On love and family, there are a number of stances. There are traditionalists – especially of Hindu and Muslim extraction – who support family but oppose love. There are libertines who support love but oppose family. There are feminists who are against both love and family. And then there are people like me, who support both love and family.
I support love because it allows for people to choose their marital partners, instead of having the choice forced on them by the family or the community. I support family because as a father I have had a wonderful experience of parenting, and I want other people to have similar experience.
Is it true, as Frank Sinatra said, that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage”? It occurs to me that a horse is a lot happier without a carriage. However sometimes the horse deliberately chooses to pull a carriage because he wants to accomplish something. He sacrifices freedom for achievement and meaning; and often he is happy with that choice.
Of course there are any number of people who do not want to burden themselves with a marriage, or situations in which marriage is impossible. I am all for the people in such situations being able to have their love relationships. That way they get something good in their lives. And if they can’t , or don’t want to, get married, then they should still experience delights of love.
At this time, there is a lot of disrespect for relationships that don’t involve families and children. When I came to Australia, the immigration officer was going to deny me a visa until my wife told her that she was pregnant with my child, at which point she became very friendly and granted me the visa. My daughter is the best thing that ever happened to me. But I have also had relationships which didn’t involve having children, and I do not see why these should be disrespected. One such relationship involved me writing the woman a book of poetry. Several were very intense and passionate. That they did not consummate with a child, did not make them any less valid.
So we have situations in which people whose families are hostile to one another fall in love with each other. In Anglophone literature, there are two directions that this takes. One is found in Rome and Juliet, where the sacrifice of the lovers gets the clans to see the pointlessness of their feud. The other is found in Huckleberry Finn, where the lovers from two feuding clans swim the river and start a life for themselves as the clans kill each other. Both are semi-solutions. The real solution is the lovers building a family life for themselves, while bringing together their families in peaceful and cooperative existence. Both love and family thrive, and through them benefit and blossom everyone involved.
The people who are anti-love tend to point to bad things that happen in love relationships. The same bad things happen in arranged marriages. In India, 40,000 women a year die of domestic violence. We see incest all around the world as well. Any human institution can go wrong. It can also go right. I have known matches in World War II generation who came together in love at first sight and kept going strong when the partners were in their 90s. And these people were never accused of being unrealistic or narcissistic. That their daughters likewise believed in love, is understandable from their experience. It worked for their mothers; they thought that it would also work for them.
So we have a song that goes, “The temple of love is going down” and another “I don’t want to be in love.” Certainly love should not be compulsory, and people who don’t want to be in love should be able to not be in love. What they should not be able to do is prevent others from creating love relationships. Most of the explanations of love that people make are wrong. Either they haven’t been in love or they’ve had bitter experiences with it. Both are likely to change their minds if they see love working for the better.
It is inevitable that people will pair up and reproduce. I want the experience of this to be a wholesome one both for the parents and the children. Both love and family should be affirmed and both should be practiced the best way that they can be. The result will be benefit all around.