Marriage without love
"Listen," says Anika, after she threw three red wine bottles and two takeaway China menus on my kitchen table without being greeted. "Frank proposed marriage to me last night." "And," I ask carefully as I uncork the wine, "where's the problem?" "I do not love him," says Anika.
I was not prepared for such an existential answer. "Then why are you with him?" I ask. "Because we have a wonderful time, because we get along well, have good sex, because I trust him, because we can laugh together ...", Anika takes a big sip of wine, "... and because he is simply my best Friend is. " "This is clearly more than many other couples can claim," I say. "Yes," replies Anika, "but can you marry a man without loving him - in a romantic sense?"
"I'm afraid that's not enough", replies Anika. "And at the same time, I'm afraid my demands are too high." The China menus are now cold, I poke in the sticky noodles and suddenly think of my friend's sister.
She was with a surgeon for years, doing everything for her, traveling with her to the moon and back. But she claimed not to love him. Somewhere out there, she thought, waiting for something bigger. At one point, that was too stupid for the surgeon. Today she is 42, far from her planned two children, she has not yet found the dream man, and she is crying after the surgeon. But of course he has a different one.
"Maybe sometimes we do not actually recognize love because we expect way too much," I tell Anika. Because we always equate love with excitement, passion and great drama. But life is not a state of emergency.
If we want to live as a couple, we have to accept that in long relationships the passion loses meaning and friendship takes its place. Love is changing. Why is it so hard to choose the person whose face we can endure better in the morning than many other people? Does that damned always have to be the big love?
"Do it," I say to Anika, in front of us three empty wine bottles, "marry Frank."
Happy without love? At night I dream of wedding dresses. I wake up, Lars sleeps next to me. Good smelling and warm and familiar. I have to think about our first weeks, they are years back. How right it felt with him. Suddenly, I no longer had the feeling that I had to test other options. I wanted Lars. Not because it's the most convenient way to make a choice in the late twenties for a person with whom you can live a reasonably nice life. And not because at some point you have to be satisfied with what you have.
Because satisfaction is no luck. Satisfaction is a condition that makes life tolerable for a while.
I wanted Lars because I was sure I loved him. I can not sleep anymore and dive in the dark kitchen. There are photos hanging on the fridge. Lars and me by the sea, Lars and me in Sardinia. Laughing. Happy. Satisfied relationships are just a seemingly happy construct that you build when you deny that love did not catch you once again. The lie of life can be condensed, until the longing for great emotions is only a soft whisper, which is then drowned out by the babble cry.
I am very miserable. Did Anika and Frank deserve to end up as a compromise? Does not everyone have a right to love? And does not every human have the right to be loved? Frank too? Is not a wedding without love a huge self-deception? I was wrong. I'll have to call Anika tomorrow morning. Friday, 7.25. I will wake her up. She will be annoyed. No matter. This is about a very big story. "Anika," I say, "I remember some very important things last night."
Friday morning, 7:45. I have just advised my girlfriend not to marry her boyfriend. And do not know exactly if this decision is correct.
