Is Love a Commitment?

Aquarian Answers Existential Helpdesk, this is Adrienne. What aspect of the human condition is troubling you today?

Is love a commitment?

Okay, so you have a good thing going in the romance department, and you don’t want to lose it. And our cultural practice is, just promise to stay together forever. You promise, they promise, you do it in front of a religious officiant—even if you’re not religious—and then for good measure you file a legal contract at the government office.

But you have some doubts about the effectiveness of this strategy…yeah, based on personal observation. So you’re wondering, is love actually something you can commit to and then just…thug it out.

Great question. So…we could do that if love were a behavior. We commit to behaviors all the time, and some of us are disciplined enough to just…keep doing the thing we said we were going to do. Show up on time. Observe the dress code. Play by the rules. Always do our best. Share. Don’t have sex with anybody else…

The problem is, love is not a behavior. Love is an emotion.

I know, that’s not what they said at the regular helpdesk. This is the existential helpdesk. We’re authorized to tell you inconvenient truths.

Love is an emotion. And emotions are fluid. They flow in and they flow on and something else takes their place. It is no more possible to commit to loving someone forever than it is commit to being happy next week at 3 pm, or furious for all of August, or to feel joy from now on.

Okay, that’s a reasonable suggestion. Maybe what we’re committing to is not the emotion itself, but the behaviors associated with love. Kind of a fake it til you make it scenario. I promise to love you until death do us part, and even when I can’t feel my love for you, I promise to behave as if I love you until the feeling comes back online.

That seems like familiar advice. I think I’ve heard that from a marriage counselor or two. But here’s the problem. Imagine doing the same thing with happiness. I promise to be happy with you for as long as we both shall live. And what I mean by that is that even if I don’t feel happy I will pretend to be happy, and I will do my best to never show you anything but happiness. All the time. Even if I’m actually in excruciating pain, or my loved one died, or my house got robbed. And I expect the same from you. For the rest of our lives. Cool? Cool. Pinky swear in front of god and the law, subject to heavy penalties for non-compliance.

That’s totally batshit, right? Happy behaviors flow from the emotion of happiness, and if we force ourselves to pretend to be happy even if we’re not…well, we do this sometimes, don’t we? It feels terrible and it’s totally dishonest, and when we do it, we’re being manipulative in some way, right? We do it when it doesn’t feel safe to show how we really feel. Like, if we complain or act angry instead of happy, there will be a consequence that’s even worse than whatever we’re not happy about.

And fake it til you make it really doesn’t work in this scenario. If you pretend to be happy when you’re not and you do it long enough, you don’t magically find your way back to happiness. Just the opposite. You get less and less happy until you absolutely can’t pretend anymore and then you explode all over the place.

So why would we make a sacred and legal contract to pretend to an emotion—love—even when we don’t feel it? It’s lying, dishonest, manipulative—all things that are the opposite of love. In doing this, we destroy trust with our partner by basically promising to lie. And in forcing ourselves to act in a way we don’t feel, we build up resentment and bitterness in ourselves in ways that are going to lead to expressions that are very unloving.

I agree. The implications are very disturbing. It feels like the marital contract is really about something completely other than love, and love is kind of the bait. Like, love is the free introductory offer, and it’s so good we sign up without reading the fine print.

Yes, I can answer those questions but I’ll need to open a separate ticket. Let’s sum up. In response to your original question, no, love is not a commitment. The emotion of love is fluid, and commitment is solid, and building a solid structure on a fluid foundation is not well supported by the physics of this dimension.

You’re welcome.

And we’re opening two additional tickets:

What are we actually committing to when we get married, if not love until death do us part?
If marriage isn’t the way to keep love forever, is there some other way to do it?

You’ll be receiving a callback in the next couple of days. Absolutely. My pleasure. Bye bye.