As I was passing by

A panelist said something

that sounded profound at first:

"If you divorce because of love

you were never ready for marriage —

marry for commitment, not for love,

because without commitment

love alone won't hold."

I sat with it.

Then it broke.

Love is not the enemy of commitment.

It is the only reason commitment means anything at all.

We exist as a species

because of love extended toward us —

to enter the most sacred of unions

without it as your foundation

is not wisdom.

It is absence dressed up as discipline.

I am a committed person by nature.

But love is what earns that commitment from me.

It is the ignition, not the obstacle.

The envelope that holds everything else inside it.

Romantic love carries weight, yes —

it has its seasons, its facets, its demands.

But it is always the first step.

Without it, nothing jumps to life.

Commitment is the choice you make

because of the love you chose.

To argue otherwise

is to remove the marrow from the bone

and call what remains a skeleton worth building on.

As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 116 —

if love alters when it alteration finds,

then he never writ,

and no man ever loved.

I agree.

And I would argue the panelist

has simply never been

that kind of in love.