Really does signing a legal contract have anything to do with love? I married and well, the love is just the same as it was before the signing of the contract and everything is the same. I just do not see how it should love should have any bearring on a legal paper or how a legal paper should have any bearing on love.

Signing a contract - legal, religious, or otherwise - may not affect a person's love for another person. It does, however, represent a societal expression of said love. Further, the formalized nature of said contract reinforces for many people their commitment to each other.

That contract also affects taxes, insurance, ownership of property, guardianship of children and so forth.

It might not change the love, but it does affect lives.

Too bad that contract means shit. "Til death do you part"...my ass.

I've heard it be said that 'Nothing kills love faster than sayin': I Do.'
Love is a bond between two (or more) souls, and no form of legality can make it more or less true than than the people involved believe the relationship to be.

That said, I believe that those that require that legality should be free to persue that legality, because otherwise the church may burn them at the stake for 'living in sin'. I say this as fact as I come from a long line of men and women who have been burned at the stake or otherwise silenced for their beliefs.

I personally don't need a fookin' chuch or government's rubber-stamp approval for my unions... that's what my bed is for.

My node and the universe's sense of humor killed my marriage.

I know Singularity and I are engaged, and we intend to get married, but we do not need a piece of paper to consider ourselves bound together in love and life.

Of course, trying to find a ceremony that combines paganism, Buddhism and the Teras philosophy is certainly making for an interesting challenge, even for myself.

I've heard of you, Satyr, and I'd like to talk to you if you've got the time.

"Lots of people don't believe in marriage, because it's just a piece of paper. So's money, but we all believe in that."

For some people, a tangible token of love matters - it gets them through the bad days by reminding them they made a committment and should think before doing something rash. While we'd all like to think that we'd never do something like that... realistically, we all have our bad days. Just recently I got into a monumentally stupid argument with Mitch about vacuum cleaner attachements. I feel ashamed to even have let it go past the first two sentences.

Some folks get by fine without marriage and some don't and that's just fine by me, long as they don't start trying to tell me that being hitched to Mitch was a bad idea.

Oh god, not this subject again. -.-;

Amen to that Vixen.

Well, this is not what I was hoping for but it what I got. my souse finds this whole thing amusing.

Well, Sandcaster that is one way to look at love. Not a hopeful or chearful one but it is one.

Steller, money is pointless to me. I have so much of it that I honestly do not think I could spend it all. Plus most of the legal issues that do not deal with money can be walked around by anyone iwht a half a brain.

Satyr, love and sex aren't the same thing. I happen to have a wife. We care about religion as much as we care about the shapes of clouds.

Vixen money is worthless to me. I am a nova, and well my means far out streatch my needs.

Fuusen, if you do not like the topic you can keep your nose out of it. I presonly wanted to know what people here thought of this problem.

You did not say this was specifically concerning you. You just asked a general question, so my statement is very true and very valid. And it is not that easy to side step the legal issues. At least not legally and in the U.S. as well.

And it is "Stellar", not "Steller". I guess all that wealth beyond avarice was not spent on an education.

Stellar, that is a mistake. Or maybe an over looked detail, like the laws regaurding right of confession in modern life.

Being hitched to Mitch was a bad idea.

No I don't even know you guys but I had to do it. I smoke in no smoking areas too. Marriage is just great. I won't touch it with a ten foot pole but I still remember a time when I might a felt different. Now I got what I need and that good enough.

What were ye hoping for, a neat little all consuming answer to a question that has a differ'nt answer to e'ery human being. I guess around 50% will say that the paper is not important, while another 50% will say the paper is important, but each person will ha'e vastly differing reasons for answering the way they do.

To me love and sex are but two sides of the same coin, you should try it, 'course marriage and love are at least as equally distant and yet you ask of them as though they are remotly related. The institution of marriage was imposed by the church on early christians and young lovers to pay a priest for the right to love another or be branded a sinner and pagan. So for me as a pagan, the paper in question is meaningless, for you perhaps not.

Y.T.: You asked a question - a vague and poorly phrased question, but a question nonetheless. People answered that question as written. In return, you replied with indignation and non-sequiturs (e.g., "...the laws regaurding right of confession in modern life"? Do you even read what you are typing?).

In the future, ask these questions of the only person to whom you listen - yourself - and spare the rest of us your tired, rambling, incoherent dramas (not to mention your painful inability to spell, or at least to show the rest of us the common courtesy of running your drivel through a spell-checker).

It seems to me, love is what brings to people together and intertwines their lives. Marriage is a social contract and depends upon the society you live in for meaning.

Love and marriage are liabilities when you are a law enforcement officer.

You sound way too much like my comic book hero Spiderman

Somebody woke up bitchy this morning. Is it the new mouthwash? Are you not getting enough of that minty freshness?



Now that's what I was trying to say. Except for the law enforcement and stick up the ass part.

Marriage was the very best thing to happen to me. In all honesty, it's put me in a more focused frame of mind and I'm happier every day just because I know she's there for me. Does that have anything to do with love? This isn't philosophy 101 for me but if it is for you then you're going to be disappointed in my answer. I've lusted after my wife for a long time, loved her not as long but still quite a few years but none of it meant anything to anyone until I finally did something about it. A piece of paper represents all of that.

Oh, and I'm back from the cruise. The new book is out and I'm working on two projects simultaneously. The first is a treatise on terraforming Mars into a usable colony using nova technology to bootstrap the start with a three year phase out of the quantum tech, while the second is... Let's just say there's a second project.

Vague you say? "Really does signing a legal contract have anything to do with love?" (Is the legal action of signing a contract in any way linked to love?). Point out the vague part of that question to me?

Better yet point out the part in said question that talks about sex, or money.

And a law enforcement officer who has nothing to look forward to when coming home is a liability. Do not make your job your life.

Um, the topic title is "Love and Marriage". Marriage and Love often (not always) involve sex and Marriage very often has something to do with money (who's got it, how is it shared, how is it spent and all that shit.)

Just my two cents.

I haven't been in a relationship since high school so I can't consider myself an expert on either subject.

Not to speak for the officer in question, but most of us have our own very particular and peculiar ideas about what we want to come home to.