Romantic follies: looking for a mature view of love

`BY ALL means marry," Socrates urged. "If you get a good (spouse), you'll become happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."

Were it not for a promised annulment, it wouldn't be too long before Darva Conger could start sending out resumes to the most prestigious liberal-arts schools in the nation.

The Fox television show "Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire" was centuries in the making. Our modern obsession with romanticism - and a view of marriage that is dependent first and foremost on a storm of emotion and romantic feeling - was virtually unheard of to the ancients. There were exceptions, to be sure, but the belief that marriage could provide the bulk of our personal fulfillment and emotional satisfaction is a relatively recent phenomenon, making its first headway into our collective culture around the end of the 11th century and getting a big boost from Shakespeare several centuries later. Such thinking was aided and abetted by the romantic poets of the 19th century, and hit its nadir on Feb. 15 when Conger married a man she didn't even know.

While many thought the mere premise of this show was absurd, in all fairness to the Fox producers, it was but a small step from the countless romantic comedies that have the two leads jumping into bed within hours of meeting each other, convinced that they've found their destiny in each other's (preferably naked) arms.

It's clear now that our culture is captivated more by the process of making the "catch" than it is in following the plight of the family that follows. Thoughtful writers have sought to call us into a more realistic view of marriage and relationships. W.H. Auden wrote, "Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate."

The problem is, marriage isn't nearly as fascinating on the big screen, and even less so on television's little one. So we focus on the romance and miss the real drama of life.

This is not to suggest that romance itself or the desire for more romance is necessarily bad; good marriages work to preserve a sense of romance. But the idea that a marriage can survive on romance alone, or that romantic feelings are more important than any other consideration (such as actually knowing the person you're about to marry), is a peculiarly myopic modern idea.

This is because romantic love has no elasticity to it; it can never be stretched, it simply shatters. Mature love, the kind demanded of a good marriage, must stretch, as our personalities continue to evolve over the course of the five or six decades that follow long-term marriages.

It is our choice of a romantic or mature view of love that will determine who we marry (and now, apparently, how).

The British writer C.S. Lewis satirically ridicules our culture's obsession with romanticism when he has a fictional demon gloat to a fellow fallen angel: "Humans who have not the gift of (sexual abstinence) can be deterred from seeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves `in love,' and, thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical. Yes, they think that. They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion."

Hollywood and television producers have been profiting off this "storm of emotion" for decades, and finally it has come back to bite them. Unfortunately for them, a good heresy needs at least a little truth; this multimillionaire marital farce lacked even a modicum of maturity or common sense.

The good satirist pushes a line of thinking to its extreme, helping us to laugh at the absurdity while we wince at the truth. May I suggest we consider Fox the unwitting satirists of this generation? They've shown us how silly we've become, and how seriously we need to re-examine the very foundations for why marriage exists.

Gary Thomas (www.garythomas.com) is the author of "Sacred Marriage." He lives with his wife Lisa and three children in Bellingham.