ABSTRACT
Love is often paired with other strong emotions and desires- fear, anger, pride, envy, greed, and/or lust. The marriage ceremony includes the promise to love and to cherish "for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health". Many couples have found their solid financial circumstances gone; others have ended up caring for an incapacitated mate. Marriage used to be the only socially acceptable household structure for couples and the inevitable next step when a couple "fell in love". Many of the stories include women who chose to follow their men into very uncertain and even dangerous situations; yet, the accounts of their marriages are filled with love and romance. God made the business of establishing and maintaining a couple's unity compelling by making sexual intimacy, between a man and a woman who love each other deeply and tenderly, one of the greatest pleasures of which humans are capable.
