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You are here: Home / Archives for marriage

Is It EVIL to Say I Love You with No Intention of Getting Married?

By loveandsex

I love you! Love you too! I love you more! No, I love you more!

AAAAAhhhh! Stop it! You hear it every day… people casually throw these magical words around like there was no tomorrow. Sometimes it’s a replacement for “talk to you later” when you’re going to hang up… “Luv you. Love you too.”

Sure, it’s very important to express your feelings to those close to you, to let them know you love them, cherish them, enjoy their company. But what does all this constant “I love you” REALLY mean? What ARE YOU getting yourself into?

Here’s a question from Lee in Ontario. She’s found herself saying “I love you” to her boyfriend more and more lately, and suddenly she’s feeling unsure and uneasy about it. Is she actually misleading him?

Dear Dan and Jennifer,

I am in a 6 month relationship. He says I love you I say I love you back. He says it more I say it more. Yes we are both in love with each other.

If you tell someone you love them a lot, are they going to expect you to marry them? Am I leading him on by telling him I love him – I do. But will I marry him I don’t know. Is it evil to tell someone you love them under these thoughts?

— Lee in Ontario

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh6WvCxWNa8[/youtube]

Does “I love you” mean “I want to marry you”?

NO!!! Love and marriage are two very, very different things. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting married, but there’s also no reason whatsoever to rush into it.

Our society is so hung up on getting married FAST that young girls grow up planning that fairy tale wedding since before they have any idea what love for a partner means. They’re enamored with the idea from their childhood days when they hear stories of the lovely princess that’s rescued by some dashing prince, and he sweeps her off her feet and they get married – and live happily ever after. Yep, it’s really that natural. You meet a guy, he’s not that bad, so you get married before he gets away. Done deal.

STOP IT! Drop that thought and back away slowly.

Marriage is a government sponsored religious construct and may be defined differently depending on your personal beliefs. Separation of church and state aside (just pretend it doesn’t really exist since often times it doesn’t), governments everywhere discriminate against people who choose to share their lives together but not get “married” – i.e. they don’t have a signed government contract together that is blessed by the church.

This is the whole reason why the topic of “gay marriage” is really an issue, and why it will disappear as an issue as we evolve as a society and as a species. The government has no business discriminating against people and telling them who they can and cannot marry. These restrictions originate from one faith or another that some people may subscribe to, but many others do not.

So before you sign that contract, take to time to actually think about what it really means to you on a personal level. Marriage is just the beginning, or the next step, of your life together – not the end goal…

FEAR – “You better marry that girl before you lose her”

One of the main reasons people get married WAY too early in their relationship is fear. Whether it’s pressure from friends and family, pressure from one partner or another, or just pressure to get married before you hit a certain age, it’s all based on fear. And decisions based on fear are almost always decisions you regret later on.

Want to marry the love of your life? Wonderful, do it. But don’t rush into it.

Getting “married” won’t change your relationship, it’ll only change the legal description of your relationship – and make your family and friends happy or sad, depending on whether they like your bride or groom to be.

Finding the person you want to spend your days, months, years with is a wonderful, beautiful thing that not nearly enough people experience. Be grateful for the experience and enjoy it to it’s fullest. But don’t treat it like a quote for a home loan and lock in your rate before your APR has a chance to go up!

You don’t have to get married to have a long and happy relationship

All this rampant fear around getting married too late or “losing that special someone because you didn’t marry them sooner” creates all kinds of silly complications. It’s gotten to where people feel awkward saying “I love you”, and almost feel they have to preface it with “but I’m not going to marry you just yet”.

Express your love freely, and understand that your expression of love and caring is JUST THAT, nothing more. No need to lock in that interest rate until you’re good and ready.

But what if you don’t get married and end up losing that person?

It’s important to remember that being a part of someone’s life is a wonderful privilege. Every day, that special person makes a conscious decision to be with you. That’s a beautiful thing. And you can be happy together for days, weeks, months, years, whether you’re married or not.

People are always changing and growing, some more than others. When you are together with someone, you are either growing together or you are growing in different directions (read: growing apart). If for some reason the time comes to part ways, then so it must be, and that’s OK.

It doesn’t make the time you spent together any less previous and blessed. Just think – if you had been married, then you’d be parting ways and calling it a “divorce” – often a very ugly business, since you have to cancel your government contract AND your religious bond at the same time. Wow, talk about a deterrent.

