Grounds for Marriage

Who among us is so wise, so knowledgeable, so insightful, so self-aware, so well put together, so hip, so cool that he or she can choose a mate at the age of seventeen, twenty-three, or even fifty-something, who will prove to be a true and loving companion, friend, and lover over the next twenty to seventy years?

Yet this is what our society and our elders expect us to do. The implicit message is that we should choose a mate and enter a relationship that will be vital and dynamic and sexually stimulating for a lifetime. The mass media (movies, TV, tabloids, magazines, the Internet) bombard us with romantic myth. Sensual allure and the promise of sexual bliss pervade the collective messages from Madison Avenue and the advertising industry. The love/sex hype instructs us in the belief that if we simply love one another, there is no obstacle or barrier we cannot overcome. Love will conquer all. Unfortunately, even if we think we are immune to these messages, we absorb and internalize much more than we realize and thus set ourselves up for failure, disappointment, and bitter resentment.

In these pages I will challenge the reader to consider what is myth and what is practical reality. Much of the social-cultural belief about love and marriage is nothing more than romantic folklore. Generation after generation we buy into these semi-official societal beliefs, and each new generation builds up its new reservoir of unrealistic, dream-world expectations that in turn greatly increase the chances for marital disenchantment and disillusionment.

            Grounds for Marriage is intended for single people, high school age and older, who will most likely marry or remarry within the next few years of their life. Everything within these pages is intended to help the reader make a more rational choice of mate. As a comedian once quipped, “It is much better to want something you don’t have than to have something you don’t want.” Certainly this thought applies to our choice of mate, a decision to which people often give less serious thought than their choice of career, job, place of residence, or automobile. This is because we are members of a society that not only encourages but also implicitly prescribes that our choice of mate be made on the sole criterion of highly romanticized love. This love is extolled in the general media, including religious institutions, and it pervades our everyday life in more ways than most can even begin to realize.

Grounds for Marriage is not a how-to book with easy-to-follow steps on how to meet a prospective mate, much less how to land a mate. Nor is it a recipe or checklist for choosing the so-called right person. Within a field of eligibles there may be several persons who have the potential for being the right person. Further, Grounds for Marriage is not a textbook on mate selection nor is it an academic investigation into the question of why a person chooses the mate she/he does. Over the years scholars have advanced several very pertinent and creditable theories of mate selection. Most of these theories attempt to explain why we choose the person we do. These theories reflect sound academic research but they do not focus on the practical side of helping a person make the right decision.

When relevant I will sketch out several of the more important mate-selection theories as clearly and simply as I can and attempt to illustrate their practical implications. Sidebars—boxed segments of information set apart from the flow of the text yet supplemental to the thought being developed—will also highlight certain principles, aphorisms, and questions that, hopefully, will bring the topic into sharp focus.

Grounds for Marriage is intended to serve as a forum of discourse in which the reader may reassess her/his hopes, beliefs, values, and attitudes regarding his/her future life. Inevitably these beliefs and values lead to expectations, and these expectations are the key to almost everything else.

In order to facilitate this forum of personal discourse I have provided a background of practical and personal information, knowledge, and facts that will increase and strengthen the reader’s ability to choose a mate with care, caution, and a strong sense of self-awareness. I hope the reader will resist the temptation to engage in any kind of computer search for a prospective mate, or utilize a matching service, or scan the newspaper “personals,” at least until he/she has digested the main messages of these pages.