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Can a relationship or marriage be sustained by love alone? What instances could love not be enough in marriage or a relationship?

I’m learning that people marry for different reasons, other than love. Call me naive if you want, but I’ve always thought that the only reason one married is because they love one another and have chosen to spend the rest of their lives together. Well, it’s become a rude awakening to find otherwise.

Secret Lover is a true story of two people who were passionately in love but ended up not marrying each other for different reasons. It was a triangle. The guy was in love with someone else, yet he married another lady for a few reasons other than love. The guy married couple of years before his lover. On the morning of his wedding, he called to check on her, though he was marrying someone else later that day. He even invited her to his wedding. What audacity you would say. Or is’t misplaced or misdirected love? Or is’t lust (uncontrolled passion)? Tell me what you think it is because I don’t know neither can I fathom or explain it.

The morning after the wedding, he called her again though she was intentionally out of town, on a vacation, to avoid the whole weekend event. But, after the wedding, he called to tell her that he was flying in to see her on her vacation. Rather than go on his honeymoon, he caught a plane the next day to Paris where his lover was vacationing. Maybe his honeymoon was intentionally postponed, who knows?

He married for the wrong reasons but was in love with someone else. How sad. Such is the case when one marries for the wrong reasons and/or marry the wrong mate.

People marry for different reasons; most for the wrong reasons. I wonder if love is even the main factor any more. Is love not enough? For if the marriage foundation is love out of a pure heart, there is nothing the couple can’t overcome. Let me know if you agree or disagree with this statement.

Some cultures betroth their daughters at early ages such that those marriages are devoid of love. While some might “grow into love” eventually, many live in prisons the rest of the years of their marriage.

But why subject oneself to that?

The wrong reasons for marrying include:

• I can’t leave her because she’s pregnant with my child (this was the case with the Secret Lover,
• He needs me now
• We’ve gone through so much together
• We’ve been middle school sweethearts
• We’ve grown old together
• I don’t want to disappoint (fill-in-the-blanks), etc.

Whatever the reasons may be, I ask, is’t worth going through?

Outcomes for marrying for the wrong reasons include:

• Infidelity
• Marital aches and pains
• Having children born but not out of love, which leads to
• Resentments
• Unloving and, probably, divided family
• Family conflicts – fighting over unnecessary issues and things.
• Incessant conflicts in marriage will eventually lead to divorce, if not heart attack prior to the divorce. Why go through that?

I ask and write on this topic for younger ones, and even the few older ones, contemplating marriage to think it through before jumping in.

Nonetheless, I still believe that marriage is good and honorable.