You, like many others, never learned to love. This sort of lifestyle is one that is selfish, self-indulgent, and exploitative. Consent does not change that, an

You, like many others, never learned to love. This sort of lifestyle is one that is selfish, self-indulgent, and exploitative. Consent does not change that, and people can also be mutually exploitative, even by consent. Consent alone does not bless an act. To love another person is to will the objective good of the other. It is sacrificial. When two people marry, they promise to love each other until death. It seems many do not take this vow seriously, as if it were just a nice, but empty thing to say, nothing more than a sentiment. Liars and frauds. Marriage teaches people not to be selfish, it teaches people what it means to love, because if you actually do keep your vows unconditionally, as you promised, you will be forced to learn, you will need to learn, you will have no other option than to grow if you want to live a full life. In the vast majority of cases, divorce is a failure to love, it is selfish, it is childish, it is weak sauce and pathetic (divorce motivated by abuse or whatever are the statistical exception). Lost people looking for excitement or thrill or some promise of happiness they can never find like the Samaritan women at the well. There's a reason divorcees are more likely to divorce again. They do not understand or honor commitment. They don't even care about their own objective good, only some selfish, subjective imperative or impulse. Love is sacrificial. It is a cross to bear. For most of human history, marriage was arranged or contracted out of convenience. Romance was not a precondition. If it was there, fine. If not, fine, too. (Romance can also develop, on more solid grounds, as you come to know the person, instead of being fed by wishful thinking and fantasy.) Romance is not the purpose of marriage, only typically a nudge toward it. In some cultures, the non-romantic view is still the case. I do not suggest we return to arranged marriages. However, our ancestors can provide lessons for us regardless. If we remove the relentless, selfish demand for romance, the burdening of another with the demand to make us happy, if we de-center the emotional dimension that we seem to greatly overemphasize in our culture, and come to understand the objective good that marriage is, and the objective reality of married life, we will be better positioned to receive it for what it is. It will mean something, and we will become greater because of it.