Marriage, or any other close man-woman relationship, offers a whole range of wonderful options as a way of life. Provided expectations are not set too high and the couple keep their feet firmly on the ground, marriage can be a friendship; a source of attachment; an alliance against a hostile world; a source of companionship; a mutual admiration society; a therapy group of two; a work group with each member specialising in jobs they do best; a source of tender, loving care; a means of keeping adolescent romance alive; a secret society with its own language and history; a child-rearing group; and a means by which we can increase the love we feel for ourselves indirectly by putting someone else first in life.
Although marriage is a personal contract between two people it is also a social act because it is the way in which society chooses to organise men and women in family units to bring up children. Around the world different cultures have very different ways of organising family life but in the West we have arrived at the nuclear family in which, typically, two adults live alone with their children. The heart of this type of family structure is the parents, not only because they are the starting-point but also because they are the only consistent source of adult company for the children. The vast majority of people still think that children should ideally be raised within the context of marriage. Many young couples throughout the Western world live together, but once they decide to have children they usually get married.
There is no need to ‘sell’ marriage. It is as popular as ever even at a time when its failures are so apparent and seemingly inevitable. Of all those of marriageable age in the UK 95 per cent will be, are, or have been married at some time in their lives. Marriage is, unfortunately, still portrayed as some kind of fairy-tale ideal rather than the reality of two people living together and sharing their lives for a very long time. The thing is that today, with age expectancy rising all the time, a couple married in their twenties can expect to be together for fifty years or longer, which is more than twice as long as they would have only a hundred years ago.
Statisticians and analysts looking at the mid-life peak in divorces (second only to the
first-five-year peak) suggest that it could be a sort of natural break point for many people. After all, they argue, had they lived a few centuries ago they would have been ‘divorced’ by death.
Many, if not most people, (and especially girls) go into marriage with expectations that are far too high. What most people do not realise is that by idealising marriage as an institution they trivialise the man-woman relationship. This comes about because it is intrinsic in our culture to regard marriage as the ideal manifestation of the man-woman relationship. Until recently it was the only social structure within which men and women could enjoy each other’s company and have intercourse. Reliable contraception and the women’s movement have changed all that, probably for ever, and now most people don’t get married solely to have intercourse or to have a close, meaningful relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Even so, most people still see marriage as their preferred life-style, even if children are not involved. The one in ten couples who live together in the UK (many with children) as if they were man and wife without in fact being so go to show how conventional we all are, even in these so-called enlightened times.
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