce is so prevalent in our days is because the widespread cultural understanding of “love” is so flawed. Even if neither spouse falls for anyone else, it is not surprising that such a marriage would break up anyway.

(A further confusion to all this is that love seems to mean something different when a couple have been together for decades. There it seems to mean the care, regard and consideration that people have built up for one another over years and years together. My literal brain gets confused!)

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to do later: Write a comprehensive guide to a better way to approach a relationship