Ryu's Blog

Should I marry someone I love, or someone who loves me and can give me what I need? I think the answer depends on what type of person you are. The degree of love needed to keep a person happy and satisfied vary from person to person. There are those who wouldn’t mind marrying someone they don’t love but are decent enough and can give them what they want (stability, family, security, etc.) These people can find satisfaction or happiness in pursuits outside the relationship. The other type can’t tolerate marrying someone if they don’t feel there’s love involved (love’s hard to define but those people’d say they know it when it’s there).

Those who value love a lot will tend to fall into the first group, while those who don’t generally fall into the second. I don’t think either type of these people worries much about the ‘marry for love’ question as they know who they are and what they want. The people who are troubled by the question are probably those who can live either way: 1) their personality allows them to live rather happily either way even though they prefer love to no love, or 2) they don’t know themselves well enough to know what they want, or more likely 3) they fall into self-deception as they don’t really want to know and follow what they really want.

I’m probably the type who can live either way (that’s probably why I’m thinking about this question). But the more I think about it, the more I prefer the first type. Since being single is not that a big negative for me, I think I’ d rather stay alone than marry someone I’m just content with. But ideally I’d find someone whom I want to marry.

Po Ye suggested that I might idealize things too much or not open up enough (I’m probably also too conservative, rational, and not taken enough chances). I guess I still don’t know myself well enough and suffer some sorts of self-deception. How tolerate am I for a partner with different interests (I might not be as open to experience as I’d like myself to be)? How much do I want my partner to think of me as her top priority in life? How much disagreements and differences can I truly handle (it’d be easy to deal with friends but perhaps not with a partner)? What if preferences and personality clash (like career choice, what you want to do might not match your personality)?

It seems to me shared values, common interests and activities, similar level of intelligence, and compatible personality (doesn’t have to be similar but have to fit somehow) are some elements of a successful relationship. Besides that I think all love involves some forms of self-deception and irrationality. The challenge is to find a person who makes you think self-deception and irrationality are not such a bad thing after all.

Here’s my earlier post on marriage, Stevenson and Wolfers’ explanation of modern marriage still makes lots of sense to me.