Love & Marriage

Love

There is nothing as powerful and as complex as love. In Margaret Atwood’s “Happy Endings”, she presents the idea of love as just that. The characters of John and Mary are at first introduced as an ideal couple, living the perfect married life. But as the story continues, and as other characters are introduced, Atwood is able to touch on the realities and complexities of relationships. What may come across as a healthy and loving relationship can be and most likely is riddled with challenges and struggles. But these challenges are what make love as bold and mysterious as it is.

As Frank Sinatra once said, love is a tender trap. When two people first fall in love, it rushes in like a potent drug filling the bloodstreams and finds its way to the heart. The feeling is undeniable, and life becomes euphoric. In this early stage, the two people in love become inseparable. They cannot imagine doing anything or being anywhere without the other. When they reunite after a brief moment away from each other, their emotions are revived and they both get their fix. This early stage of love is usually the most passionate but not necessarily the strongest.

A couple’s love cannot be defined until it has been tested. In a perfect world, love is unbreakable and everlasting. But in this world, love must exist along with everything else. As other people come into a person’s life, that person can momentarily be drawn to another’s presence although their heart remains with their partner. Money can also cause some turbulence in a couple’s relationship. There are many instances which make love as vulnerable as it powerful. But when love survives both time and circumstance, it evolves into an energy which merges two souls into one.

One of the ways a couple may want to express their love to each other, as well as to others, is through marriage. There is nothing which compliments love better than marriage (Sinatra also said something like that). It is more than wearing a ring and going through the rituals of a wedding, it is an expression of commitment. It is a harmony of two hearts. When two people get married, they are putting their relationship before each other. Decisions and actions are made together.