It’s all OK. Enjoy your time together every day, every moment. And if you feel the special desire to get married, then do it because you wish to further show each other your commitment, not out of fear that it’s too easy to let each other go without that paper. Do it out of love for one another.

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: love, marriage, Relationship Advice

Marriage – Just a Legal Contract or a Real Commitment?

By loveandsex

What is the meaning of marriage today?

We believe that marriage today is little more than a piece of paper these days – BUT not for the reasons that you may think.

Our frustration lies in the fact that many people seem to treat the contract of marriage like the contract on their car. They lock in the interest rate, buy the car, and then rarely even bother to change the oil or wash the car…

Corporations give certain privileges to people who hold this piece of paper (only the one sanctioned by the government) while refusing to acknowledge or accept other definitions, perfectly valid definitions, of marriage.

Getting married shouldn’t be like petitioning to get a local building permit, getting a government inspector to sign off that your plans are up to his specific codes.

The separation of church and state no longer seems to exist – making marriage more of a political statement than a real commitment!

Here’s a great article that we found on Netscape today that explains the subtle yet very important differences between a contract and true commitment: 

"Till death do us part, contract or covenant?"

And on the topic of separation of church and state (or rather the sad lack thereof), check out these recent articles:

  • BANNED for Talking About Sex?
  • Uncovering Sex and Sexuality Censorship in Today’s Business World

Then leave a comment below and tell us where YOU stand on this very controversial issue!

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: commitment, marriage, Relationship Advice

High School Sweethearts: Is It Meant to Last?

By loveandsex

It’s happens all the time. High School Sweethearts go off to college. Usually, they go off to different colleges and that ends it pretty quickly.

But what happens when they actually go to the same college and see each other every day?

It may be more difficult to break it off, but as people grow and mature, especially at that age, they tend to go their separate ways. And that’s OK. It’s almost expected.

There are occasions where they stay together and live happily ever after, but that’s not the norm.

For young couples in this situation, the important thing is not to focus so much on the ever after and enjoy the time spent together today, in the present.

Don’t rush into marriage too quickly. There’s no reason for it. You can always get married later if you choose to do so. Being together is not all about marriage, and it’s not always meant to lead to marriage.

Many people just see marriage as a safety net – a way to "lock in" that relationship permanently before it gets away. Signing a marriage contract won’t make you closer. But getting married too soon in any relationship will usually lead to a lot of heartache and often an even more painful breakup.

Open and honest communication is critical. One may worry about the other’s happiness and make foolish decisions just to keep from hurting their best friend. Talk about your relationship frequently at this age because both of you are changing and growing so much all the time.

What may have been a valid assumption about your relationship in January may no longer be true in June. It’s not that the other person is fickle or confused. The ages between 18 and 27 are the years when a teenager becomes and adult and truly discovers who they are. They come out of their shell so to speak.

In many cases, this means leaving behind old friends and lovers, including your High School Sweetheart. Not because they’ve done anything wrong… You’re just growing and changing in different directions.

While it may hurt to break of the relationship, if you are honest with one another, five years from now, you’ll probably still be friends because of the trust and friendship you’ve developed. If you lie and hide your feelings, you’re more likely to lose the relationship all together.

If you’re not sure that you want to continue the relationship – maybe you want to experience life and see what else is out there… Talk about it with your partner and explain your feelings. Let him or her know that it’s not about them. Make it about you.

In reality, two things could happen — you could be completely honest and find out that your partner feels exactly the same way – so you decide to just be friends, or your relationship may grow even closer because of your honestly and move to the next deeper level.

The important thing to remember is that the decision to stay together or to move on should be a mutual decision made by the two of you together. 

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: breaking up, love, marriage, Relationship Advice

High School Sweethearts – Can It REALLY Last?

By loveandsex

You’ve seen time and time again… young couples together since high school, making plans to be together forever.

Ah, young love… It’s beautiful and romantic, but forever is a pretty big word. Being so young, high school sweethearts are much more likely to grow apart than older couples.

They go to college, make new friends, find new interests and passions. And before you know it, they find they’ve grown apart.

So here’s the question: Can it REALLY last? And if it starts falling apart, what can you do to keep from losing your best friend?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irx9hYd1_Kw[/youtube]

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: breaking up, love, marriage, Relationship Advice

Why Your Partner Lashes Out at You When They’re Angry

By melody

Have you ever experienced your partner’s wrath?

You know, when they lash out at you and get angry with you for reasons that you cannot explain?

