Chapter XVIII - Screwtape Letters - C. S. Lewis

[The "Enemy" here is affectionately implemented to refer to God].

... (on sexual temptation)

We have done this through the poets and novelists by persuading the humans that a curious, and usually short-lived, experience which they call “being in love” is the only respectable ground for marriage; that marriage can, and ought to, render this excitement permanent; and that a marriage which does not do so is no longer binding. This idea is our parody of an idea that came from the Enemy.

SEE - I TOLD YOU. FALLING IN LOVE IS A TOTAL LIE. A LIE, I SAY!!! STOP TEACHING THE KIDS THAT THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO LOVE A PERSON, ESPECIALLY IN MARRIAGE! IT IS FALSE.
And stupid...

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But in the humans the Enemy has gratuitously associated affection between the parties with sexual desire. He has also made the offspring dependent on the parents and given the parents an impulse to support it — thus producing the Family, which is like the organism, only worse; for the members are more distinct, yet also united in a more conscious and responsible way.  The whole thing, in fact, turns out to be simply one more device for dragging in Love.

It makes more sense now... how and why God designed the family they way He did... just to further express more ways to love. Not all of it has to be disgusting and weird.

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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 wherever a man lies with a woman, there, whether they like it or not, a transcendental relation is set up between them which must be eternally enjoyed or eternally endured. From the true statement that this transcendental relation was intended to produce, and, if obediently entered into, too often will produce, affection and the family, 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.

See, this is what I understood... and was inadvertently taught. This is what it means for love to be a choice... and then for it to bud and grow into something beautiful the way God designed it. It's between one guy and girl and then when they create something like God created, it just further bonds them and nourishes love between them all. This is the kind of sappiness that I'm okay with.

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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.

So, likewise, I have always been confused. Why do people look down on the love between friends. This can be such a powerful force. Why do we have to depend on raw, uncontrolled emotion, and ungrounded, superficial sexual desire... it makes no sense to me to deem the latter type of love as more valuable the the 3 former.

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In the second place any sexual infatuation whatever, so long as it intends marriage, will be regarded as “love”, and “love” will be held to excuse a man from all the guilt, and to protect him from all the consequences, of marrying a heathen, a fool, or a wanton.

This is freaks me out equally so. My mother says that as long as I intend to marry the guy, then the "love" is permissible. Since when is the infatuation ever good? It is UNFOUNDED. IT IS NOT REAL. IT WILL NOT LAST. IT DOES NOT EXCUSE TRANSIENT, SELFISH BEHAVIOR.  Mother, how could you be the one to teach me like this? How could you be so blinded?

~CJ