On ‘Being in Love’ 2

The modern tradition is that the proper reason for marrying is the state described as ‘being in love’. Now I have nothing to say against ‘being in love’: but the idea that this is or ought to be the exclusive reason or that it can ever be by itself an adequate basis seems to me simply moonshine.

In the first place, many ages, many cultures, and many individuals don’t experience it — and Christianity is for all men, not simply for modern Western Europeans. Secondly, if often unites most unsuitable people. Thirdly, is it not usually transitory? Doesn’t the modern emphasis on ‘love’ lead people either into divorce or into misery, because when that emotion dies down they conclude that their marriage is a ‘failure’, tho’ in fact they have just reached the point at wh. real marriage begins. Fourthly, it wd. be undesirable, even if it were possible, for the people to be ‘in love’ all their lives. What a world in wd. be if most of the people we met were perpetually in this trance!

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“Letter to Mary Newlan, 18 April 1940,” Collected Letters, V. II, 392-3.