The Romance Novel Marriage
From the moment they saw each other they knew they were the perfect pair. They knew instantly that the other was their soul mate. It was love at first sight. This knowledge is followed by amazing sex. Then the ecstatic couple gets married and lives "Happily Ever After." I'm talking about the modern day adult fairy tale, also known as the romance novel. I've been reading these novels since I was in the seventh grade. My first one was titled Bitter Sweet, written by Laverle Spencer, and was found in my mom's closet. From there I graduated to the more sordid novels with half-naked people on the covers. My adolescent mind was absolutely fascinated and I could not wait until I found my guy and could experience those feelings first-hand. Fifteen years later, I'm happy to say that I realize the utter ridiculousness of hoping for a romance novel relationship. I'm glad I realized fairly early in my life that reality is never anything like the words on those pages. What many people fail to grasp is that they are just entertainment.
The modern marriage is given up on too easily; dashed to bits by its disgruntled participants with only a couple of swipes of their pens. Marriage should not be promoted as a fairy tale or romance novel, or as a place for the typical family to reside. Marriage should be promoted as hard and grueling work, but at the end of day after all the sweat and toil you have a partner for better or worse to share your world with. There is no "typical marriage." You should marry exactly who you want to, but when it starts getting messy, frustrating, and generally annoying, as marriage will, stick with it. Here, I will enter a short disclaimer: I do not believe anyone should stay in a marriage...
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...equences and the effect it will have. Love is different for everyone, but what is the same in every successful relationship is the time and work put into it by the couple. My advice to everyone is to put down the romance novel images that you carry in your head about what love should be like. Fairy tales and books are nothing more than...well, fairy tales and books.
Works Cited
Shulman, Polly. "Great Expectations." From Psychology Today, March/April 2004. Rpt. in Elements of Argument: A Text and Reader. Annette T. Rottenberg and Donna Haisty Winchell. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. 569-575.
Pollack, William, and Todd Shuster. "The Sting of Divorce." From Real Boy's Voices by William Pollack. 2000. Rpt. in Elements of Argument: A Text and Reader. Annette T. Rottenberg and Donna Haisty Winchell. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006. 567-568.
Marriage is something most people do but few do it well. If a couple is not looking at divorce papers that are probably seeking marriage counseling. If they are not screaming to the top of their lungs at each other they are probably sneaking out to lie in someone else’s arms. If they are not physically abusing one or the other they are probably being mentally abusive. If a couple is not saying hurtful things to each other they are probably not saying anything at all because why would they when the other is not going to listen anyways. We have all been in or seen relationships struggle with these kinds of things. This big question is where did they go wrong? I think the answer to that question lies in Matt Chandler’s book The Mingling of Souls. Chandler’s answer to the question above is that if a couple wants to have a truly successful marriage they must follow God’s design for marriage. Now Chandler is in no way implying that a couple will not struggle if they do it God’s way but they will be able to get through those struggles together. This review is not a summary of the book but it will discuss the strength and weaknesses of
Marriage is the union of love, friendship, patient, and comprehension. Although nowadays marriage has a lot of diversity, we should accept everyone and respect their choices, meaning that if they get marry or decide to live together to see if their relationship work.
Walls, Jerry. “The Great Divorce.” Eds. Eds. Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward. The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Schwartz, Lita. Painful Partings: Divorce and its Aftermath. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1997.
Rottenberg, Annette T., and Donna Haisty. Winchell. The Structure of Argument. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009. Print.
Crusius, Timothy W., and Carolyn E. Channell. The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003. Print.
* The Aims of Argument. 4th ed Ed.Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York:McGraw Hill,2003, 352-355.
Brief Guide to Argument. Ed. Sylvan Barnet and Hugo Bedau. 8 ed. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2014. 125-128. Print.
Marano, Hara Estroff. "Children of Divorce: 25 Years Later." USA Weekend. Sept. 15-17 2000: 16-17. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 04 May. 2014.
Coltrane, Scott, and Michele Adams. "The Social Construction of the Divorce "Problem": Morality, Child Victims, and the Politics of Gender." Family Relations 52.4 (2003): 363-72. Print.
Spohn, William C., and Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. "The American Myth of Divorce." Santa Clara University - Welcome. Web. 21 Feb. 2011. .
Zimiles, H. (2004). Schismatic studies of divorce: Essay reviews of for better or for worse: Divorce reconsidered by e.m. hetherington and j. kelly and of the unexpected legacy of divorce by j.s. wallerstein, j.m. lewis and s. blakesfee. Human development, 47(4), 239-250.
Readers prefer fictional novels in a way that they can relax and relate to the stories. Romance is on the rise in movies and novels. People want to be entertained by the stimulation of romance and love. MarFarquhar makes the point when she says “the point of romance novel is not to dazzle its reader with originality, but to stimulate predictable emotions by means of familiar cultural symbols” (1). Because everyone wants to believe in the fairy tale of love, they relate real life experiences with fictional characters. Readers want to be able to express their feelings by relating to a book. However, readers love being swept away by the exploration of love. It’s not always an easy path and that’s what makes it realistic, but by the last page of the book you get to sigh with pleasure as another couple commits to each other. The setting and circumstances certainly add to the experience but in the end readers are always won over by the romance.
A husband and wife do not appear to be a choice that means ?forever? anymore. When a person plans to marry, it should be when they are ready to start a family and begin acting responsibly. All marriages have their ups and downs, and we are prone to argue; but we need to let love conquer hate, not the other way around. The divorce rate is too high and it affects everybody. There should be no reason for a person to give up their marriage for selfish reasons. Arguments between husband and wife occur, of course; but when something is wrong, it should be worked-out peacefully. The meaning of a divorce is betrayal; it?s unfair and the cruelest situation to put your ?loved? one through. For instance, if a man wants to divorce his wife aft...
Marriage has gone through many changes throughout its history. It's earliest forms date back to the story of creation. It has developed a great deal since then. It is a simple fact that men and women can not survive without each other. Marriage is part of the created natural order, we were meant to be together.