You can't make a rule about it. The minute you make a rule, it's

The words of Frances McDormand—“You can't make a rule about it. The minute you make a rule, it's like putting your wedding pictures in In Style magazine—you're divorced.”—are both humorous and piercing in their wisdom. They reveal that the moment love is bound by rigid rules or turned into spectacle, it begins to lose its spirit. For love is a living flame, not a formula; when caged in expectation or displayed for the approval of the world, it suffocates. Her warning is simple yet profound: preserve love’s authenticity, lest it be consumed by vanity or rigidity.

This utterance is a meditation on the fragility of relationships. To make marriage into a set of fixed laws, or to turn it into a performance for the crowd, is to strip it of its sacred spontaneity. The jest about magazine pictures is not about the photograph itself, but about the transformation of a private bond into a public image, carefully curated for strangers’ admiration. What was once a union of hearts becomes a brand, and what was once intimate becomes brittle.

History teaches the same. Consider the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine. Their love, once fiery and consuming, became entangled in rules, appearances, and the weight of public expectation. When passion turned into protocol, and the needs of the empire overshadowed the needs of the heart, their union collapsed. Napoleon, who commanded armies, could not command the survival of a love drained by spectacle. So too does McDormand’s jest remind us that what is paraded before the multitude is often doomed to fade.

Her words also remind us of the necessity of freedom in love. The strongest unions are not those that follow commandments etched in stone, but those that move with the seasons of life—flexible, forgiving, and alive. To impose rules is to believe one can outwit change, yet true love thrives not by resisting change, but by embracing it with resilience and grace.

Let this teaching endure: guard your bonds from both rigid law and hollow spectacle. Do not shape your love to be admired by the crowd, nor strangle it with endless decrees. Love is not a rule to be followed, but a river to be tended, flowing fresh each day. As Frances McDormand teaches, the secret is not in perfect appearances, but in the unseen devotion that never needs display. For in humility and authenticity lies the strength to endure, where the loud pageantry of the world so often fails.