The Simple Dollar: Who Do You Love?

Causality, it's been the topic of contention between any scientific data on marriage. What makes something happen? Can you say that neutering marriage has caused a decline in marriage, if you see a decline in marriage? Jane Gualt noted a long time ago that changes happen one marginal case at a time. What makes someone choose to do better, to be responsible about their commitments and obligations? The unsurprising answer might be that our personal relationships have a great influence on our motivation to be responsible and meet our obligations. This is a recent first hand account by someone who I've never seen give an opinion on neutering marriage.

At the low point of my personal finance situation, I spent a long night sitting with my infant son in a dark room, wondering what would happen next. It was during that night that I realized I was failing that poor child and that I needed to start making better decisions with my life.
It wasn’t just my son, though, that convinced me to follow a different path. My wife played a huge role, as did the children we had later on. My close friends played a big role, as did my parents.
It was the sum of all of those relationships that pushed me to make some major changes in my life. It was not a matter of wanting to disappoint them or to make them proud. It was my desire to always hold up my own end of the bargain that was my relationship with each of them.

The author doesn't limit which relationships influenced him. Certainly the ones that had the most impact were the ones that were closest to him, his child then wife, then parents and friends.



While I have no idea if that author supports marriage equality (the equal recognition of the rights and responsibilities of the man, woman, and child they potentially have together) or neutering marriage for the sake of sexual orientation equality, the tale is at the very core of why I support marriage being tied explicitly to the type of relationship that creates children, and the change I hope it has for people in similar need.


Marriage is about relationships. It is love, mentioned in the title of the post, that motivated responsibility. I also argue that it happens the other way around, that his recognition of responsibility to his child (being the most helpless) and his wife fertilized the love between them to grow. Causality, in our own way of capturing it under a glass to analyze it scientifically, seems inadequate to capture in sociological terms such a self-reinforcing cycle within marginal cases within a more grand society. Yet, intuitively in understanding our own humanity we can understand it almost universally.


You see, when a reader asks me if marriage is about love, then why can't they marry the person they love? The answer is simple, marriage is about who is most deserving of that love -- who you are most responsible to -- then who you most conveniently love, or who you figure might give you the kind of romance you want most expediently. When you focus on your responsibilities, the love grows between you naturally. And as the love grows, so does your ability to recognize your responsibilities. It all ties back to the man and the woman.