SOURCE: Biblical Families

by PolyPride » 12:35am – Wed, 19 Sep 2012
http://www.biblicalfamilies.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=3651#p36906&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Romantic love is valuing another person more than anything else. You have to give your all to that one person up to even sacrificing yourself for them if need be. If you don’t have this for you partner then it is not true love. This is a sum up from what I hear from popular culture and from others on what they feel romantic love is or involves. Now a polygamist would have 2 woman so he would not be able to hold any one woman as the most valuable. This raises the questions:

Can you experience true love in polygamy ?

Do you have to experience love to the depths mentioned above to be in a marriage?

Answers:

Re: Romantic love and Polygamy – Are they compatible?

by PolyPride » 1:46am – Wed, 19 Sep 2012

Most of the above description of romantic love is based on feelings and not so much action. When you press some people to explain what love would look like in action, it does boil down to things that a polygamous husband can do for his wives. For example, a man can support both wives through good and bad times, etc. Now the love that a polygamist husband can give to his wives doesn’t even cover the love (although non-romantic) that the wife can get from the other wife which gives her companionship from two people instead of just one. So I think where there’s less romantic idealized love given to just one woman is made up by the extra companionship of having an extra person in the relationship.

and

Re: Romantic love and Polygamy – Are they compatible?

by Isabella » 3:46am – Wed, 19 Sep 2012

Well I don’t think it is necessary to use other people’s definition to answer that question. It is not my definition of romantic love, granted, my idea of romantic love may not be entirely romantic, since they include a lot of chemical signals and pedestal raising, but…it is when that feeling ends that what I see as true love is allowed to develop, can that sort of love exist amongst more than two people? Of course, because it does not involve having to elevate one person above all others, but to feel that you can and want to do all you can to make those you love safe and happy.

People who are parents already know this. I just think that youngsters especially elevate romantic love above all other types of love in the world but to me it is just evidence of inexperience.

Re: Romantic love and Polygamy – Are they compatible?

by FollowingHim » 4:43am – Wed, 19 Sep 2012

Very well said Bels, 100% agree.

True love is a decision to commit to loving the other person, whether or not you happen to have any fuzzy pink feelings about them today.

The popular romantic view of love is that you’re “in love” when you’ve got fuzzy pink feelings, and if they disappear you must no longer be “in love” and should leave them and look for someone else. That’s nonsense.

Having said that, I don’t see why someone couldn’t have both true, committed love to two people AND feel romantic fuzzy pink nonsensical romantic feelings towards both of them at the same time. I don’t see that as mutually exclusive at all. I think that romantic love is just as applicable to polygamy as to monogamy – it just shouldn’t be the basis for ANY marriage, but is something to be enjoyed in EVERY marriage when you do feel it.

Samuel, Forum Moderator