Chapter 43 Three Love and Marriage

Marriage was originally created for love. Animals have no marriage.Because animals only need to procreate, not love.Although some animals also have a dedicated mate, it is mostly a habitual behavior after a one-time sexual choice.Therefore, animals with mates always have mates, and animals without mates always have no mates.People have gone through a process from "group marriage" to "single spouse".Which plays an important role, is undoubtedly love.It is the "special liking" required by love that makes people give up the group marriage system and choose the monogamous system, which is commonly called "monogamy".

However, marriage is not equal to love. Love is a personal matter, marriage is a social matter.Two people, a man and a woman, love each other or not, there is no need for social notarization, and there is no need for social judgment.However, if a man and a woman want to get married or divorced, they must go through social notarization or judgment and go through certain procedures.Moreover, as long as the approval of the society is obtained and the corresponding procedures are completed, the marriage will be established, and the man and woman are husband and wife.As for whether there is love between these two people, no one cares.Even if they are separated from each other, or they are like strangers, and they don't live together, no one cares about them unless they file for a divorce.In other words, society only manages marriage, not love.On the issue of the relationship between men and women, it is better to say that society is also "disregarding deeds and minds" or "formalism".

So why does society regulate marriage?Its purpose is nothing more than two.From a positive and positive point of view, it is to organize the cells of society - the family; from a negative, negative point of view, it is to prevent the disorder of the relationship between the sexes.As long as these two purposes are not violated, society will support and even protect any marriage.As for whether there is love in this kind of marriage, society does not care.In fact, society can't manage it if it wants to.Because love is purely a "private matter" between two people, and it is a matter "in the hearts" of two people.The things in the heart are invisible, intangible, ever-changing, invisible and invisible, how can we manage them?Therefore, there are those who marry for love and those who do not marry for love; there are "marriages with love" and "marriages without love".All of these are recognized and protected by the marriage system "with equal treatment".The best that society can do is a little precautionary and remedial measure of feeling.For example, a marriage is not authorized where one party is unwilling or against it.Or when the two parties do have a "broken relationship", a divorce is granted.If there is no objection from one party during the marriage, and if there is no trouble after marriage, then no one can control it.This is one of the reasons why the traditional Chinese "marriage without love" can last for so long.

Obviously, whether there is love in marriage is out of the society's control, and others can't help, it all depends on the parties themselves. There can be two attitudes of the parties involved: "resign to fate" and "strive for pursuit".Ancient people mostly took the former one, and modern people mostly take the latter one.Of course, speaking seriously, more people hold such an attitude: when they can’t get what they want, they have to resign themselves to fate, and after deciding to resign themselves to fate, they are unwilling. In fact, this is precisely the contradiction between marriage and love.The principle of marriage is the principle of reality, and the principle of love is the principle of ideals.Ideals are worth pursuing, but reality must be faced.When facing the reality, I suffer from the loss of my ideal, and when I pursue my ideal, I am troubled by the fetters of reality.Bear's paw and fish cannot have both, and ice, coal, water and fire cannot be accommodated in one container.Therefore, thorough idealists often give up marriage, while thorough realists simply "don't talk about love".

Unfortunately, it is not easy to be thorough.Because love and marriage, ideal and reality, just like women and men, are both contradictory and unified.Simply pursuing ideals or simply being content with reality may not necessarily lead to good results.The result is likely to be that the radical idealist will suffer greatly from having to return to reality, and the radical realist will regret for life that he did not pursue it. What's more, who, who doesn't want to live in reality, can be more ideal? So, is there a more realistic and ideal solution?This requires an analysis first of all, how many possibilities are there for our marriage.In my opinion, from the perspective of marriage, there may be four kinds of marriages: happy marriages, successful marriages, not bad marriages and failed marriages.

A happy marriage is a marriage filled with love.A man and a woman are united because of love, and after the union, they continue to love each other and complete the entire journey of life in love.The history of their marriage is the history of their love. Every day, every night, every moment, they are bathed in love.This kind of marriage, for example, is like sugar, which gives people a sweet feeling; or wine, which makes people intoxicated. A failed marriage is a marriage that is full of jealousy, suspicion, quarrels, fights, and finally turns against each other, and they have to break up, and they still hate each other after breaking up.Such a marriage, figuratively speaking, is like bitter water, poison, or spoiled food, not only painful but also disastrous.

