Just reading the OP, it sounds like Mary is *behaving *like she loves Don so I’d say go ahead and get married if they both want to. I know several people who can’t/don’t use the word love and yet manage to have happy relationships with other people who don’t get hung up on the word.
I agree that the fiery and intense parts of love are going to die out at some point no matter who she chooses. That is a physiological reaction that will burn out like a solid rocket booster. People move through stages on this stuff and most of it is still based on primitive instinct. High school girls like jocks because they are the warriors but they are of limited utility much beyond that for that purpose unless they go on to professional sports in which case there are a lot of other problems to deal with.
Everyone’s looks start fading by their late 20’s so other things take on importance especially for male attractiveness. The once cool kids may or may not find their way into the more adult world. Once you get past your mid-twenties for males, money and status starts talking hard and most of it is based on skill and brains. Is there any single female here that wouldn’t go on a date with Steve Jobs from Apple in a millisecond if he called. He is just a brainiac adopted child dork who is a recognized control freak with an asshole problem and a potentially fatal physical condition to boot. Put out that singles advertisement as an anonymous person and then a real name and compare the results.
The full menu of opposite sex relationships includes a good friend, sexual compatibility, stability, finances, a good roommate, similar tastes, similar values, and temperament. You can pick two or three but not all of them because that is just fantasy. Fireworks is last on the list and mostly irrelevant because it isn’t sustainable to the vast majority of people.
It isn’t just fantasy. It’s how many of us live our lives.
If you don’t know, we can’t tell you.
Twenty years and counting, and I still have all of it. The initial endorphin rush wears off, but that doesn’t mean love for the long haul can’t be lying underneath it.
She doesn’t really want to. She’s just willing to do it to make him happy, which isn’t the same thing.
No, it isn’t. Love and care are not synonyms. Anyway, it could easily be that she has some hang-up about saying those words. (Which is probably not a sign of mental health, but doesn’t make her nuts.)
I wouldn’t want to have a seven-way. I doubt I’d survive. Anyway, women other that my wife bore me. I’d do it if she really wanted to, though that seems unlikely.
I agree that they can be; certainly they are parlous to the person who loves more. The only problem I have with your statement is that I suspect all relationships involve a disparity of emotional investment. The questio nis how great that disparity can grow before it’s too great to be countenanced.
I know what I mean by being in love, but lacking telepathic powers I cannot say with certainty that I know what you mean by it.
I have two definitions of “being in love” that suit me in different moods. One is that love is the state of mind in which the well-being of another person is essential to your own peace of mind; the other is that it is an mental state combining the emotions of affection, lust, trust, and respect, along with the intellectual state of willingness to commit.
Seems to me that being willing to do something solely because it will make another person happy is a major indicator of love. Being willing to do something just because it makes YOU happy only shows that you know what will make you happy.
Dude, you’re the one who insists on rational responses. You can’t get away with such a response. Either there is something you are specifically thinking of, or it’s just some weird love religion, not based on facts.
Anyways, I’d recommend waiting on her to come to the realization that she loves him, as she clearly does. But, if she doesn’t, I don’t see how she could object to a prenup. That’ll prove if she’s after the money. And it’s she’s not, what’s there to lose?
I’m assuming, as I do in all Rhymer hypotheticals that don’t state otherwise, that the person is an atheist. If I go the Christian route, then I have to admit the downside of divorce being a sin unless she’s actually cheating. But then I could also throw in Christian marriage counseling.
Then again, there is other marriage counseling out there–I just don’t know about the effectiveness for this type of situation.
I don’t understand why you’d make the atheist assumption. I don’t think Christians are stupid or evil in any greater measure than other folk (my knee-jerk insults of the Church of God in Christ notwithstanding).
It doesn’t matter what I think it means. The issue is not whether or not she actually loves him. The issue is that she says she doesn’t. That means, in her mind, she’s not really all that into him.
I didn’t say it made her nuts, but it makes her un-marriagiable.
It’s already too great to make marriage a very smart bet.
It doesn’t matter what either of us means by it. What matters is that she says she doesn’t have it. Whatever she thinks it means, she doesn’t feel it. That would make marrying her a mistake.
Or stupidity. Or greed. In any case, if she isn’t willing to say she loves him, so obviously it could not be a satisfactory arrangement for her. If she had a choice between being proposed to by Don or nor being proposed to by Don, which would she choose? This question is intended to take the issue of doing it for a friend out of the equation. All things being equal, the implication in your OP would be that she would prefer not to have been proposed to at all (and this would be an asinine thing to do for mere friendship anyway, in my opinion)
Someone should tell Don that.
