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Had Random Thought #110,786 today -
When do frum couples (of the '5 dates in two weeks and then there's a l'Chaim' variety) drop the 'L' word?
Is that part of the Yichud Room process?
Do they just say ILY even when they don't really mean it? (like... Date #4? At the L'Chaim?)
Or maybe they really do mean it when they say it?
But how can you mean it when you barely know the person?
(for the sake of keeping this post matzah-thin let's avoid the question on everybody's mind which is 'how can you marry someone you barely know?' but i'm still thinking it...)
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
when do frummies say 'i love you'?
love, Maidel at 1:04 AM
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14 comments:
I've thought about this too. Not just with "frummies" but any couple who dates & gets married all in under a year...it seems too soon to profess love.
This video gives a bit of an insight into what love is all about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGmWlHfL9aY
I am of the opinion that love doesn't come into the equation after at least 5 years of marriage.
Love, as I see it, is when one is willing to throw oneself in front of a bus for another person. Frankly, I don't see someone doing that for me after three months acquaintance.
What about passionate love?
I guess everyone hasa different idea of what it is "supposed" to be, but I think that a couple says it simply when it "feels" right, when they have been exclusive for a good while and make each other feel special.
I dated my husband for nearly 2 years before we got married and I knew after only a few months that I loved him. Like Anonymous said, you say it when it feels right. There's no "correct" time frame when it comes to love.
this brings me to my next question...
can you marry someone you dont love?
Definitely! Research in social psychology shows that couples whose marriages were prearranged, for example those in India, are the happiest and their marriages more lasting. On the other hand couples who marry out of love find their love discipate after some short period, say one year, and replaced by, at best, a warm feeling of companionship. Read any Social Psychology textbook on romantic relationships.
They say it whenever their rebbe tells them to. The rebbe will quote a source about loving your wife and go forward from there.
As someone who is in this "five dates, then a l'chaim" (which is a bit progressive, as I am in the "one to two dates, and then a tenoyim" crowd), I would say that it takes a long, long, long, long time...
My sister is the kind of "frumie" you are talking about. She dated the guy for a total of 7 dates and got engaged on the 7th.
She was very into saying that you can't say I love you until they were married, even though they were tottally googly-eyed. She was very into the "love hav" which means you cant love someone until you can truly give to them which only starts under the chuppah and grows when events like children being born bring their love deeper.
But she was DEFINITELY in love when she was engaged. We found a text they sent(pre-lakewood rules about texting) in which her husband said I love you first when they were engaged(awwww!). And they knew each other at that point for no more than a month. Even now, 6 years later you can see the love and respect they have for each other.
My point here is that there is never a timeline with love. It really depends on your perspective. If your focus in life is to get married, then when you find the one, its not so crazy to get engaged and married in the course of a month theoretically speaking.
Everyone has their opinion on when its the "right time". That maybe people are pushing to get married too young or that they're waiting around and are too old. At the end of the day, each person is different and are going to find the right person within different timelines.
The whole "I cannot imagine marrying someone I barely know" is a western phenomena which is engendered by our youths spent watching unrealistic disney movies portraying love in this "happily ever after" way. Its like "I have to be sure this guy is good so I need to get to know him perfectly before committing to marriage and my happily ever after".
Your question is valid but you have to be a little more open minded to the idea that when a person decides to marry someone, they are not doing it necessarily because they are madly in love but because they are compatible.
Using love as the basis is a more unstable foundation than compatibility. People can fall in and out of love and people can lust after someone thinking it's love. But if you are compatible from the beginning, then love will naturally grow, as long as the marriage is constantly worked on.
This is why the "frummie" system you don't like works. Now I didnt follow this system when I got married, but even so, I knew he was the one after the second week of dating. And when we had a long engagement and we got to know each other really well(especially the worst sides of both of us), we both said it was time wasted and not worth the information we learned about each other in the interim.
Dating or engagement for a long time can ultimately be extremely stressful if not done properly.
Basically, both kinds of dating have positives and negatives an at the end of the day, it's all about comfort and what you are comfortable with.
Well it pretty much all boils down to what you consider love and why you would get married if one gets married because he/she realizes or decides that life is bigger than him/her and they feel like it's the right thing to bring a new generation into the world then they are getting married not for their comfort or enjoyment of course they should like each other and all that but they realize their life now bieng spent with this person not for them self but rather for someone else rather for their children for something bigger than the two of them put together
It's pretty much like this love that comes because of something when that thig leaves so does the love. If one gets married because their partner makes them laugh or looks cute or the like not necessarily will that be everlasting but when one gets married because of something bigger then the both of them that is something that may last
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