A marriage that is not bad is one that is established entirely in accordance with the principles of reality.No love, no hate, no happiness, just passable.The two sides are doing routine, and everyone lives in peace with each other. There is neither passion of love nor conflict of hatred, but they are just fulfilling their life responsibilities and completing their life journey.This kind of marriage, to use a metaphor, is like plain water. Although it has no taste, it is not harmful, and it is even more beneficial to life. A happy marriage is not easy to come by, a failed marriage is hated by people, and a good marriage is acceptable, but it is always regrettable.Obviously, none of them are both realistic and ideal solutions.

It's worth trying for a successful marriage. The so-called "successful marriage", for example, is a delicious dish that is full of sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty, and after reasonable matching and artistic treatment, it is both nutritious and delicious.Obviously, to create a "successful marriage", you must be both emotional and rational, both sincerely loving and strategic. In fact, the failure of many marriages of modern and contemporary people often lies in "emotional matters".They mistakenly equate love with marriage, and unrealistically regard the so-called happy marriage as their goal.In their view, the so-called "happy marriage" means nothing but love.This is probably a so-called "romance novel".In these novels, the heroes and heroines seem to do nothing but love.In fact, in the married life of human beings, if one does not think of "others" except love, this kind of marriage will most likely fail in the end.

What's more, love is such a complicated thing.It can give people happiness, but also pain; it can make people intoxicated, but it can also make people troubled;Therefore, love and hate are very easy to transform: fascination will become gnashing of teeth, and love and hatred will become life and death.The end is "resurrection".However, those who "dead" may not all "come back to life".Many love tragedies and marriage failures are not due to "no love", but are more due to "too much love".Because once "too much love" is bound to be "demanding".People who love too much tend to care too much about being loved. Once they feel that they are not loved as much as they expected (this happens often), they will feel resentful and sad.Some people say that love is dedication without expecting anything in return, but this is not entirely accurate.Love does not ask for material rewards, but requires love in return, and this requirement is still very strong.Of course, this requirement is often difficult to fulfill.Therefore, although it is difficult for a person without love to be a good couple, a couple who cares too much about love will inevitably have troubles.In comparison, those couples who don't love each other very much can live in peace and coexist peacefully.There is not much love in many marriages in China, but there is no divorce, which is proof.

In fact, just as the content of love is richer than sex, the content of marriage is also more complicated than love.Love can only be one of the contents of marriage, although it may be the most important one.Therefore, marriage cannot be without love, nor can it be only love.A marriage without love is like a tomb, and a marriage with only love is like a minefield. If you are not careful, you will be "strike a mine", or you will be "shattered to pieces".Therefore, when we pursue a "marriage with love", we must not forget: there should be love in marriage, but at the same time there must be reason.

