A reader who says she has been in four serious relationships, but none of them totally satisfying, asks, “Are there some women who never fall in love?”
Of course there are. And while they don’t want to admit it, some women have needed to claim they’re in love or have had to convince themselves they’re in love in order to have the marriages or families they yearn for. Some women have fallen in love fleetingly; some have spent their lives fantasizing about an unrequited love. The variations of what we call “love” are endless, and being IN love is not everyone’s birthright. People marry—and I’ve studied this—for reasons as varied as wanting to build character, to wanting to pass on a particular religion. In fact it is only recently that love—certainly being IN love—is considered a prerequisite for marriage. For centuries, women have gotten married and you might well ask, as Tina Turner did, What’s love got to do with it?
“Being in love”–however it’s defined– is surely an experience only some of us have—and not always so happily. Many people experience it as something akin to, say, cholera—a deadly illness, something that makes them dizzy, nauseas, crazy, sleepless….Thanks, but do we all want this?
Some do, some don’t. Some never expect it. Think of Charlotte Lucas, dear friend of Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, who decides to accept the marriage offer of the loathsome Mr. Collins—an offer made three days earlier to her friend Elizabeth. While Elizabeth refused him in horror, Charlotte accepts without skipping a beat. In love? Hardly. But she tells
Elizabeth:
“I am not romantic, you know; I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”
Isn’t it heavenly that you can have serious relationships, decide they’re not satisfactory, and move on—without marrying an odious Mr. Collins? Isn’t it wonderful that you can ponder the question of love—but not feel unbearable societal pressure to experience it? Isn’t it fantastic that you can be happy without ever falling in love?
And you can.
There was a time when a young woman was doomed to poverty and dull spinsterhood if she didn’t marry; and so a woman like Charlotte Lucas never felt she had a choice. She had to marry. So she married without love.
For those who fall in love, bravo: They have a life experience that they wouldn’t want to have missed. But you are just as lucky to have a life that allows you joy and happiness and plenitude without it.