Much of the time, you simply don’t know where your partner is coming from. Everything was perfect until you got married. How can this happen? Have you made a terrible mistake?

In short, No.

This is just another area where we receive very little if any training or education. In school we are taught calculus and linear equations, but no one bothers to tell us how an intimate relationship is supposed to work or what to expect.

This one single fact is a large contributor to our extremely high divorce rate. Read this article from Melody Brooke to get a little insight into what’s really going on when your partner lashes out at you…

A Quick Course in Pre-Marital Education

Did you know that, now, in Texas, when you obtain a marriage license you will be given a premarital education handbook and encouraged to attend a premarital education course?  Texas legislation has implemented this as an attempt to intervene with the increasing divorce rate.

The truth is that most of us know more about what’s on TV than we do about how to manage a healthy, intimate relationship. I know I was certainly clueless about it. Which is undoubtedly why I ended up divorced twice.  I had no clue what marriage really was and how to go about achieving success in the most important area of my life.  I suspect most newlyweds are like I was, naive and full of fantasies with nothing to solidify my dreams.

In order to make sense of what I was experiencing when I married I did what I had learned through nature and nurture: I blamed him.  After all, he was the source of my misery.  Certainly if he just straightened up and did right my happiness would be achieved.  But of course, the reality is that I had no idea what it was I really wanted from him, or how to go about getting it from him.  I didn’t understand what I wanted; let alone what it would take to get him to do it!  Blaming him was much easier than figuring all that out.

Blame is a survival mechanism. When we can figure out whom or what to blame then we can come up with a strategy to survive.  Blame is a brain function.  Our old brain, the part of us that drives our survival has simplistic views of our world and of ourselves.  It is not complicated by our cognitions.  For this part of our brain, something is either good or bad, threatening or safe, there is no in between.  By categorizing our partner into the category of our enemy we can easily determine what we should do for our survival.  We then strategize on how to overcome our enemy.

Of course, this is not terribly conducive to retaining an intimate connection! So what can we do to overcome this innate programming? How can we turn our enemy back into our lover?

The key is to understand that our old brain is operating on false premises.  Our old brain thinks that our partner really is threatening our life, and that we are in real physical danger. Except in the case of physically abusive relationships, this is not true.  When we recognize that we have a choice about how we view our partner, we can make different choices.

What I have learned over the past 10 years is that when my partner acts out in anger he is hurting.  Wow, what a concept.  They are actually in pain or afraid, which is why they lash out.  If I had known this one simple thing, I might not have had to get divorced once, let alone twice.

I was so anger phobic that when my partner became angry I went into a defensive position myself and lost complete connection with where my partner was coming from.  I couldn’t hear what he had to say or understand his pain.

This is what we do, we move into what I call a Self –Protector role and become defensive, putting up walls between our partner and ourselves. These walls dissolve our sense of connection with our partner. When we lose our sense of connection with our partner we no longer care about the impact of what we say or do on them.  Our only concern becomes our own survival (survival of our well being at least) and we no longer experience any empathy or concern for our partner.

When this happens it spells disaster for the marriage.

If, instead, we recognize what our old brain is telling us is not really true, that we are not really in danger and that our partner is not really our enemy, we have a chance to save our marriage.

What we can do is to choose to move ourselves out of the Victim role and see our partner not as our perpetrator, but as another human being who has feelings and is hurting themselves.  We offer them empathy for the pain they are in, too.

To do this, we have to risk becoming vulnerable. We let down our protective barriers when we stop and think, “Wow, he’s really hurting.” We allow ourselves to respect that they are doing the best they can to communicate their pain.  Then we own our part in what has happened.

This does not mean taking the blame. This means accepting that whatever we did triggered a reaction in our partner that was painful for them, even if that was not our intent.  It means saying to our partner, “I’m sorry, I can see that you are upset by what I said (or did). Can you tell me more?”  This offers them an opening to tell us about their feelings and to understand more fully how we impacted them.

By doing this simple thing: offering our partner our empathy and respect while owning our part in the conflict, we change the way our brain perceives the situation.  It moves us out of our old brain survival mechanism and back into connection with our partner. From this, we can then become partners in solving the mutual problem of the hurt feelings on both sides of the equation.  Moving ourselves toward connection instead of away from it in the old brain fashion exponentially increases the odds of achieving marital success.

Filed Under: Relationship Advice Tagged With: fighting, intimacy, marriage, Relationship Advice

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