A successful marriage is a marriage of love and reason. The reason mentioned here mainly includes distance and sense of proportion.The so-called sense of distance, to put it bluntly, means "intimacy and space".In the past, we often used "glue like paint, intimate" to describe the good relationship and relationship between two people.But this is literary language, you must not be fooled!What can truly be called a "good" relationship should be "intimate and intimate", which means that they share each other's hearts while keeping a distance.Two principles of aesthetic psychology are very useful here: "empathy" and "psychological distance".The theory of empathy holds that the object will be seen as beautiful only when the subject transfers his emotion into the object and unconsciously experiences himself as one with the object.The theory of psychological distance holds that the aesthetic relationship between the subject and the object can be established only when the subject and the object keep a certain distance.These two principles seem to be contradictory, but they are actually unified.In short, distance is the premise of empathy, and empathy is the result of distance.The so-called "empathy" can only happen if the distance between the subject and the object is set first.If it is really "intimate" and there is no distance at all, why do we need to "shift" any "love"?If there is no empathy, how can aesthetic feeling arise?How can you love without beauty? When the sense of distance is lost, there is no sense of proportion.He speaks and does things without any scruples, and does whatever he wants, and if he is not careful, he will hurt the other party, and he doesn't feel it.However, everyone has self-esteem, which cannot be violated.Even when the offender is a loved one.No matter how much parents love their children, they can't stand their children's opposition. This is the reason.When two people are in love, they may not feel it.But just like "a long illness without a filial son", too much injury (albeit unintentional) can also affect love.Over time, small dissatisfaction will turn into grievances, inner complaints will turn into disputes, and the subsequent procedures are almost the same: quarrel, reconciliation, suspicion, explanation, anger, begging for mercy, quarrel, abuse, turning faces, and fighting , and even destroyed the belongings, ran away from home, made the neighbors reluctant to be peaceful, and finally divorced. It can be seen how important the sense of distance is to marriage.But the most difficult thing to do in marriage is to set and maintain a distance.When a man and a woman get married, there is no more physical distance, let alone psychological distance?But the sense of distance is indispensable.It is necessary to find a way to regulate and control the relationship between husband and wife.From this perspective, it is not unreasonable for the traditional Chinese society to advocate "love with etiquette" and require both husband and wife to "respect each other as guests".In fact, this proposition has indeed played a certain role in stabilizing the marriage relationship.Its shortcoming lies in that it only speaks reason but not affection, has time but not intimacy, and men and women are not equal. Indeed, the mistake of the traditional Chinese marriage system is that it mistakenly regards "level" as "distance". Grade is of course also a distance, but an unequal distance.Its result, not love, but awe.Confucius said: "Only women and villains are difficult to raise. If they are close, they will not be inferior, and if they are far away, they will complain." In fact, it is not only women and villains, but also men and women. Gentleman's.Moreover, men and gentlemen, I am afraid that "the one who is close will not be inferior, and the one who is far will complain."In short, whether a man and a woman, husband and wife, or any other interpersonal relationship, it is better to be "near or far away".However, if the relationship between two people is unequal, then no matter how well this sense of proportion is grasped, it is respectful without love, polite but ruthless.After all, love is something from the heart, and psychological distance can only provide conditions for it, but it cannot guarantee that it will happen. In fact, if two people are in an unequal relationship, they will never fall in love anyway.Just imagine, the one with high status wants to put on airs, and the one with low status wants to put on airs, how can there be true love?The best result is nothing but "indifference". Obviously, the distance in love must be "equal distance".It essentially requires both men and women to treat each other as a person with independent personality and free will.No matter how much two people love each other and how close they are, their personalities must be independent and their will must be free.Independent personality is "inviolable", and free will is "inviolable". In the final analysis, it is respect.Respect is not the same as politeness.Courtesy, if not predicated on respect, eventually turns into hypocrisy.Traditional Chinese society attaches great importance to politeness, but does not understand respect. The result is that there is only form but no content, and it only cares about face but not dignity. Either it oppresses women for the sake of men's face, or it becomes a "henpeck" who loses face. What is respect?Respect means acknowledging that everyone has their own independent personality and free will, regardless of whether the person is a man or a woman, a husband or a wife, a father or a son, a brother or a brother.With this respect, one will not impose one's will on the other party, will not regard the other party's privacy as something that must be disclosed to oneself, and will not hurt the other party by speaking rudely.In other words, with this respect, distance can be maintained, and lasting love is possible. In fact, no matter in ancient times or in modern times, most of the problems in Chinese marriages are due to lack of respect.Either domineering, coddling or pampering, or indifferent, the best ones can only care about face.But respecting independent personality is by no means taking care of face, but "respecting privacy"; respecting free will is definitely not coddling and connivance, but "respecting choice".That is to say, two people who really love each other, while opening their hearts to each other, still have the right to keep their little secrets.Whether he uses his own power is his own business, but the other party must respect this power, because this power is equal to everyone.Therefore, respecting this right of the other party is the education and self-esteem in love.With this self-esteem, you can respect others, and of course you can respect other people's choices.It must be emphasized that the respect for choices mentioned here is not only respecting the other party's choices in small matters such as diet and clothing, but more importantly, respecting the other party's choice of love.That is to say, as a person with independent personality and free will, even when deeply loved, he still has the freedom to choose whether to love or not to love.Only when a person first recognizes and respects the freedom of choice of the other party, and then strives for love, can he obtain true love. With such respect and true love, there is no need to worry about a successful marriage.