What's Wrong with Marrying for Love?

Falling in love is the expected and proper prelude to marriage. As presently interpreted, this means that you marry for love and that you work at it after marriage. A successful marriage is the final realization of a romantic attraction. A good marriage is one that contributes freely and fully to personality development; a poor marriage is one that hinders it. Getting married is primarily a romantic adventure with an emphasis upon individual rights and freedom from parental control, rather than a carefully reasoned choice involving a prudent weighing of other factors important for a lifelong union. Passionate attachment and anticipated happiness outweigh such considerations as companionship, cultural similarities and common social experience. We proudly announce that we no longer marry for convenience, to promote a career or to please our families but to establish a personally desirable relationship that is voluntary, rests on personal choice, and aims at individual happiness and personality development. Romance is beautiful. Wonderful. But as the primary basis for selection of matrimonial mates? On which to build a lifelong union? Many things must be considered. This is the verdict of other centuries. Young people need the counsel of their elders. Parents do know something about the nature and needs of their own children. They can judge their mates through the eyes of their greater age and experience. And 'they do seek the happiness of their children. Does modern research throw any light on the validity of romance as a basis for mate selection? What are the findings of recent studies of marital problems? Romance according to some researchers is a process of fantasy formation, usually adolescent when one idealizes another person, ignoring the faults and magnifying the virtues of the loved one. (After marriage there is usually an emotional return to reality.) Other students of the problem see it as a striving for emotional security, so lacking in casual relations Df our everyday life. Whatever the facts may be in each of these interpretations, it should be noted that all see romantic love as some brm of compensating emotion, personally satisfying, ide-ilizing someone else but unrelated to reality. Studies of marital failure and success show quite clearly hat the longer the period of acquaintance before marriage, he greater the chances of marital success. Perhaps most essential is the importance of similarity of ocial background for marital success. This means that like hould marry like. "Marriage," writes a well-known family sociologist, "involves living with a person, not merely loving him." It is this prosaic fact that places romantic love in its proper proportions as a basis for marriage. Romance must be termed the prelude to the more sober and realistic consideration of a mate hut