I recently read about a new type of dating website that aims to give busy singles just what they want: intimacy with only a bit of commitment required. The website states: "...thousands of single people who expressed a desire to fall in love, but daunted by the demands of the typical relationship: Commitment demands that you share a bed, merge your holidays, spend every Sunday together. No wonder so many relationships fail with such a job-description."
In the accompanying book by Helen Croyden, Screw the Fairytale: A Modern Girl's Guide to Sex and Love, she describes the "shackles of commitment" as "terrifying" and "boring alternative models of relationships".
To be fair, I haven't read the book. But it's presumptions are pretty clear from the description.
Is commitment boring? Are there any great movies or books depicting true love or real friendship that do not require commitment, sacrifice, and faithfulness? No, because there wouldn't be much of a story to tell. Sadly, a person who lives life this way wouldn't have much of a story to tell either. There would be interesting moments but nothing special if a person is preoccupied with self-interest his or her whole life.
I wonder what would happen to the world if the majority of us chose to live this way? The real tragedy here is that this type of perspective utterly underestimates people. It sells us short by dismissing our most noble qualities: faithfulness, loyalty, fidelity, and a willingness to sacrifice for one another. And, yes, marital love can be terrifying when your spouse is sick or dies and you're helpless to change anything.
Relationships fail not because people have to share beds, holidays, and Sundays. They fail because people enter into the commitment from a self-seeking perspective. Their expectations, if they've bought into the world's version of romance and love, are probably close to the fairy tale that Helen Croyden rightly dismisses as unrealistic.
Romance is not love, only a part of it. The foundation of love is sacrifice because real love is self-less. A passage in 1 Corinthians is heard frequently at weddings. Consider for a moment how radically different this description of love is compared to the "modern" concept of love:
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...(13:4-8a)
Real love is wonderful, terrifying, painful, glorious. It is how our Creator loves us and reflecting that love in marriage is one of humanity's highest callings.
