Marriage and Love Essay

Marissa Bolanos Bolanos1
English 1AH
M. Roberts
21 August 2013 Do we really know what love and marriage is? What comes with love and what comes with marriage? Is there even a difference between them? These three questions are answered by Evan Wolfson in his story “What Is Marriage.” Wolfson explains what love actually means in comparison to marriage and shows us the differences between them.
If you have ever been teased for liking someone when you were younger you may have heard the old childrens’ song where they sing, “[name] and [name], sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage.” As children, this childhood song taught us the so called “order” of how relationships go. At that age we also started to learn what love and marriage actually were. Wolfson also brings up a childhood saying stating, “If you love candy so much, why don’t you marry it?” As kids, we would tell others this when they had too much of an attachment to one particular item, in this case it would be candy. Both of these taunts show us that we were able to comprehend what love and marriage was at a young age. Although we may not have fully understood the meaning behind them, we still were able to realize that they correlated with one another. Even though love and marriage associate with each other, Wolfson makes it clear that “marriage is different from love.” He wants us to recognize that love is an internal feeling that one expresses when they have deep regards for something, whereas marriage is a sole commitment to someone. Being married dignifies Bolanos2 someone’s love for their significant other but realize it is also a level of self-sacrifice and responsibility. We all understand that loving someone can be reason to marry. Just as same sex couples love their significant other, they too want to marry, but justifiably cant due to government.
The tie between marriage and the rest of society, particularly government, is very strong. They are connected in such a way that a married couple has all these benefits such as health care, insurance, inheritance, and so much more, whereas an unmarried couple has little to none of these benefits and if they do, they are probably paying double for them. In wolfsons piece, he interviews same sex couples who would like to marry not just for love, but benefits too. Because these couples are homosexuals, the law prevents them from marriage and all the benefits that come with it. For example, Hillary Goodridge was denied access

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