Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Couples Working Out Love's Meaning Deserve Praise”

Today's couples should be considered relationship pioneers! Given awards, proclaimed as courageous heroes, and receive special license plates! (The vanity plate would read, “2 U-NEEK”) When you get a little perspective on the history of marriage in civilized society, you will be amazed.

For only the past 200 years in the Western world have people married for love. This is relatively short-lived phenomenon in the big picture of the genders connecting over the centuries. I have to figure that way up in my family tree, my ancestors were not “dating” or “courting” in any modern sense of those terms. Before old John Morrow came to this country in 1801 from Northern Ireland , his family Bible would have been filled with arranged marriages, economic unions, or possibly even tribal peacemaking. Wives were like property or currency.

As I imagine my ancestors, I'd like to fill my mind with pleasant pictures of 17 th century Scotch-Irish lassies doing a vivacious Riverdance while flirting with a preincarnation of Mel Gibson. But this scene is highly unlikely in real life. More probable, those couples in my genealogy record came together for less romantic reasons. Marriages in those days may have coincidently enjoyed the feelings of love, but it was not the reason why the genders got together, or stayed together. “I don't love you anymore,” was not in the script, and probably would not have been cause for ending the marriage.

Early American couples, from the Mayflower on down, had a hard life together, facing hunger, poverty, and wild animals. Not exactly my kind of “marriage enrichment”, but their marriages probably were relatively “solid”, even if often cut short by early death. My great-grandfather Robert Morrow had three wives, not, I understand, due to divorce. Women began marrying for love, but died young, often from childbirth. Nobody thought of leaving their partners. (Maybe it was easier to hang in there for marriages that weren't going to last long anyway, due to death.) There was no mid-life crisis because people didn't live long enough to reassess their life. Forty years of age was your death-bed scene, not your go-crazy scene.

Then (fast-forward) in the mid twentieth century and a longer life-expectancy. The notion of “long-term marriage” took on new meaning. The psychology gurus began to preach about self-fulfillment for both sexes, and this rocked the marriage scene: If you weren't happy, it was your own damn fault or your partner's. And so modern divorce was invented. Whatever outward necessities had kept previous generations of couples together now began to be threatened with the awareness of their inner drives. Psychoanalysis foreshadowed the need for a new science of marriage.

So this is why I say that today's couples that keep their marital sanity are doing a brave new thing. Today's marriages are lived out in the psychic heritage of the sixties, hazardous and plagued with the “D” word. Guidebooks older than 40 years are out of date.

Marrying for (romantic) love in an era when love is so dependent on “happiness” is harder than it looks. All couples are subjected to this cultural influence, whether they are aware of it or not. Partners have to work out personal and practical issues without the safety net of successful historical precedent. Staying married requires dealing with all the consequences of marrying for love, while trying to define it.

Fortunately, people can choose to stay together for reasons different than what brought them together. Physical attraction can be transformed into enduring love and acceptance of your partner's evolving personality. I salute those out there who can grow and maintain their marriages. You are making history.

________________________________________________