Of all the arguments against marriage, one of the most common – and one which deserves some consideration by those who argue from a pro-marriage perspective – is that cohabitees’ relationships retain more spontaneity and intensity of love. The reasoning is that such couples are together not because of the expectations and social pressures associated with a formal institution, but because the individuals want to be together. Marriage and domesticity create a sort of inertia, which makes people reluctant to leave an unhappy partnership. A contributor to the Guardian newspaper a few weeks ago expressed the point thus:
"Our feeling was that every day being together was a choice, whereas marriage was about habit and convention."
This is actually a fairly perceptive comment, insofar as it goes (a lot might be said about both the somewhat idealised vision of free-spirited cohabitees in the piece, and, more importantly, the copious evidence that marriage is better for children). But it is not quite perceptive enough. It fails to see both the benefits of habit and convention, and the limitations of choice. And I think these failures are linked by a common cause: an incomplete understanding of what it truly means to love someone.
I once heard a film director say in an interview that the word “love” should be banned for a month, to make people say what they really meant. He had a point. Love is so ubiquitous a concept that it is hard to say anything about it without lapsing into cliché or platitude. We build our lives around it; we write songs and books and plays and poems about it. In the name of love, people perform acts of enormous courage and nobility, and commit acts of great stupidity and cruelty. Yet it sometimes seems that we never actually get any closer to understanding what it means.
Both the classic 80s rock band Boston and the author and scholar C S Lewis have pointed out that love is more than a feeling. The heart can be treacherous. Love is also an act of will and a disciplining of the self: to hold on in the difficult times, to forgive, to understand, to accept.
This is where habit and convention come in. The Greek philosopher Aristotle popularised the idea that “virtue is habit”, that is to say that if we want to become good, we must practise goodness. Becoming a good person is a bit like becoming a good athlete, requiring training, commitment, and a series of conscious choices about the kind of person you wish to become. If we prefer TV or the PlayStation to physical training, we will not perform well in a marathon; if we prefer TV or the PlayStation to making an effort in relationships, we will soon find ourselves in trouble.
Let’s move from abstract ideas to practical situations. A couple have a blazing row. Hurtful things are said. Old grudges are dredged up. Festering frustrations are finally aired. They go to separate bedrooms and barely speak for a week. The little things they used to do to show their love – the in-jokes, the affectionate touches, the flirting, breakfasts in bed – all but vanish. A birthday or an anniversary passes uncelebrated. A work colleague who provides a shoulder to cry on suddenly seems fresh and attractive and exciting, a new world of romantic possibilities.
This couple do not feel very much in love. They are not choosing each other every day, if by “choosing each other every day” we mean that they experience the kind of strong feelings that we tend to associate with love: sexual desire, a wishing for emotional and physical intimacy. But we would not say, based simply on the lack of these feelings, that they no longer love one another. There is a deeper level on which they are still deeply committed to one another; their lives woven together. It is habit and convention – routine, if you like – that has helped to sustain and develop this deep connection. The whole point of committed long-term relationships is that there will always be days – perhaps whole weeks or months – when we don’t feel like consciously choosing our partner. But that is not a reason to bale out straight away. Sometimes relationships do break down irretrievably. Many more that could be repaired and made better than ever by improved communication, or more patience and tolerance, are abandoned prematurely because people have been misled about the meaning of love and what a human relationship is actually for.
It may seem counter-intuitive that a relationship that appears to restrict our options or commit us to a certain way of life actually offers us a new kind of freedom. But if marriage is approached in the right way, it can liberate us from insecurity and the need to project an image to the world. Secure in the knowledge that our partner not only wants to be with us permanently, but is willing to say as much, and promise to take care of us, before friends, family and the law, we can be ourselves. Committed relationships – especially ones such as marriage that involve a formal, public and legal commitment – give us a guarantee that it is not a body or a lifestyle or material possessions that our partner is interested in, but a person.
To end on a light-hearted note, the following story illustrates the point better than the most eloquent advocate of marriage:
An elderly couple, who had been married for some sixty or seventy years, were interviewed by their local paper about the screts of a successful marriage. The woman was asked whether she had ever considered divorce during the inevitable difficult periods. She paused briefly, and replied;
“Divorce? No, never. Murder? Frequently. But never divorce.”