I attended a Bruce Springsteen Tribute concert, and there were old people dancing. They appeared to be happy. I am sure these people are inspiration to others.
I have seen many different kinds of relationships. The best ones were World War II Generation marriages, which kept going strong till death do part.
In my relationship and the generation before it – Generation X – there has been a lot of sentiment in-weighing against romantic love. As the song goes, “The temple of love is burning down.” What these people fail to understand is that romantic love is not the only way to have man-woman relationships. The biggest alternative to romantic love is arranged marriages; and these don’t have a better record than romantic love. In India, 40,000 women a year die from domestic violence. Here is a society that has done its darnedest to do away with romantic love; however their solution has not been better.
The reality is that most people will want to have families, and most people will want to have children. Having choice as to one’s romantic partners is one of the most important freedoms that one can have. And denying it is one of the worst violations of life and liberty that there can be.
If a person does not want to have romantic love in his life, that should be his choice. The choice that he should not have is to prevent other people from having romantic love in theirs. Romantic love should be neither coerced nor denied. If you want to have romantic love, you should be able to pursue romantic love. If you don’t want to do so, that should be your choice as well.
This really is a matter of freedom and choice. Certainly if you feel coerced to be in a romantic relationship, then you should not be required to have it. But if you do want it, you should be able to have that choice as well.
Will there be people comfortable with having their marriages arranged? Will there be people comfortable with choosing the partner they love? I expect there to be both. Certainly a family-oriented person can, and should, be able to have an arranged marriage situation if such is their will. However it must not be the only choice one has. It is a matter of liberty and a matter of choice. Both of which form the most noble and most rightful aspects of Western tradition, which it should stand by proudly and own as one of its greatest accomplishments.
I do not like to see the better party cringing before a worse party. While there are many romantic-based relationships that fall on hard times, there are just as many arranged marriages that do as well. Here, we are seeing the party with better values cringing before a party with worse values. If arranged marriage leads to at least the same level of violence as marriage based in romantic love, it is time to take a look and see what is being done wrong in arranged marriages.
Is the temple of love burning down? For a long time there were any number of people who were part of that project. They had their word, but I don’t think they will have the last word. These same people look back fondly to World War II generation social arrangements; and these social arrangements were based in romantic love. And these arrangements lead to wonderful lifelong situations in which romantic love stayed strong till the parties were in their 90s.
Deciding either for or against romantic love must be a strenuous personal choice. It cannot be coerced and it cannot be destroyed. The first part is for people to have meaningful freedom as to what kinds of relationships they are to have. That being done, freedom will blossom, and people will have experience of the world’s greatest social accomplishments that is romantic love.