Saturday, 18 February 2012

Romantic love is a poor basis for marriage

Cinderella, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White. What do they all have in common? They meet their prince charming, fall in love and live happily ever after so isn’t that the way it works? The answer is no. Romantic love is a poor basis for marriage because a relationship cannot relay fully on affection. Morals and beliefs and financial stability are more important for a successful relationship then romantic love.

In order to have a successful marriage, the couple needs to have the same morals and beliefs. In the top ten reasons for divorce, difference in priorities and expectations was listed as number ten and communication break down in relationship was listed as number 2 (only second to marriage infertility). These “difference in priorities and expectations directly relates to the issue of having different principals. Communication breakdown could only be the product of not understanding a spouse’s feelings or intentions which again relates to difference in beliefs. Divorce statistics show that about eighty percent of all marriages end because of “irreconcilable differences.” Irreconcilable differences include conflict of personality, difference of interest and whether there is mutual concern for the emotional needs of each other. Cultural and religious strains are also listed as one of the top ten reasons for listed as number 7. Studies in the U.S. show elevated levels of divorce among interracial couples compared to same race couples. Asian husband and white wife marriages are 60% more likely to divorce than white/white marriages. What differentiates a white/white marriage versus an Asian/white marriage is the dissimilar cultural and religious views they share. Supporting the point when a marrage consist of people with different values, morals and beliefs they are more likely to lead to divorce. Financial stability is another factor that contributes greatly to unhappy and short lived marriages.

Financial stability is more significant then romantic love in order to have a long lasting marriage. Irreconcilable differences as mentioned earlier ends all but 20% of marriages. This includes whether the marriage is characterized by financial difficulties. This means that a majority of marriages end based on finical struggle. In the top ten reasons for ending a marriage, marital financial issues was listed as number 4. Financial struggle leads to the end of multiple marriages because love alone is not strong enough to keep a marriage live. Therefore for two people to get married they need to both first be financially stable which is probably why there is such a strong correlation in the U.S. between the number of divorces in states where women and men marry young like in Oklahoma and Arkansas where half of first time brides were age 24 or younger. These two states have shown to have above average shares on women who divorced in 2007-2008. At such a young age neither these women would have just finished collage at the most before getting married. The likeliness of them having a decent paying job without having gone to collage would have been low not having a degree and being so young in the workforce and therefore from this research we can conclude that these states most likely had such high divorce rates because of the marriage’s financial struggles. Also Oklahoma ranked number 45 our of the 50 states in the U.S. and Arkansas the 48th in the U.S. states ranking’s by median household income in 2009. Arkansas has the highest about of divorce in the entire U.S. 2009 and Oklhoma was second. Showing a direct correlation because financial struggle and divorce. This if proof of how financial struggle is a huge factor in considering marriage, even larger then romantic love and how romantic love solely is a poor bases.

Romanic love is a meager basis for love as morals and financial stability is more important in determining the fate of the relationship. Our society has fallen in love with the Hollywood and fairytale stories of finding your soul mate and then living happily ever after but in reality modern world marriages can only suffice if the couple has similar moral beliefs and are financially stable. That is why romantic love is a poor basis for marriage.


  1. Nice introduction--Interesting yet to the point. Careful of many spelling mistakes.

    Effective statistics. Body paragraphs could be organized more efficiently. Careful of run-ons.

    Interesting topic! Some more revision would have made the entry even more persuasive.

    1. i think that she did a wonderful job and that she did not go off topic good work. ps: i kinda disagree with Mrs. Woodward, i think she did an excelent job!

  2. Oh, I enjoyed your own persuasive- I hadn't been thinking on a more statistical basis when producing mine, so I'm genuinely interested with the financial issues statistic and I loved how that completely clashed with the repeated (and emphasized) 'Princess' factor, which is what you were aiming for. Your voice was a complete wake-up call to all those romantics who enclose themselves behind fantasies of a 'Prince Charming', a colloquial, calm, but frank tone throughout the piece, and all the more believable with your non-biased data. And language is fantastic, with organized paragraphs and concise points. All I can say is that you need to proofread the small things (misspelt words?) but overall, a lovely, yet realistic piece.

  3. Good article!
    may I have your references list?

    romantic love