What is more, it emphasizes, as the Lord Jesus was later to say in his comment on this verse, the twinship of love and death, which has, until recently been thought by our entire culture to be the true meaning and measure of love. This special man-woman relationship is so profound that only death is to break it, only death could break it. This is understood to be morality, respect for other persons' freedom. Perhaps young people do not say 'I love you' because they are honest. Relationships,' not love affairs are what they have.
Love suggests something wonderful, exciting, positive, and firmly seated in the passions.
A relationship is gray, amorphous, suggestive of a project, without a given content, and tentative. But that is what we have here before us in Genesis 2. The complementarity of our natures, with marriage as the chief purpose and the chief beneficiary of that complementarity. Make no mistake about this. The Bible confirms it in no uncertain terms.