Valentine’s Day: Does Happily Ever After Still Exist? Do You Believe in Marriage?

Valentine’s Day blues? So it’s 2011—another year of buying a new home, making loan payments, or simply making ends meet.
Valentine’s Day: Does Happily Ever After Still Exist? Do You Believe in Marriage?
There is a girl in the United States, born to liberal, highly educated parents. She went to the best private school in Massachusetts, spent summers at camps, and fell in love with hockey. (Photos.com)
2/13/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015
Daniel Goleman- autor of Emotional Intelligence theory and books and 2nd is Enrich Fromm autor of the Art of Loving- among othersSo, it’s 2011—another year of buying a new home, making loan payments, looking for a bigger career, working on the next degree, or simply making ends meet. But somewhere in there is the need for love, the understanding from that special someone.

Last year, 2.3 million couples got married in the United States alone, mostly based on love—the couples chose each other and professed love for one another from the bottom of their hearts. In India, however, the vast majority of marriages are arranged, after arduous assessment of compatibilities and other factors by the couples’ families.

The Rat Race


But let’s look deeper into the changing times in both cultures. I picked these two countries because, however different they might seem, let’s face it, both are in the rat race.

Consider a boy from a Brahman family in India, who was educated in the best Catholic schools in Calcutta and Mumbai. His family ingrains in him the idea that he has to be the best student—study, physical activities, and prayer—every day.

In the 8th grade, when he was 12 years old, he took a major exam and failed it. He felt like he could not show his face at home. Many boys in similar situations committed suicide, but he was more balanced. The next year, he passed it.

When he expressed his childish nature, he was brought back into line with beatings from his parents, using brute physical force. His parents practiced traditional religious laws—no expressions of love were allowed between adults.

In the 10th grade, when he was 14 years old, he took the placement exam and was 4th in his school and 31st for the entire grade in Mumbai.

His father worked for a European company, traveling a great deal, and his mother worked too—12 hours a day. The strict foundation of strong academic study and securing a good job has paid off for the boy, who now at 32 years of age is working in Manhattan and earning good pay, with a good reputation in his field.

He works 15 hours a day, commutes for another two hours, and still must make time for a half-hour or more of scolding from his parents about what else he did not do and should have done, and the ways he is disappointing his family and still not fulfilling his obligations.

There is a girl in the United States, born to liberal, highly educated parents. She went to the best private school in Massachusetts, spent summers at camps and fell in love with hockey.

Her parents told her the American dream can be achieved by anyone. Be independent, study, pursue your dreams—you can have anything you want. Her mother worked and studied to increase her earnings. Her father was away, discovering new bio-weapons.

The girl, now 40 years old, works 60 hours a week and spends her time as a single mother—by choice. She receives weekly calls from her mother, who lectures her on how she should be more independent.

Both children received very good grounding on the importance of values, however different—tradition, language, reading, math, study, pursuing higher education, and a strong career.

At about age 30, both sets of parents started pushing them into marriage and family. The Indian boy thinks that family is a distraction to his mission—a belief now firmly ingrained. The American girl is so independent that she does not need a man. Quietly though, they both long for unconditional love, warmth, and melting into the caring embrace of a loved one at the end of a hectic day.

Is there something missing from the education they received? Both sets of parents pointed to the power of knowledge in our daily lives—go and learn from the best, and then make make it happen. And so they did.

But now they have to find a spouse, despite receiving no education in how to love and be loved.

So, after looking at the amount of time we spend learning math, computers, languages, and business, shouldn’t we make it our business to learn the languages of love?

How can we expect to live happily ever after? Where were we supposed to learn the skills of loving interactions? We have worked on our IQ, but haven’t we forgotten our emotional intelligence?

In the Indian family is the principle of not having attachments to love. It is a lofty mission, but what is cultivated in its place? If you do not have love towards one another, have you reached the realm of compassion? Or have disappointment, frustration, anger, and pursuit sneaked into love’s place.

If there is no love when we teach children, is that child going to end up being a kind person, capable of love?

In the American family, the importance of being independent, not needing love and support, made the girl excel in many things, but she is incapable of giving and receiving love and sharing her life. What’s more, her child is raised by others so she can continue her independence.

Traditional Values


Long ago, before World War II, there was a need to survive. There were genius scientists working in all fields, who made amazing breakthroughs, and we still learn from them. At that time, however, people worked to make a living, and living meant a happy family.

Children went to proper schools, where they learned proper behavior. Boys were taught to be chivalrous and take care of their mothers and sisters so later they could take care of their wives and children.

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/200408310-001.jpg" alt="There is a girl in the United States, born to liberal, highly educated parents. She went to the best private school in Massachusetts, spent summers at camps, and fell in love with hockey. (Photos.com)" title="There is a girl in the United States, born to liberal, highly educated parents. She went to the best private school in Massachusetts, spent summers at camps, and fell in love with hockey. (Photos.com)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1808388"/></a>
There is a girl in the United States, born to liberal, highly educated parents. She went to the best private school in Massachusetts, spent summers at camps, and fell in love with hockey. (Photos.com)
Girls were taught to be soft and graceful, so they could shine like rays of sun after a hard day of work by their future husbands.

And so the strong lived with the soft, the feminine nurtured the masculine. I can hear the sighs of “ahhhhh.” As children, we are like little tape recorders. Dictaphones. We record everything our parents show us and then we play it back in our lives, over and over, hoping for a better ending, instead of the aching void where the ability to love should be.

How are we going to have healthy solutions if we have not changed behaviors and not fashioned better tools? We have learned so many new languages—human and computer ones—but have we learned to speak the language of love and how to be understood?

We instill the goals to study, learn and work hard. We know what we want to study, year after year, where we want to go to school, what job we want, what car we want. We have visualized it all. But how much time have we spent on visualizing our relationship goals, our romantic goals?

What will happen when the current kids grow up?  For a moment, step away from computers and electronic gadgets for long enough to long for a loved one by their side—will they have tools to fulfill that wish?

So this Valentine’s Day, do not be disappointed that you are single or are not in the happiest relationship. Just make a commitment to achieve at least the same success in your love life as your work life and pick up a book or two, like The Five Love Languages, or titles by Rory Ray or Lauren Frances. Look inside and learn, so that your love can be the best ever.

Two other great books worth reading are Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence theory and Enrich Fromm’s Art of Loving.

Author’s Selected Articles
Related Topics