Because I know very little about love, my pet theory has been that love cannot be understood whereas matrimony explains everything. Men and women marry for love or money or convenience; marriage is the culmination of romance; love is a mystery whereas marriage is a contract in black and white.

And now my eyes have been opened wider by a book I recently bought for P65. Why Men Marry Some Women And Not Others is a “research-based book, the only one of its kind,” which puts together the answers culled from several stages of interviews with more than 3,000 women in the US. True, American women are not like Filipino women, but women are women anywhere.

Author John T. Molloy targeted single women and their boyfriends as they came out of marriage license bureaus, as well as women in their late 30s and 40s “who had no immediate prospects of marriage.”

What was his answer to his own question in the title? That it’s the women who insist on getting married – “they settle for nothing else.” It’s the lady’s decision, determination, and stick-to-it-iveness in setting the date and buying the wedding band that ties the knot.

The research also showed that “women who married love themselves more than they loved any man” and “women who are committed to the idea of marriage are much more likely to marry than those who are not.”

In my limited experience, one kind of woman gets to marry whom she wants when she wants – the pregnant kind. Happy Valentine’s!