Wait, let me back-track a moment here: we, as a society, are all aware that marriage has been a crumbling institution for the past fifty or sixty years. We search for the clues as to why and how to fix the problem (or whether there's a problem at all) but all we see are the statistics: 50% divorce rates, fewer marriages and a lot more cohabitation. The statistics also show a likelihood that cohabiting couples are more likely to call it quits. This, normally, wouldn't be so big a deal-- if you didn't add children to the stew.
And the problem is pretty simple: feminism. Feminism destroyed marriage.
And that's a good thing.
If we go back to the very first concepts of marriage, before those heady days with the idea of "romantic love" was first conceived, marriage was little more than a living, breathing, eternally binding contract. You trade a daughter for a bunch of gold and a financial stake in an up and coming corporation-- In-Laws inc.
Later, you cemented alliances with feudal lords, passed a princess and a few peasants, be sure she gets knocked up and BOOM-- you needn't fight that messy war.
Times changed but it wasn't until postWW2 that the nature of marriage shifted-- until women went to work, marriage was a way to financially secure your daughters, hopefully to someone they could tolerate. It wasn't like women could own a property in all places, or were respected if they did. Thus, the safety of marital bless-- with it's attendant abuses and servitudes (of course, it wasn't all bad-- after all, marriage tends to take the fight out of a man).
Then a funny thing happened. Women started wanting, like, rights and stuff. And jobs. And equality.
And when they happened, they realized they didn't need to be married. So when they got married, while having jobs of their own, divorce wasn't as horrifying a thing.
Fast forward to today and you find women becoming increasingly successful-- and who needs a marriage when you've got a career?
We had a boom in divorce, followed by a bust in marriage-- fewer people doing so, but those who do understand the risk: a coin-flip on whether they'll last. Maybe they're a little more committed-- then again, maybe not--, maybe they're just a bit smarter, having watched a generation of parents divorced... they, like the survivors of some species-wiping cataclysm, have adapted their way into the next step of marriage evolution. And maybe that's a good thing.
You take the money out of marriage and all you're left with is love, hardship and commitment. Love, in the romantic sense, runs dry after a few years. Hardship is something modern Americans aren't used to dealing with (perhaps these new married couples have benefited from a decade of unwatchable romantic comedies). And commitment?
One of the few married couples I know have neatly side-stepped this problem in what I increasingly believe will be the next step in marital evolution: the open marriage.
They are a couple. They live with (and date) another couple. And date a few others, besides.
While I do not understand the mechanics of their particular little sex-nest, I've seen the overall concept executed a few times thusly: there's a primary partner, with a few other secondaries. There are "veto" rules, allowing some measure of control for the other partner (i.e., "no you're NOT sleeping with that particular crazy bitch-- go fuck that nice girl in the corner"). If one partner is feeling unappreciated, there must be some devotion to repairing the primary relationship. Communication is a must. And there has to be at least one MFF threesome.
I just threw that last one in cuz, you know, naturally, that would be my clause.... I just assume that's an unspoken given.
It seems to work out for them but more importantly, it may work out for those who aren't married. After all, some people don't want or need the pressures, stresses and time consumptions of a relationship-- why not, then, just attach yourself to a happily open marriage as a free-agent secondary and let the franchise players worry about the Big Questions.
Personally, I have a hard time with the idea of open marriage-- for myself.
That is probably because I have a hard time with the idea of marriage, period-- that is, once again, for myself.
But if and when I did, I would have all the knowledge that my marriage is fragile, fraught and likely to fail-- and still should be forever. Perhaps the rise in cohabitation shows that, in order to succeed, you should fail a few times-- and if and when you find the person to enter a binding contract with, you'll fight through the hardships, you'll let the love mature and you'll hold to whatever version of commitment you happened to hold with.
Either way, we can't go back to Donna Reed. And we shouldn't. This is a brave new world and we have brave new marriages to go with it.
And hey... let the gays marry, already. They couldn't do any worse at it than straight people, could they? Don't fight it: they're just another step in the evolution. Change is inevitable.
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