What is this thing called love?

We've all heard the statistic that half of all marriages end in divorce. It's unsurprising, then, that Congress passed and the first so-called gay-friendly president, Bill Clinton, signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. Conservatives think marriage is too loosely conceived and see the encroachments of anathemas like gay marriage, polygamy, and no-fault divorce as the culprits. Meanwhile, committed leftists see marriage as being too strictly conceived and, at bottom, repressive of women. Thus, they're denouncing it (even the same-sex variety) with renewed vigor. Strangely, both sides seem to agree: Marriage, as we define it, is the problem.

Nonsense. Marriage itself (gay, poly, or otherwise) is not the problem. On the contrary, properly conceived, it may well be the solution. By most measures, like those Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher marshal in their book The Case for Marriage, marriage is good for us. We need it. One might even call it the linchpin of a healthy, thriving culture--the most intimate manifestation, perhaps, of what Francis Fukuyama called "social capital." Married people tend to live longer, healthier lives. When married, criminals are less prone to recidivism.

So, then, if the problem is not marriage itself, what is it? Neither liberals nor conservatives are finding the answer, for the decline of traditional marriage can no more be blamed on groups who don't yet enjoy its benefits (for example, gays and polygamists) than it can on antiquated notions of tribal ownership or sexism. No. More likely the problem is us and our pervasive misunderstanding both of what makes marriage tick and what makes it indispensable: love.

The Western world is suffused with the mythology of romantic love. Its cultural heritage is rife with archetypes: Samson and Delilah, Cupid and Psyche, Tristram and Isolde, Romeo and Juliet, and on and on. Each of us comes of age expectant, inculcated in the baroque masochism of Eros, waiting for that decidedly pagan euphoria to overcome and inhabit us like the flu. And inevitably it does, transforming us utterly and yet most often leaving us crushed in its wake, empty-handed, and, if once married under its spell, now divorced.

How could it be otherwise? Artificial paradises degrade of necessity, said Baudelaire. When people exchange illusions, however strong and pleasurable, the transaction is, of course, empty. Love is giving something you don't possess, wrote Lacan, to someone who doesn't exist. This is the essence of romantic love as our folklore unwittingly purveys it.

But there is another kind of love in the Western world, one that, like faith, is not primarily a feeling but an act or a series of acts. It, like faith, is a commandment, not a whim or a virus. Somewhere along the way we've forgotten this.

Interestingly, Westerners misunderstand the Sanskrit term karma in the same way, thinking it means "fate" or "destiny"--something passive and imposed--when, in fact, it literally means "action" or "deed." Thus, your karma is what you do. It only becomes your fate because your actions become your fate.

Similarly, true love, even romantic love, is what you do, not what you feel. That is why, when we pledge ourselves to another in marriage, we say "I do," not "I feel." Conceived this way, love is not subject to outrageous fortune. And so marriage is a promise, not a flourish. It is a declaration of personal responsibility for another human being, an act of charity by which we say, "I am my lover's keeper."

There is no sociological evidence that traditional, gay, or consensual polygamous marriages, when dutifully undertaken, erode the social fabric, whereas there is considerable evidence that acts of love, when legally and communally reinforced, become strong and mutually beneficial social bonds. We should overcome our considerable misgivings and learn to practice love. We should, in the interests of forging trust and social capital, be in favor of all marriage--indeed, as much marriage as possible.