四級(jí)晨讀主題美文100篇 26

Love Is Not Like Merchandise

A reader in Florida apparently2 bruised3 by some personal experience, writes in to complain, “If I steal a nickel’s4 worth of merchandise, I am a thief and punished; but if I steal the love of another’s wife, I am free.”

This is a prevalent5 misconception in many people’s minds — that love, like merchandise, can be “stolen”. Numerous states, in fact, have enacted6 laws allowing damages for “alienation of affections7”.

But love is not a commodity; the real thing cannot be bought, sold, traded or stolen. It is an act of the will, a turning of the emotions, a change in the climate of the personality.

When a husband or wife is “stolen” by another person, that husband or wife was already ripe for the stealing, and was already predisposed8 toward a new partner. The “lovebandit9” was only taking what was waiting to be taken, what wanted to be taken.

We tend to treat persons like goods. We even speak of children “belonging” to their parents. But nobody “belongs” to anyone else. Each person belongs to himself. Children are entrusted10 to their parents, and if their parents do not treat them properly, the state has a right to remove them from their parents’ trusteeship11.

Most of us, when young, had the experience of a sweetheart being taken from us by somebody more attractive and more appealing12. At the time, we may have resented this intruder—but as we grew older, we recognized that the sweetheart had never been ours to begin with13. It was not the intruder that “caused” the break, but the lack of a real relationship.

On the surface, many marriages seem to break up because of a “third party.” This is, however, a psychological14 illusion15. The other woman or the other man merely serves as a pretext16 for dissolving a marriage that had already lost its essential integrity17.