I grew up on Disney movies. My initial views of love and romance were shaped by the starry-eyed love-at-first-sight scenarios portrayed by Cinderella, Snow White & Ariel. How then, did I end up so cynical? How did I go from a hope-filled child in love with love, to such a realistic and analytically-minded adult? It breaks a little piece of my heart to even admit that I am indeed grown up. You know what’s crazy? While it drives me insane to see people get married in the throws of new love, when I watch those movies I totally fall for it! I find myself swooning over the beauty of their love and approving of their speedy nuptials with a sigh and a smile and a tinge of jealousy. Where, pray tell, is this hypocrisy coming from? What does it mean? Is love-at-first-sight real? Can you know in a small matter of days or months that someone is “the one?“ Do you need to date for at least a year and experience a post-new-love relationship before committing? What is really right and true when it comes to love and commitment? I know this is a bit unorthodox for this blog, but I want to reference multiple movies for this posting in an effort to figure out exactly how I feel about an issue that has been causing much emotional stress for me; hurried engagement.
~”True” Love~
It’s fitting that this is a truth-seeking entry because these romantic movies distort the truth. They present scenarios to us and we just eat them up with wide eyes because they are beautiful, and we want them to be true. I am guilty of the same innocent belief. My favorite movie of all time (tied with another nautical film) is Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The movie’s heroine is Ariel, a beautiful mermaid all grown up and ready to make life-altering decisions at sixteen years of age. She falls deeply in love after laying eyes upon, and subsequently rescuing the handsome and conveniently single Prince Eric. Not more than a week later, they are married, and I buy into it every time. I have no doubt that they will live happily ever after. In today’s culture, and with good reason, young teenagers are not deemed ready for marriage. If it was the norm for teenagers to marry then they would be getting married and divorced as quickly as, well, adults. In a way, teens actually seem to have a more healthy view of love. They live in the moment, but usually aren’t quick to commit. They fall deeply in love very quickly, but understand that marriage is a big decision to be made later in the relationship. Adults on the other hand, often use those same initial deep romantic feelings, coupled with the rationale that the other person is a very good person and loves them completely as justification for an immediate engagement. In movies, I approve. In real life, I don’t buy it. This whole “he loves me and I love him and we both feel it’s right” phase is fun and beautiful, but people forget that this phase happens at the beginning of almost every relationship. When you find someone who is good and kind and attractive and your feelings are mutual, the result is magical, but the ending is not a guaranteed happily ever after. That new-love feeling will fade, and when it does, what will you have left? I think a year is a good length of time to get to know someone. By then, the novelty of the new relationship will have worn off and you will be left with the heart of the relationship. Hopefully by this point you will have both seen each other really angry and worked through difficult conversations and if after all this time you have learned they love you despite your imperfections, agree with you on foundational beliefs, and love and support you completely, only then will you be in a place to make a mature decision about marital commitment.
~The Faith Excuse~
Adult humans often use logic to justify their decisions. Christian adults love to claim the peace they feel is a supposed approval of God to justify their rash decisions about love. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s wise to pray about relationships and I’m a huge fan of logic, but when in the throws of new love, peoples’ sense of right and wrong is almost always clouded by their own desires. They already feel their relationship is right and want God’s approval so they interpret all His silence and every romantic moment as confirmation. Might I remind ye readers that humans have been using God’s supposed approval via lack of conviction to rationalize the likes of slavery, male dominance, and incredible mistreatment of animals for centuries. So, forgive me if I don’t completely accept your use of God as a justification for an action you have already decided is the right one.
~Destiny~
What makes the decision to marry right? This is a question I have been struggling with for many years. When I was considering getting engaged to my boyfriend, I asked many of my married friends if they had had any doubts when they got engaged and frustratingly the majority said no. Most of them had gotten engaged in less than a year, some even got married in less than a year. They walked down the aisle blind with happiness. Sometimes I wish I could have been that blind. Unfortunately my eyes were wide open, so that even as I was falling more in love and excited by first kisses, I still remained unsure of the future. Were these reservations a sign that I really hadn’t found my true love? How can you know when you have found them? These questions have haunted me. How can you ever know that the person you have decided to share your life with is the one you are destined to be with? A close friend told me these are the wrong questions to ask; that there is no ‘one;’ but rather that we should focus on who we are with and if they are right for us. If you find that that person is right for you, and vice versa, then you put your all into the relationship. I find myself right in the middle, thinking there is something to what he said; to focus on who you are with, and their rightness, rather than wondering about countless unknowns that do not matter, but also still believing a bit in destiny. I’m not saying the movies have it right, but I do believe that God knows exactly who is the perfect match for each of us, and so in a way there is a ‘one.’
~Fairy Tale Love~
So what do the fairy tales tell us? The distortion of truth presented to us tells us that you certainly can know at first glance that a particular person is your soul mate. Take for instance the story of Sleeping Beauty. Princess Aurora is out in the woods when she meets Prince Phillip, and joins him in a song about recognizing your soul mate from your dreams. Not much later his services are required in the form of true love’s kiss to awaken the princess from an evil curse. True love? How did they know? Why do I buy into the legitimacy of this every time I watch it?! I forget that it is different to be viewing all sides of a love story than it is to be involved on only one side. The movie manipulates the viewer’s thought process by making them feel all-knowing. This is literary device called third person omniscience. First, the viewer is introduced to Aurora, who is beautiful, innocent, loving, and feeling a bit trapped. Then the viewer is introduced to Phillip, who is handsome and intelligent, refusing a betrothal forced upon him. You already know and trust both parties, and seeing them so in love, you believe it’s destiny, so why wouldn’t you approve of their immediate marriage? In real life, however, you simply can’t know. Being swept up in the throws of new love, one can only see the good in the other, and can only imagine a lifetime of romantic bliss. The modern adult will often concede that there will be challenges along the way, but that they will work through them together of course because they are surely meant to be.
