The politics of love

Who are you meant to fall in love with? Your parents will tell you true love is based on the solid rock of professionalism. Their logic goes something like this:

Figure 1: Graphical depiction of the economic premise for “true love”

According to this theory, parents will analyse a potential mate based on his ability to provide for, or support their daughter. The selling points of this mate will be spin doctored with statements like “look at the car he drives” or “do you know? Sheila stopped me in the Pick’n Pay to tell me (insert mate’s name) has just got a promotion at work. He is doing very well for himself”.

Other parental criteria for the promise of “true love” are more or less assumed. Or perhaps more accurately, “true love” is believed impossible, where certain criteria are missing. In such cases as these, most parents will default to the position of assuming a race, culture and religion exact match. Their logic goes something like this:

Same race
Same culture
Same religion

These are sensitive topics though. And, so wherever possible, these criteria must remain unspoken. And, in most cases when these criteria are challenged, parents will adopt extreme right or leftist positions. There is no room for moderate response, when one’s daughter is considering dating or marrying out of her “kind”.

For the purposes of this explanation, I refer to the above as the “exact match” theorem.

Parents also have a unique approach to match making. All astute politicians cater for the “just in case scenario”, and most responsible parents are no different. When we date, we may do so for a variety of reasons: we want companionship, fun, sex and for some perhaps marriage. For our parents, when we date, we do so for a reason: marriage. No matter how young we are, how broken or bruised our hearts may be, a date to a parent signals that “just in case scenario” and the theories of “true love” are automatically applied.

Here’s how the politics of love played out in my life. I attended five years of school at a convent, during which time I practiced Catholicism as a “pseudo catholic”. This means: having never been baptised or confirmed in a Catholic church, I followed the religion in a way all children receiving a catholic education practice their religion, with a degree of rigour. Given this context, and according to the “exact match theory”, my parents were looking for a nice Catholic boy or at least a good Christian boy.

My parents were “firsts” in their families, that is, both my parents were the first children to obtain a tertiary education. Therefore, completing some form of tertiary education was assumed for me, and any application of the economic premise for “true love” meant I would fall deeply “in love” with a man who had a professional qualification.

So when J, a northern suburbs Jewish lawyer, picked me up for our first date, my father, wanting a rich son in law, and applying the economic premise for “true love” breathed a sigh of relief.

My mother had a more complicated response. She was suspended between the two theorems. On the one hand he was a lawyer, which meant a nice tick next to some of the criteria for “true love”. But on the other hand he was Jewish, this was going to be problematic.

To allay her own concerns (being the adept political operator that she is), or perhaps because of that uncanny ability mother’s have to tune in and decipher their daughter’s emotional vibrations, my mom asked, “Where is this going?”

I had just emerged from a seven-year relationship, and I wanted to have fun, so I raised my eyes heavenward and replied, “Oh Mom, we’re not getting married, it’s just a date”.

For the next two years I fell slowly and madly in love. On the 9th of January two years later, J asked me to marry him. His only request, other than that I spend the rest of my life with him, was that I become Jewish.