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"Why bother? It's lovely this way. The idea is, sort of, more romantic. Because it does mean we're together because we want to be. Not because now we have to be. It's a slight difference, but maybe it's a very good one."
-Audrey Hepburn on why her and Robert Wolders never actually married
-Audrey Hepburn on why her and Robert Wolders never actually married
At first the quote sounds nice, but it's appeal only comes from a backwards view of love and marriage. Relationships, especially lifelong relationships, should not be measured just by the amount of love people have for each other (however you would measure that), but their devotion to one another, and how they serve each other's needs over their own, and build the other up in affirmation. All of this should be present if true love is there.
In a good marriage, the couple's love for each other is expressed when, even when they are not "in love" with each other, during an argument or just a rough patch, they remain loyal and committed to each other. They will stay committed, and because of their true love for each other, work with time and energy to solve the conflict, serve each other, and fall in love again. When a man asks a woman to marry him he should be declaring that he will continue to love even when it's difficult to love her, and when the woman agrees to marriage she accepts this responsibility too to him. Marriage is a love that, as we all know, remains "for better or worse, in sickness and health, whether rich or poor, until death do you part..."
Divorce is inconvenient, and it should be. The inconvenience of divorce is designed to protect and keep married people in their marriage promise. What is selfish, and really unloving, is to refuse to marry so to keep the option of separation "convenient." That way, you can love as long as you are in love, but if anything changes, since you have no committal to each other, you can leave. Even if you have declared this love, devotion, and commitment in words, but not in ceremony...what then keeps you from becoming legally bound? The only thing is selfishness, wanting to keep things "convenient," wanting to keep your options open.
It is sad that many marriages are loveless now, where the couple stays together only because of the inconvenience of divorce, but expresses no love to each other in selfless service and devotion (and then husband or wife or both often searches outside of the marriage to find that love they are lacking.) But this is not the original design or purpose of marriage. That's a selfish marriage, equally disgusting. These awful marriages are often even abusive!
But we should not let the new common loveless marriage model make us forget what it was meant to be: two people devoted to each other in a love that will overcome any difficulty because of how each spouse shows that love in daily service and affirmation. It requires a lot of work and sacrifice, but the result will be beautiful and full of more, deeper, passionate love. When we see loveless marriages, it should not make us revolt against legal binding, but long to cultivate a loving relationship inside a legal marriage covenant where the devotion to one another makes the love between the two only stronger, and unconditional.
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