~Logic~
The little girl with bouncing blonde curls inside me really really wants to believe that love at first sight is a real phenomenon. Is it? If it is real, it certainly defies the laws of logic. Unless there is some magic out there I’m unaware of, it is impossible to know if someone is right for you simply by looking at them. Feelings can be very strong and rightly influence our decisions, but allowing emotions to lead you is a dangerous, unstable way to run your life. Our emotions wax and wane. This is one reason why marriage is so important. Humans need to make a romantic commitment of some kind, or they will continually pursue fresh relationships that end when the novelty fades. That starry-eyed, infatuation, let’s call it the ‘Disney feeling’ can be important, but is it necessary? My philosopher husband broke it down to me like this:
There are 4 possibilities:
1. It is necessary to feel that “Disney feeling” to know it’s right.
2. That feeling is sufficient to make a long-term decision based upon it.
3. It is both necessary and sufficient or
4. It is neither necessary, nor sufficient to determine relational ‘rightness.’
It isn’t necessary to experience that feeling, because you can imagine a functional relationship in which that ‘Disney feeling’ is absent, but the couple is otherwise a perfect match. Experiencing that feeling alone isn’t sufficient to make a lifelong decision, because feelings fade and change over time. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that that magical feeling is neither necessary to validate a relationship, nor is it a sufficient reason to commit. The ‘Disney feeling’ is very real, and very strong, but one must remember it is only a feeling and does not signify the rightness of a long-term commitment. So when Snow White wakes from her coma and rides off on that white horse with Prince Charming, and they “just know” they are soul mates… that’s crap. I wish it were true. When I was young I thought I would “just know,” but it turns out relationships are much more complicated, something I discovered by persisting in a relationship long past the initial new-love phase. Anyone can feel warm-fuzzies, and then think it through and decide based on the other person’s good qualities and compatibility that they are the perfect match, but is that all there is to it? Is there nothing to persisting in a relationship? Isn’t that what dating is for; to get to know a person completely and decide is they are really right for you? Why not just enjoy dating and lessen the risk of marriage? Besides, spending your pre-marriage time learning to be a couple, and preparing yourselves for marriage is a much more beneficial way to start than spending it planning a large, stressful, expensive public event. What on earth is the rush, then? Besides, if he or she really is ‘the one,’ they will still be ‘the one’ a year from now, or longer.
~Where my heart is at~
If you’ve read this far, you know where I stand in regards to rushed engagement, but are probably wondering why this issue bugs me so much. Normally I would just think to myself well I know I’m right and that’s all that matters, but lately I’ve been forcing myself to dig deeper. I hate feeling helpless and frustrated and if this issue isn’t as big a deal as I feel it is, I’d love to be free to not stress about it. When I first began mulling this issue over in my mind, I thought my intentions were firmly grounded in the best interests of the parities in question. Are my intentions really that pure? It’s certainly true that I don’t want my friends to make risky decisions. I definitely want to save my friends from the risk of disappointment or divorce down the road. I want to encourage them to take their time and make the wisest decisions possible, but is that it? I may be a bit more OCD than I would like to admit. I crave ‘rightness.’ I want to be right, but it’s more than just that. I want the truth to prevail. It’s like when a smoker justifies their risk by saying their grandfather smoked his whole life and never got cancer. When people say they know they are right early in their relationship and jump immediately into marriage, a part of me wants them to be happy of course because I love them, but if I’m being honest, a part of me wants it to fall apart, so they will realize the reality of the risk they have taken. I have a desire for consequences to fall neatly into place. The problem of course is that a risk is just a risk. The results could either be awful or successful. My frustration stems from the conclusion couples reach upon success, that there simply was no risk at all. I would love to hear couples be realistic and say “I really feel that this is right, but I know it’s a risk. Every marriage is a risk, and I am willing to take this one and stick with it despite the outcome.”
In conclusion I would like to point out what may appear to be a glaring hypocrisy between the logic of my previous blog entry (Monsoon Wedding: “What marriage isn’t a risk?”) and this one. Why was I able to write a whole entry justifying an arranged marriage based on very little relationship experience, yet I find it so hard to swallow engagement after months of dating? Am I worrying too much? Is it really such a big deal? Do I need to pick my battles? One thing is for sure. I care a lot about my friends and family. I want the best for them. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be typing this. I wouldn’t say anything. I would just feign support and be, like, so happy for them! True friends warn their friends when they might be making a mistake, and I will continue to do just that. I will be honest. I will attempt to steer my friends in the right directions. However… Every marriage is a risk, not just shotgun ones. It is entirely possible to date for several years and convince yourself you ought to marry someone, only to have it fall apart and end in divorce. So, in standing with my previous blog, if every marriage is a risk, shouldn’t I then support a marriage of two people who share beliefs and have discussed support and compatibility? It’s clearly wiser to wait to commit, but it’s not the worst mistake to get married quickly. There are much worse mistakes one could make. Maybe I should look at it like this; if both people are good people, and committed to staying married come what may, why not support that? So I guess where I stand is this: Look, Disney lied to you. It’s a beautiful lie. You didn’t “know” when you first saw him, or when you had that life-changing conversation just 2 weeks later. No matter how sure you feel, you simply can’t know they are the one, but that doesn’t mean that marriage is a terrible mistake. It’s a risk, but, hey, you just might live happily ever after, and if you start your marriage on a foundation of love and trust, it might be worth the risk.
Out of the Sea 