What Love Has to Do with It

Love has everything to do with it—the institution of marriage relies on love’s reservoir to survive, because without that, there is slight motivation to make the union successful, and consequently little energy for the effort and time that’s required. But people define and analyze love differently, and in a relationship, it is cause for hardships in simultaneously reaching the peak of content. It is why not everyone is raised knowing how to love and be loved. Once children are born, the parents’ demonstration of a relationship is under constant watch. Every word and every action is impressionable on young minds. Children look to their parents as guides for life’s formula, which makes marriage a written contract to raising a family. The strength of a family’s bond, which relies on the parents’ bond, determines the degree of the children’s wellbeing. Without love, two people cannot be anyone’s model for a healthy relationship. Even if the parents show much love to their children, the parent-child relationship is not enough to grasp the formula of a healthy relationship. Plus, the parent-child relationship does not begin as an equal one, whereas the relationship between two adults does (or at least should). Two people can love each other without getting married, and two people can have children without getting married. But then the idea of a family unit becomes blurred, only in terms of the family’s position in society. Aside from the security that marriage offers the whole family, it is a cultural way of being accepted by society. The way our culture has played out, in order to be recognized as a legitimate family unit, two parents must first be married, or must have once been married. Having children is considered socially acceptable only if the couple is married first. Raising healthy, loving individuals not only impacts their social acceptance, but is crucial for living in a less chaotic and less complex society. 

            When children see a successful relationship between the 2 people that are raising them, it reinforces their understanding of how love works. In this sense, it doesn’t matter if the 2 parents are married or if they are a woman and a man. In fact, Hooks discusses how a child needs two adult guides in his or her life to have different perspectives to situations that arose in life (All About Love). Having a good model of how to love helps raise individuals who succeed in healthy relationships (Rubin, Worlds of Pain). But how does a couple get there? How does one successfully master the art of communication, the art of love, and the art of a healthy relationship?