Is it a sin to marry someone you're not attracted to?

[gloraykid]

My sister has said she is considering marrying a man she “loves” but is not “in love” with. She admits she is not attracted to him physically. Would this be a sin to marry this man? I mean, doesn’t he deserve a wife who can be passionate about him, especially since “marriage” is the single male-female relationship where sex is allowed by the Church?

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I think you’re placing far too much importance on romantic attraction and are treating marriage as a means to sex rather than as a vocation within which marital relations plays a part. A person does not need to have a strong romantic attraction to someone to love that person and to fulfill the duties of marriage. Certainly, romantic attraction plays a part in drawing a couple together, but it is an emotion that fluctuates wildly over the course of the years and decades of marriage. Love, on the other hand, is the choice to will for another human being his or her greatest good (i.e., God) and to work to help that person to attain it. Because love is a choice, it can remain constant even when the difficulties faced by a couple strain their feelings for each other.

In short, yes, your sister can marry this man if she truly loves him. But I would recommend to her that she stop telling people she is not “in love” with him. As she found out with you, doing so will only confuse people.

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Should I be an attendant at the marriage of a couple who don’t love each other?