The other day I was in Panera Bread and I heard a young boy exclaim: "I could marry my soup!"
Presumably this was another way of saying he loved his soup. But it was the "I could marry" expression that caught my attention.
Americans view love and marriage as related. Few Americans are in arranged marriages and some small percentage marry primarily for access to money, power, or name recognition. Most still believe they are marrying for love.
It isn't easy to figure out the divorce rate for first-time marriages. Many divorces represent a person's second or third divorce. In the case of Scotty Wolfe, a Baptist minister who died in 1997, there were 29 monogamous marriages with 24 divorces along the way.
One concern is that love isn't a sufficient driver to sustain a marriage. So, while I didn't interact with the boy in Panera, I thought, "I wonder what he means by 'love'?" We use that word in so many senses to express our affection, attraction, admiration for everything from soup to nuts.
One simple definition that I find useful when talking about love is that I have the other's best interests in mind as we interact. I have no idea what is in a soup's best interests (not even sure that is a meaningful concept), but presumably this boy meant something more like: "This soup tastes great, is satisfying my hunger, and is enjoyable"
The problem for some is that is exactly how they view marriage. "I love you" means you satisfy my needs and make me feel better. Once life settles in and I am no longer your continuous focus, I no longer feel loved.
Marriages last when people share deep-seated values and when each partner is committed to serving the other, to meeting the other's needs.
I don't object to using the word "love" in a variety of contexts to express a wide range of meanings. My concern is that many people really don't know how to love another person, to act with that person's best interests in mind, and often marriages are built on a lesser sense of love that erodes with time amid the storms of life.
As we teach our children about relationships, statistics assure us that most of them will marry. Let's just help them understand that marrying a life partner is something far deeper than marrying one's soup!
