Although the Protestant Reformation brought new ideas to the institution of marriage, including relaxing notions of who could marry whom, marriages throughout the Western world represented an unequal partnership between a man and a woman, in which the man treated the woman like a piece of property.
That didn't change with the arrival of the institution on American shores. In fact, in the early 17th century, when colonists began to settle Virginia, women were auctioned off in a manner reminiscent of Long's painting, "The Babylonian Marriage Market." A "pure and spotless" woman arriving in Virginia could fetch 80 pounds of tobacco, according to Genealogy Magazine. Women brought over to work as indentured servants might even end up marrying the men they were working for.
The wedding ceremony itself might have been religious in nature, but marriages were purely civil affairs. Men who deserted their wives or women who were adulterers could actually be brought to trial for their misdeeds.
The notion of "love" was not just absent in a marriage in colonial America; it was frowned upon. As Psychology Today notes, in the 1690s, "Protestant ministers warn spouses against loving each other too much, or using endearing nicknames that will undermine husbandly authority."
It wasn't until the 19th century that the idea of love as being natural to a marriage really took hold.