Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him.

“Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.” These words of Marilyn Monroe, the radiant yet tragic muse of the twentieth century, carry a truth deeper than their playful tone first suggests. Beneath the veil of wit lies a meditation on the evolution of desire, on the shifting tides of love and intimacy between the promise of courtship and the reality of union. Monroe, whose beauty drew the eyes of the world, understood not only the thrill of attraction but also the loneliness that often follows it. Her words are not cynical—they are observant, carved from the experience of a woman who had seen how easily passion fades when it is not nourished by tenderness.

Before marriage, love is pursuit—a dance of seduction, of charm, of imagined perfection. Both man and woman are actors upon a bright stage, performing the parts they hope will win devotion. The girl, as Monroe says, must “make love to hold him,” not in the narrow sense of physical affection, but in the broader sense of giving her heart, her warmth, her allure, to draw him close. Desire is new and wild then, lit by mystery and expectation. It asks for no reason to burn—it simply does. But marriage, the ancients taught, is not the end of love’s story—it is its beginning. And what begins as fire must learn to live as flame, or it will consume itself.

After marriage, the order reverses. Now the woman must “hold him to make love to him.” What once came easily must now be earned through care, through patience, through the steady tending of affection. Love, once reckless, must become deliberate. The embrace that once followed passion now must create it. This is the deeper wisdom Monroe whispers: that in marriage, passion no longer sustains love—love sustains passion. The thrill of the chase gives way to the labor of keeping hearts intertwined, of protecting tenderness from the weariness of familiarity.

There is an ancient story that echoes this truth: the myth of Eros and Psyche. In the beginning, Psyche is forbidden to see the face of her divine lover. Their love is hidden, mysterious, aflame with secrecy. But when curiosity breaks the spell, Eros vanishes, and Psyche must wander through the world to win him back—not with beauty or seduction, but with strength, endurance, and devotion. Only when she learns the art of holding, of cherishing love through sacrifice and constancy, is the god returned to her arms. The story teaches what Monroe’s words reveal in modern form: that love’s truest test comes not in passion’s birth, but in its endurance.

Monroe’s reflection also carries a quiet sorrow—for she lived in a world that prized the image of love more than its essence. Her life, surrounded by admirers, yet marked by isolation, showed how fragile human connection can be when it depends only on attraction. Her quote, wrapped in humor, hides a yearning for a love that lasts beyond desire—a love that is steady, mutual, and real. In that sense, her words are not playful but prophetic: she reminds us that every heart must learn to build its own shelter against time.

The lesson, then, is simple yet eternal. Passion begins with the spark of bodies, but endures only through the holding of souls. To keep love alive, one must learn the sacred rhythm of renewal—of listening, forgiving, reaching again even when weariness sets in. Marriage is not the death of romance but its refinement, its transformation from lightning into light. Those who understand this do not mourn love’s changes; they cherish them, knowing that what deepens may lose its heat, but never its warmth.

So, to those who walk the path of love, take heed of Monroe’s wisdom: learn to hold as fiercely as you once desired to be held. Let affection become your discipline, not your accident. For love is not sustained by memory, nor by promise, but by the daily act of choosing—again and again—to give your heart where it has already been given. Then you will find, as the ancients knew, that even after passion quiets, devotion sings louder still.