Romantic love is a poor basis for marriage because love is simply a result of a stimulated limbic system, a stable relationship cannot rely solely upon affection, financial stability is more important than an emotion that can fade, a couple must have similar goals in life, and finally because a couple must share similar cultural and moral backgrounds.
Marrying because of romantic love is ill-fated because love is merely an emotion, and emotions are just a response of the limbic system of the brain being stimulated by the body’s attempt at regulating neural processes and the release of pheromones and chemicals. The release of such chemicals are caused by a random sequence of events, mainly the increase of one’s heart rate alongside the increase of respiration rate. This sequence of events is what can cause the “falling out of love” experienced by many, because the release of dopamine and phenylethylamine is not permanent and the high experienced quickly fades. For the feeling of love to last a steady chemical benefit of serotonin and oxytocin are required.
Aside from the science behind love, a relationship cannot subsist upon affection alone. While a sense of endearment is helpful, it is not the most important part of a successful relationship. A couple must learn to communicate effectively in order to move forward in their relationship, a couple must also have a personal compatibility and be able to complement each other well. A couple must also be flexible with each other and be able to resolve conflict well, in order to have a workable relationship. Unfortunately, very few couples realize the amount of effort that must be put into a relationship and enter into things blindly. Many could argue that this is why, on average, a marriage in the US only lasts about 8.8 years and American marriages have a divorce rate of over 40 percent.
A third reason why a marriage based upon love is an inadvisable decision is because it is wise for a couple to have financial stability before entering into a marriage. A solid relationship requires a sense of stability and the capacity to provide a secure future for one’s family. This need for a stable marital environment is typically brought about by ensuring one or both spouses are financially stable and can care for the family as a whole.
It is easy to understand why finances continue to be the leading cause of divorce, especially when many couples tend to overlook the practical aspects of marriage before combining everything as marital property.
Some relationships last a lifetime and others are destroyed for various reasons. Marriage is in my view one of the most fragile relationships in today's society. Although it is scientifically proven that the family is the place where a person can develop physically and intellectually in a harmonious way, and can maintain his/her physical and mental health, today many families are falling apart, causing much suffering not only to the partners but also to the children in the family. The author of the article on the site www.apa.org/helpcenter, suggests a few steps to take in order to keep the romantic partnership in good working order, and I think this is also true for a happy marriage too. According to the site, communication is a key piece of healthy relationships. Another recommendation is to keep the marriage relationship interesting, planning interesting activities together, away from the daily routine. When you can no longer overcome the obstacles that arise in marriage, it is recommended to call for outside
Marriage was designed to allow a couple to spend a lifetime together, creating memories. The intentions are to fall in love before being married. However, society has made a drastic change in
Divorce can be caused by problems such as drugs, adultery, abuse, and money. The United States is a fast-paced country with little to no time to spend on the basic family values it was founded upon. Jobs are more demanding, kids are spending most of their time with people other than their parents, and the economy drains marriages by causing worry and stress. The foundation upon which marriage was built has been shaken.
Ludwig Lowenstein, an experienced psychological consultant. In his article, “Causes and Associated Features of Divorce as Seen by Recent Research” states that “people who embarked on partnerships at an early age, cohabitants, those who had experienced parental divorce, and those who were economically, somatically and emotionally vulnerable had higher risks of divorce” (Ludwig pp 157). Couples who are financially unstable are bound to experience the effects of the bad economy thus resulting in expected problems like unemployment and constantly depending on their significant others to provide for them. With this, comes the disadvantages of relying on others and disrupts the social status. At this point, most couples think of ways to solve this issues and according to this study other couples eventually file for divorce. He also reports, “A study of young Americans who wished to divorce showed that economic factors played a significant role in many who sought separations and divorces (Burgess et al., 1997)” (Ludwig pp 157). Evidently, this shows that financial problems cause divorce due to lack of money to support oneself. With that, it is also difficult to financially support your marriage. In some cases, the other person is inclined to take on the responsibilities that deal with financials. Eventually, this doesn’t last long, and that is
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 32.1, TRANSLATIONAL APPLIED SOCIOLOGY (2009): 158-83. JSTOR.Web. 11 May 2014. Chalmers, Jennifer H. "Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?" Romantic Love: Is It a Realistic Goal for Marriage Therapy?
According to recent statistics, there are more divorces now than ever before. At the rate things are going, the divorce rate may soon surpass the marriage rate. There are many reasons for such a high divorce rate, but one of the main ones is that people do not realize what they are getting themselves into when they marry. Couples do not realize that marriage is a job that must be worked at continuously in order for it to go well. Because many couples marry for the wrong reasons, a breakdown in communication results, which leads to a couple's growing apart. This process, all too often, ends in divorce.
While society has heavily embedded the idea of love into marriage, the actual applications of marriage does not incorporate love into it. Love and marriage are a thing that has been disconnected for a long time, yet the restrictions that have plagued marriage are the same restrictions that affect love due to the heavy mental connection that culture created with marriage. Abuse of the systems that marriage creates is a main reason for the failure of love. When someone can use marriage to gain something material, people will not marry who they love and ruin the concept of marriage. This is due to the heavily embedded bureaucracy that has found itself weaved into something that should merely be a sign of commitment and love towards another person.
