The Internet Turned Tolkien’s Marriage Advice Into Three Fake Rules, But The Real Thing Is Way Better

A viral Instagram post making the rounds recently claimed that esteemed author J.R.R. Tolkien credited his five-decade marriage to three rules: your soulmate is whoever you choose, you must allow each other to change, and you have to keep your problems private.

It’s a nice sentiment, and while it makes for more meaningful content to come across while scrolling, the problem is that Tolkien never actually wrote most of it. The Lord of the Rings author really was married to his wife, Edith, for more than five decades—that part is true—and remained together until Edith’s death in 1971. But that quick-bite list of advice circulating online appears to be more of a modern interpretation loosely inspired by a single real letter Tolkien wrote to his son Michael in 1941.

Ironically, Tolkien’s authentic advice is way more interesting than the viral Instagram take. Read Tolkien’s letters alongside his famous fiction, and it’s hard to miss how his views of marriage vastly differ from many people’s today. He wasn’t cynical about love, but he also wasn’t sentimental. He believed in romance, but romance alone was not enough. Perhaps that’s why his stories still resonate nearly a century later, and perhaps there are real nuggets of wisdom you can take with you on your own journey through life.

Dispelling The Modern Soulmate Myth

To understand Tolkien’s views on marriage, you first have to understand his love… Edith. Edith Bratt was three years older than Tolkien, and the two met while living at the same boarding house as teenagers. Both experienced loss early in life—Tolkien’s father dying when he was a child and Edith being orphaned at a young age—so they had that shared trauma.

Interestingly enough, their epic love story almost never happened. Tolkien’s guardian, Father Francis Morgan, disapproved of their relationship and forbade him from contacting her until he turned 21. During the years they spent apart, Edith actually became engaged to another man. But on the very day that he turned 21, Tolkien wrote to her, Edith ended up breaking off her engagement, and the two married in 1916.

Their love story helped inspire the mythology of Middle-earth long before The Lord of the Rings went to print.

In a letter to Michael after twenty-five years of marriage, Tolkien pushed back against the idea that one's happiness depends on finding “the one.” Infatuation is exciting. But, when infatuation fades—as it inevitably does for many—people might think they chose incorrectly. 

People treat the fading of infatuation as proof that they had married the wrong person.

Today, where dating apps bring people together or draw them apart, and “you deserve better” advice is carelessly handed out, people treat the fading of infatuation as proof that they had married the wrong person. Is it any wonder why no-fault divorce got so popular, and why people separate for seemingly mundane reasons instead of real conflict or controversy? The Tolkien-esque view thinks that is backward.

“The real soul-mate,” he wrote, “is the one you are actually married to.” Now, that line often gets paraphrased online, but his point wasn’t that compatibility isn’t important. Tolkien fell madly in love with Edith when he was a young man. And he believed that marriage transforms love from something we simply experience when we first fall head over heels, to something we actively practice day in and day out.

Don’t just discover love; cultivate it. That philosophy appears throughout Middle-earth, too. Aragorn and Arwen’s relationship spans decades of uncertainty, and their love story is beautiful because of the patience they had to embrace. Tolkien wrote about romance as devotion, rather than some effortless destiny.

You might meet your man and, after ten years together, realize that you’re not exactly the woman you were at the start. But that doesn’t mean that it’s time to pack up your bags and head for greener pastures—that’s time to double down on your commitment and ask yourself: how am I bringing vibrancy and joy into my relationship? How am I growing into a woman my husband can fall in love with each time I take up a new hobby, try a different hairstyle, start a new career, or nurture a baby?

He Understood That Feelings Change

One reason Tolkien’s advice feels refreshing today is that he never treated changing emotions as evidence that a relationship has failed. In that same letter, Tolkien acknowledged something that pop culture today struggles to come to terms with: being “in love” and loving someone are not necessarily the same thing.

He warned his son that faithfulness requires “deliberate conscious exercise of the will.” Tolkien had lived long enough to know that feelings fluctuate, and marriage depends on something sturdier. Naturally, his own stories reflect this.

Faramir and Éowyn don’t meet at the height of their youth. They encounter one another after suffering despair, grief, and disappointment that weaker-willed people would find crippling. Yet, their relationship tenderly grows through friendship and mutual understanding.

Being “in love” and loving someone are not necessarily the same thing.

As the years go on, their love story in particular stands out to me because it’s not dramatic. It’s comforting and relatable. I met my husband during a pretty emotionally turbulent time in my life, where we both benefited from shared healing and moving forward with a devoted companion. Building a relationship on a sturdier foundation than fleeting infatuation sets couples up for happier, longer marriages.

People don’t remain frozen in time. In Tolkien’s stories, nearly every major character is transformed by hardship. Aragorn grows from a wandering Ranger to king, Éowyn moves from despair to hope, and Frodo returns from Mordor permanently changed. Marriage works the same way.