There are 3 sorts of love, apparently.
-
Attraction: This includes, but is not limited to, sexual attraction.
-
Fixation: This includes, but is not limited to, romantic love. The intense portions of romantic love reportedly last 1.5 - 2 years, according to the internet. I know of one report of close to 3 years.
-
Long term pair bonding.
If Mary once felt #2, but does not feel that way for Don, then this could very well be a viable long term relationship. After all, romantic love invariably flares out anyway. Maybe she truly feels #3 but doesn’t ID that in her mind as love. Or maybe DtC is correct in saying that Mary doesn’t feel sufficient physical attraction. How is Don to ascertain what’s going on? Beats me. His judgment is already impaired by #2 , probably #3 and almost certainly #1 (these behavioral modules are not mutually exclusive). His best hope might be that Dave and Jenny would make some caring inquiries.
Same here, which is why I usually make the distinction between Love (the former) and love (the latter). Love is burning, usually mostly based on self-delusion, fucking awesome, and leads to complete insanity and/or tragedy. Not necessarily in that order. Whereas love is… well, it’s very nice, no doubt about it. Much safer to build upon, too. It still makes you pine for the missing capital, from time to time…
And with that lexical distinction established, from what I understand your hypothetical could essentially be restated : “he Loves her, she loves him, should they get together ?”, yes ?
But wouldn’t Don be something of a dick to make her marry him (that is to say, propose again knowing she’d say yes) to make himself happy out of her altruism/friendship/care/love, when he knows it probably won’t make *her *all thathappy ? If he truly Loves her, it’s her happiness that is paramount, isn’t it ?
But if it doesn’t, then he “merely” loves her, and since she does too, there’s no problem of inequality of feelings. No more than in any pairing that is - as Desproges said, “Love always involves two people. One is bored and the other miserable”.
Of course, if they’re already monogamous friends with benefits anyway, I don’t really see what a marriage would add to the relationship. But then, I don’t grok marriages :).
Sorry to be all nitpicky, but she says “I care for you a lot. But I can’t say I feel about you the way you feel about me. I just can’t say those words.”
Mary is judging her interior emotions by the yardstick of Don’s external and emotional outpouring. She can’t do the same, so she thinks her love is not the same. Sorry, but I think she does love Don. At the risk of sounding like Anne Landers, I think Mary and Don would really benefit from some couples counseling.
For those who are saying that this scenario is unrealistic and that this woman could not exist, I want to point out that I essentially got married under similar circumstances. I wasn’t rich, nor did I go through any tremendous health trauma, just to be clear. But the feelings involved seem to be the same. I only wish that my wife had told me beforehand that our feelings weren’t equal. I have no doubt that she loved me, but hers was not a romantic love. It was fun being married to my best friend in a lot of ways, but there was a lot missing that we both tried to bury, and we were ultimately unsuccessful.
If it isn’t already clear, I’d definitely advise Don to rescind the offer. I don’t really believe that there is only one person in the universe for you. He found one great woman that he loved. He can find another – and one who actually feels similarly for him.
Those words" are “I love you.”
She says she doesn’t.
And sometimes people say things they don’t really mean. Or the exact opposite of what they mean. Or keep things they mean quiet. Or say things they mean in ways that make you think they don’t. Sometimes people say things they wish were true, or wish were not true. And they’ll say things they think are not true but really are, and things that they believe are true but really aren’t, and any number of other absurdities that make communication between individuals complex to the point where it’s not even funny anymore.
Then there’s non-verbal cues (and misreadings thereof), subtext, misunderstandings, manipulation, mindgames, hidden agendas and each protagonist’s prejudices, quirks and filters… I think you get the point. Communication’s a non-trivial game.
Where feelings are involved, doubly so.
When it’s a woman playing, triply so 
And if someone is doing any of those things, you don’t want to marry them.
Everyone does it to some extent. Even when they think they don’t, they do. As the clichéd line goes, “Between what I think, what I want to say, what I think I’m saying, what I say, what you want to hear, what you hear, and what meaning you extract from that there’s at least seven ways any communication between us can break down - still, it’s worth a try”.
As evidenced by the myriad ways people have read and interpreted Mary’s words in this here thread alone, based on any number of factors (many of them personal and unique to each poster), when evidently she had a singular purpose and emotional state in uttering them.
Which one ? Buggered if I know
You know, I’ve never played the sort of games people claim everyone plays, and I take people, generally, at their word. I have very few communication problems in my day-to-day life. I think these things are very closely related.