My fiancee and I have taken on the responsiblity of raising a 2-year-old girl, who is, practically speaking, our daughter (it's a long story). We have been planning on spending our lives together for the last couple years, but for various reasons we've been waiting to get married.

When we finally did set a wedding date, nobody said, "great! Now we know that you really love each other!" But many people did refer back to our daughter and the fact that she would now have a solid legal family.

Historically, marriages have a lot more to do with the connections between families--yours, your spouse's, and the one the two of you will create together--than it does with feelings of individual attraction. This situation still hasn't changed. Perhaps the reason so many marriages end in divorce is that we're taught to view marriage as a product of romantic love, when it's really a combination of romance and practicality.