Thoughts
Clive really argues that two people who f and then get married because they don't want to desecrate that sacred bond, even if they don't
really like each other, have a more solid relationship than two people who get married because they've fallen in love.
Remind me to edit with source/quote once I'm back near my copy of *The Screwtape Letters*
Edit (Jun 16, 9:05 a.m.):
For background *The Screwtape Letters* are an imagined collection of letters from one demon to another, so when it says "thanks to us" Lewis means "thanks to the work of the devil" and when it says "the Enemy" it means "the Christian God"
> The Enemy described a married couple as "one flesh." He did not say "a happily married couple" or "a couple who married because they were in love," but you can make the humans ignore that.
…
> The truth is that whenever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relationship is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured.
…
> Humans can be made to infer the false belief that the blend of affection, fear, and desire which they call "being in love" is the only thing that makes marriage either happy or holy. This error is easy to produce because "being in love" does very often, in western Europe, precede marriages which are made in obedience to the Enemy's designs.
…
> humans...can be deterred from seeking marriage as a solution because they do not find themselves "in love" and thanks to us the idea of marrying for any other purpose seems low and cynical. Yes, they think that. They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life, as something lower than a storm of emotion.
-p 82-84
I think what's going on here is that Lewis is using a definition of "being in love" which today would be closer to "love at first sight." I don't think Lewis is saying that you shouldn't love your wife/husband. (Notice how he always quotes "being in love," I think to make it clear this isn't real love.)
Rather, I think he's defining "being in love" as the inherently childish, transitory, "storm of emotion" which exists only at the beginning of a relationship. And he further argues that basing a relationship on *that* feeling is a recipe for disaster. At another point, he describes how a new couple might be spontaneously moved to do things for one another which would be unreasonable and unsustainable for the entirety of a marriage.
But I just can't stop laughing at 'there's nothing wrong with getting married for the "preservation of chastity."'