Commitment is key for a successful marriage

On Valentine's Day, Google's home page had a really sweet graphic of an elderly couple walking hand in hand on a beach.

He had his stick, while she held two heart-shaped balloons. Not your usual image for Valentine's Day, but something to which many people aspire, nonetheless. Most people still want to get married, and to grow closer as the years go by.

Mind you, they might rethink that aspiration if they read this description: "Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring non-profit business. And I mean this in a good way." That's American feminist Lori Gottlieb writing in the Atlantic this month, oddly enough in an article headlined, Marry Him!

Gottlieb is forty-something and not married. "In a fit of self-empowerment", she conceived a child through donor sperm. She obviously adores her son, but rather belatedly, has realised that it is very, very tough being a lone parent. Not only that, but it plays hell with your chances of ever finding anyone to marry. She now describes dating as having to "shave your legs, blow-dry your hair, find a puke-free outfit, apply lipstick, drive to a restaurant and sit through a tedious two-hour meal for the mere possibility of some heavy petting while the babysitter meter is ticking away". If, as she so charmingly puts it, she had "settled", none of this would be necessary as the husband would already be on-site, and even if things had not worked out, she at least would have child support and the occasional free night when the child would be over at Dad's place.

When Gottlieb talks about settling, she is not talking about settling down, but settling for less. She predicts that she will be written off as having been sucked in by the feminist backlash, but still insists that most women want a husband, and by extension, a child or children.

She is addressing her article to the thirty-something women who are still looking for Mr Right. Settle, she urges, for Mr Good-enough. Forget about passion, she suggests, and about that intense connection. Choose a nice, decent man that you like and can live with, and settle for less than the dream. "So if you rarely see your husband - but he's a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own - how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is 'The One' ?"

Gottlieb's message is not just settle for less, but settle for less, early. Instead of settling in your forties, settle in your thirties, when the pool of men is bigger, and before your own marriage expiry date looms.

So is she right? Is having somebody better than having nobody? It is surely heresy. This, after all, is February, when ridiculously over-priced red roses from South Africa have become the entry level of acceptable signs of love on Valentine's Day. Never mind that they have a bigger carbon footprint than transporting a baby elephant.

Year round, there are entire industries dedicated to the idea of The One - everything from greeting cards, to chick lit, to movies, to mega-successful TV series like Sex and the City, to millions of silly love songs, to quote Paul McCartney, himself sadly in the divorce courts.

Gottlieb has got something right. The idea of Mr Right is greatly over-rated. But she has got several other things really wrong.

Firstly, I believe it is worse than an act of cruelty to marry someone to whom you are not sexually attracted, especially if the other person is sexually attracted to you. It might work for an incredibly elderly couple or a couple who happen to both have an exceptionally low libido, but for few others. There is a particular, deep-in-the-bones loneliness in a marriage where there has never been a spark, or worse, an unrequited spark.

Years ago, Dr Robert Sternberg wrote a book called the Triangle of Love. (His own first marriage failed, so he set out to see what makes marriage work.) He concluded that a successful marriage has three elements in balance, that is, passion, intimacy and commitment.

Passion encompasses the romantic or physical element of love including sexual attraction. Intimacy comprises sharing, bonding and friendship. Commitment is the basic decision to love another person, come what may.

Friendship in a marriage is vital but we tend to overload marriage and expect it to meet all our emotional needs. Women used to have really strong friendship and neighbour support circles, while men had football and the pub. Now we expect our spouse to meet all those needs, while being great in bed and a wonderful parent.

But commitment is the real ugly sister in our modern fairy tale. I will commit to you while my needs are being met, and no longer. Without commitment, though, there is no chance that any couple will survive.

It is true that our culture has idolised passion, but you can't kick it out as Gottlieb blithely does. Married people who are basically housemates with shared interests, among them children, are desperately vulnerable when a grand passion with someone else comes along.

However, while passion should be a pre-requisite for getting married, more people should be let in on this near-Masonic secret. Passion ebbs and flows, and few things are as delicious as when it comes again in a marriage that has been experiencing a lull.

I think Gottlieb's vision of marriage is really sad. All of us are just Mr Good Enough and Ms Good Enough. We all have traits that would drive anyone insane. The key is how we handle those inevitable differences. Marriages go awry when people take each other for granted, so some finding of puke-free outfits and leg-shaving are in order when you are married, too, whatever Gottlieb thinks. Not to mention the fact that the man who still loves you and compliments you when you can't rise to that gargantuan effort will win a high place in heaven, too, and maybe, even, that coveted place on the beach.