Why Pursue Marriage?
Often well-meaning, yet ignorant people offer John common advice Lennon’s as
marriage advice: “All you need is love.” It is a rather silly and naïve notion to suggest that love is
all that is required for a successful marriage. However, it is even more absurd to suggest that the
foundation for deciding marry another person should only love. This approach to be is
unrealistic, Hollywood-style marriage that is not realistic or practical in the real world. In Nine
Essential Conversations Before You Say I Do, Gary Thomas et al would describe this notion as
an unrealistic expectation toward marriage and the decision to covenant together. They write,
“Depending on who you are and where you have been (your personal stories and histories), each
of you will have your own expectations about what love, romance, and marriage will look like.”1
This is the source of the flaw within the logic that believes ‘All we need is love’: Every person’s
picture, or expectation of what love is is vastly different. So, what a couple perceives as a solid
foundation, because ‘All they need is love,’ turns out to be shifting sand beneath their feet when
the covenant commitment of marriage brings those differing expectations to the surface. There is
an old adage that says, “Expectations are premeditated resentment.” For example, when one
enters the marriage with the expectation that love is spending all one’s time with his/her spouse
forever, while the spouse has the expectation of a certain level of independent time a certain rift
presents itself. These types of examples present, with clarity, the futility of basing the decision to
