Love Marriage

Love, Marriage, & Responsiblity Essay, Research Paper

Love, Marriage, and Responsibility

Love, Marriage, and Responsibility, are three words that have very strong meanings, regardless of if they are used collectively, or separately. In this paper I will discuss these topics both individually, and in relation to each other, as well as look at these issues from both a male and female perspective. All the views that I will express in this paper are my own thoughts and feelings, and are based on personal experiences and research that I have done. In addition, any references that I make about religion and the church are based on my beliefs as a Christian.

First, I will discuss love. What is love. Webster’s Dictionary defines love as ‘strong affection’. I consider this to be a very accurate definition of love. But I feel that there are two forms of love. First we have love for family, such as our parents, grandparents, and siblings. I consider this to be natural love. Love that cannot be explained, because it is just supposed to be. For example my family has been there for me since birth, and I love them for that. It is natural for me to have strong affection for the people that I have grown with, from birth to the stage that I am at now.

The other form of love that I feel that exists is developed love. This is the type of love that usually occurs between friends and people who are in an intimate relationship. While this type of love does develop over a given time, it is not love that has to happen. While a person will only have one mother, and he or she will love their mother no matter what, this same feeling may not occur between friends. One does not have to love a person because he or she says they are friends. One does not have to love a person because he or she says that they are boyfriend and girlfriend either. This love has to develop between two people over a given time. One cannot approximate how long it will take to feel love for a person (especially since everyone has their own definition of love). Usually when a person feels that there are enough qualities in a person that are admirable and likeable, and that this person will be there from him or her no matter what the situation may be, then they have developed love for that person. While I feel that developed love and natural love are two different things, I feel that one can developed love for a person, which is just as strong as natural love they have another person.

Next I will discuss marriage. Marriage is the union of two people into one being. In the eyes of the law, married couples can be held responsible for the actions of his or her spouse. Married couples can also be held accountable for any harm done to his or her spouse. In the eyes of the church, marriage is the merging of two souls into one. This has similar meaning to the eyes of the law, where married couples are responsible for the well being of each other. Through the eyes of the church, married couples are supposed to share love, life, and responsibility for each other no matter what, till death do they part. In the eyes of both of these entities, couples should be in love, before they decide to make the decision of getting married.

With that said, I want to raise the issue of why more and more couple are getting married, without loving each other first. In today’s society, it seems that love is becoming a secondary reason for marriage. It seems as if there are a lot of reasons that people are getting married today, which are morally wrong. Today we have young people who are getting married because they irresponsibly created a child, and they feel that the only way they will both be there to care for the child is they get married, which forces both the male and the female to be there for the child. Usually these marriages will not work, because the couple will eventually realize that they forced themselves to be together, when there was no love to naturally be together. This scenario may also hurt the child that they have because if the parents do not love each other, than usually the child will be neglected, and instead of being received as a gift of God, this child will considered more of a responsibility and a burden.

There are other reasons that people are getting married without being in love. One of these reasons is money. People are marrying today because one person in the couple can insure that the other person will be financially secure throughout their life. Usually in these situations, the person who is looking for the security pretends to love the person with money, while the person with the money is in love.

Then we have couples that get married for public appearance. These are usually people who are in the public spotlight, and would like to improve their appearance by getting married and raising a family. People that usually get married for this reason are politicians, sports figures, movie stars, etc. Then we have marriages that are arranged. There are usually two reasons that marriages are arranged. One reason is that parents only want their children to marry people who are in their same social class. This usually occurs in upper class families, and in most of these cases, these marriages will not be successful do to the fact that these marriage were not out of love, but out of the need to keep social classes together. Then we have marriages that are arranged so one pe