The man and woman standing at the altar are not the same people who will celebrate their tenth anniversary, or their thirtieth for that matter. But Tolkien never suggested that change itself was a threat to a good relationship. The challenge—and it’s a fulfilling one—is remaining faithful throughout all of life’s changes.

Love Doesn’t Come Without Sacrifice

One thing that becomes obvious when you read Tolkien is that his most epic romances aren’t really convenient. Some of his most famous love stories are iconic for their lengthy and costly tension. 

Aragorn spends decades waiting for Arwen, for example, and Beren faces impossible odds to win Lúthien. Arwen even gives up her own immortality! Tolkien’s own relationship with Edith involved years of separation, uncertainty, and eventually the horrors of World War I.

But dating culture today makes it seem like difficulty is evidence that something’s wrong. Experiencing tension? Well, then, wouldn’t it be so exciting to just hop on a dating app and try out a new beau?

Love cannot be reduced to personal gratification.

Tolkien seemingly assumed the opposite, that anything truly valuable demands sacrifice. That doesn’t mean that suffering is romantic, per se, but it does mean that love cannot be reduced to personal gratification. Love is a conversation, not a one-way street, and so with any great relationship, there has to be some give and take.

One day, your husband might get a job offer in a different state or a different industry. That new career path could change everything about your family’s daily life. You might be challenged to adapt to new environments and new routines, but newness shouldn’t be something you fear. Love is inseparable from self-giving, and sometimes that means letting go of your own ego and being resilient amidst uncertainty.

Home and Family Aren’t Unimportant Dreams

The heroes in The Lord of the Rings aren’t fighting for power—far from it. They stand strong and fight for ordinary life. The Shire matters to the hobbits because ordinary things matter, like gardens, children, shared meals, a cozy home. Samwise Gamgee’s ending reveals a lot about Tolkien’s own priorities.

After Sam journeyed to hell and back with Frodo Baggins and witnessed wonders beyond his imagination, his deepest desire wasn’t a return to adventure, but a return home. He wanted Rosie, his family, and peace.

Women today receive messaging from media and peers that domestic life is somehow too small a dream. Ambition is where it’s at, and starting a family is just some consolation prize you’re supposed to settle for after failing to achieve bigger ambitions—not something to romanticize or find comfort in. Tolkien never wrote that way. The simple life wasn’t second-best to him, it was a tenet of life worth saving, and we can’t lose track of that.

It’s stupidly easy to get consumed in digital brain rot, but that should only be a short mental escape if at all. You need to be grounded in reality, and that means intentionally interacting with the people around you. Rather than hunkering down and scrolling, find a hobby that scratches a real spiritual itch rather than some fleeting fascination.

Romance Doesn’t End With Marriage

One thing that is so moving about Tolkien’s own love story is that he never outgrew romance. Edith was the inspiration behind Lúthien, one of Tolkien’s great heroines. While home on leave during World War I, Tolkien and Edith took a walk through the woods near Roos, England. Edith began dancing by the white flowers which grew beneath the trees, and later while writing to his son, Tolkien said, “I never called Edith Lúthien–but she was the source of the story.”

Naturally, a scene so picturesque remained ingrained in his memory the rest of his life, and eventually became the inspiration for one of the most beloved romances in all of high fantasy.

For Tolkien, his mythology wasn’t ever truly separate from his marriage. Decades after first developing the character Lúthien, Tolkien requested that her name be engraved on his late wife’s gravestone beneath her own name.

And when he died a mere twenty-one months later, “Beren” was engraved beneath his own. Even after fifty-five years together, Tolkien still thought of their love through that romantic lens of the story they created together. This tells us something important about lasting relationships.

Duty and romance don’t have to be enemies of one another.

Traditional marriage might get slammed, caricatured even, as practical or unromantic. Love within marriage is a dull duty, not a gift that keeps on giving. But Tolkien’s marriage suggests that’s frankly a myth. Duty and romance don’t have to be enemies of one another; rather, they strengthen each other because love itself is about something bigger than both the man and woman involved.

None of Tolkien’s great love stories exists in isolation. Aragorn and Arwen’s marriage is connected to the restoration of a great kingdom. Before then, Beren and Lúthien altered the fate of Middle-earth. Even Faramir and Éowyn help rebuild society after war. 

In Tolkien’s world, love points outward. Perhaps that’s what feels so foreign today, as modern relationships are often viewed exclusively through the lens of personal fulfillment. Will he make me happy? Will he pleasure me? Will being with him help me level up? Am I getting enough out of this?

Relationships from a Tolkien-esque lens pose different questions. What can I give? What can we build together? What is worth sacrificing for?

The internet may have boiled down Tolkien’s world views into three catchy rules, but the real thing was so much more beautiful and inspiring than that. Love does not stay the same, but two people can spend a lifetime writing their own unique story worth finishing together.