[The idea //that ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married] really leaves no room for marriage
/as a contract or promise at all.
If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing;
and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made.
The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those //who talk about love.
As Chesterton pointed out, [those //who are in love] have a natural inclination /to bind themselves by promises.
Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy.
The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love [something //which is foreign to that passion’s own nature]:
it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something //which their passion of itself impels them to do.
And, of course, the promise, made /when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me /to being true /even if I cease to be in love.
A promise must be about things //that I can do, about actions:
no one can promise[ to go on feeling in a certain way].
He might as well promise [never to have a headache or always to feel hungry].
From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis