Is fornication sinful?

[Del Tachi]

Such is the problem we arrive at when the prevailing social attitude (even among religiously-minded people) is that "love" is somehow a prerequisite to marriage rather than something that has to be imperfectly developed within marriage over the course of several decades.  That's why the idea of "falling" into love has always baffled me.  Love is not like something that you just wander into one day.  The very notion that everyone has a "Mr./Ms. Right" out there and all it takes to fall in love is for that person to come bouncing into your life one day is something that brings with it a whole host of problems.  

Not to get too personal here, but a anecdote to probably in order.  Once upon a time, I believed that I was "in love" with somebody, and, from all outward appearances, nobody would argue otherwise.  Of course, I had been in other relationships before but this one was notably different than all of the rest due to this "love" component.  This person that I loved and I honestly thought that we would be spending the rest of our lives together, and neither one of us could imagine otherwise.  However, through a course of events which I will not detail for the sake of brevity and my own privacy (however, please don't this these events were typical "high school relationship drama" type stuff, but rather something that occurred on a deeper, more intellectual and even more spiritual plane), it came to pass one day that I was no longer in love with that person.  Repeat.  I was in loved with somebody, but now I no longer am.

Do you see the problem?

The idea of "falling out of love" with somebody is honestly something that is quite alien to most people because its not ever represented in the books we read, television shows we watch, or uplifting chain emails we receive.  Based on everything that I had been taught to expect about love, I was under the impression that all it would take to set my life on a course of eternal relationship bliss was that one, special person to show-up to make me "fall" in "love".  Instead, I loved somebody, I was happy for a time with that person, I stopped loving that person, and now I am once again happy without that person.  Prior, that had never occurred to me as a possible outcome because we're taught that love is suppose to be "forever" - I thought that once I had fallen in love with somebody, a free man I would never be again because I would always be in love with that person even if I didn't want to be.  

We're taught that you become committed to somebody because you love him, not that your love for somebody actually comes as a result of you being committed to him or her.  That's why children love their parents and parents love their children, not because they just happened to be a "special someone" but because their exists a strong, symbiotic commitment between a parent and child.  Taking that into consideration, the whole idea of romantic love being any different than familial or agape love is completely thrown out the window.  However, perhaps it should be.


Now, what does that have to do with fortification?  

Let's stop equating love with marriage for starters because, quite simply, we've distorted the meaning of love to such a degree that we've actually made it into a selfish undertaking.  It's about us - our feelings and our happiness (or even about someone else's feelings or happiness) or, even worse, about simply "liking" somebody - instead of about developing and upholding a commitment.  

That's why I don't think God intended for romantic love (as we commonly understand it) to be the basis of a life-long, happy marriage.  Therefore, how could one argue that sex between "loving" couples outside of marriage somehow exists on the same level as that between a husband and wife?  


 

[Del Tachi]

I guess my post got TL;DR'ed?