In 2008 it was estimated that 40% of all marriages ended in divorce and 60% of second marriages would end also (Uphold-Carrier, Holly and Rebecca UTZ 2012 247-266). This is a sad statistic. There are some factors that may put people at risk for divorce such as: abuse, marrying at a young age, insecurities, religion, pregnancy, and affairs. Most of these problems can be prevented through commitment. Commitment is being dedicated to something or someone. Being committed could have a major impact on marriages. Although divorce may be the only option for some couples, others still try to hold on to their relationship due to financial issues.
All readers will read and interpret this story in their own way based on their life and their knowledge of marriage. One thing that is indisputable is the emotions which carry through all people and the empowerment in which marriage has on these inspirations. In life love can renew one spirit as well as kill the passion of a person.
Back in the Age of Enlightenment people felt marriage depended more on the basis of survival, they would tolerate unhappiness for the sake of living; however, for the romantics love was the necessary foundation for marriage as they held unconventional views about taking vows, not for the purposes of obtaining security from material things like money and land. For the romantics love was passionate and out of control, some even felt that spontaneous desire for someone was enough reason to believe they were in love and took it so far as to have wild passionate love affairs one after the other even if they were married.
Marital quality, is traditionally defined as an, “individual’s affective response varying in the amount of satisfaction, gratification, or happiness with his or her marriage” (Shriner, 2009, p. 83). Martial satisfaction is often used as a global best measure of marital quality. The Quality of Marriage Index, for example, is a six-item measure of marital quality, which only includes questions that relate to marital satisfaction (Norton, 1983). Fincham and Bradbury (1987), found that the Marital Adjustment Test (Locke and Walace, 1959), which is purposed to assess overall marital quality, has 22% of the possible score on this assessment as marital happiness. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Spanier, 1976), another measurement that is commonly used to assess marital quality, assesses for satisfaction and other aspects of marriage including dyadic consensus, cohesion, and affection expression. However, these subscales although admirable, all assess for compatibility, which indirectly points back to satisfaction within the relationship. To be more clear, satisfaction and compatibility go hand it hand with the American glamorization of romantic love and the assumptions that if spouse are compatible and satisfied, these are the ingredients to a long happy marriage (Crawford, Houts, Huston, & George, 2002). Crawford et. al (2002) mentioned that, “the consistency of the link found between companionship and satisfaction has been such that the notion that companionship is some how ‘good’ for marriage has acquired the status of a cultural truism” (p.
A big thing that people may disagree with is that love is supposedly “conditional” (108). According to Fredrickson, “'just as our body is designed to extract oxygen from the Earth’s atmosphere, our body is designed to love” (105). If love is supposedly such an engraved ability, why would it need conditions? Well, as amazing as our brain can be, it is not able to hold huge amounts of information. It will automatically discard of unused information after a short while. So basically, if we want to maintain love, we have to keep renewing acts of love. This explains why many relationships tend to fail. It is very common for people to lose feelings for someone and it is solely because people do not know how to self-generate love. However, it is not our fault, no one has taught us how to love, we just follow our hearts and go with it. But with integration of love 2.0, we will be able to achieve that status of “relationship goals”. Fredrickson simplifies this idea by revealing that love has two preconditions, safety and connection. In maintaining a safe environment, we can continue to bless each other with the gift of positive
Another cause of divorce is due to financial difficulties. Budget handling and debt arising out of low or reduced income is an example of a financial cause of divorce. Fighting over how to budget becomes a major problem in the marriage. In most cases, one of the partners is not content with the overspending habits of the other individual. This will cause a stressful situation which leads to an unwholesome relationship and result in a divorce. A couple struggling to make ends meet has the potential to cause conflict within the marriage. How the economy is today, it seems we are fighting more and more to keep our jobs.
...money now or save it for the future. Additionally, many couples have not talked about their financial situation before getting married and do not often consider talking about the role money plays in their relationship and life (Lee, 2013). As a result, couples discover these things after getting married and realize that they won’t be happy and successful having financial troubles. This is when couples decide to divorce. Furthermore, some couples do not like to act as a couple and prefer to spend their money separately (Lee, 2013). They do not like to help each other when it comes to finances. This situation often leads to divorce, because couples are not able to achieve their future goals, since they are hiding their money businesses from each other (Lee, 2013). Hence, these financial problems tend to cause problems between couples and eventually lead to divorce.
Marriage is a lifetime engagement and traditions in Eastern cultures. Marriages not only do couples get together and take vows to live together, but their families build a lifelong bond. On the other hand, in Western society arranged marriages are not common in the daily life; that is, the point of love is meant to be found, not arranged. In the West, love is to find that someone whereby the couples will spend the rest of their life together. According to Hai, Thu a Vietnamese author, arranged marriages are the method whereby the parents find someone for that person; they are deciding if he or she is fit for the position. Some people could not imagine that Americans who would appreciate the idea of being set together with someone they do not know. To solve this idea and lowering the divorce rate, scientists have expanded the knowledge of personality and relationships. The author brings that various tools have been built to help men and women identify a perfect marriage spouse.