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On Marriage

Update 2/16/07: Before you read this, I should mention that Erika and I filed for divorce at the beginning of the year. While I think a lot of what I say here is still valid, we obviously made our share of mistakes, so you may want to take this post with a grain of salt. I don’t regret marrying her, and we are still good friends, but it will take a while before I decide exactly how to incorporate what I’ve learned into this piece.

Well, due to all the recent hubbub over gay marriage and discussions of a federal amendment to “defend marriage,” I’ve been giving the whole marriage and divorce issue some thought and thought I’d weigh in on it and what I think really ought to be done (which is not what you might expect). Of course, what started out as a reposting of a short four paragraph comment turned into much more than that (covering more about marriage in general than gay marriage). So I’ll cut the small talk and just get into it.

Outlaw Divorce?

Divorce is often seen as the biggest problem faced by marriage, so one seemingly obvious solution is getting rid of it altogether. Well, I think outlawing divorce causes more problems than it “solves.” There will always be people who intentionally distort who they are before they are married. Abusive relationships are an obvious example. While some abusers can be identified early in a relationship, there are plenty who are smart enough to hide their behavior until after marriage, at which point they use the difficulty of ending the relationship to their advantage. It used to be that abused wives were forced by society to just keep quiet and take the abuse — sometimes a death sentence. Indeed, this still occurs in societies with poor women’s rights, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. I sincerely hope nobody really wants to return to that. Outlawing divorce doesn’t solve the problem; it just sweeps it under the rug.

I don’t think getting rid of “no-fault” divorce is much better. A full exploration of this topic is well outside the scope of my knowledge and ability to analyze, but it just doesn’t sound like a viable solution. People are constantly changing and growing, and a couple doesn’t always grow in the same direction, sometimes for reasons entirely outside their control. So what happens when people change after marriage so much to make the relationship no longer viable? Furthermore, if two people don’t want to stay married but are prohibited from getting a divorce (because it’s legally prohibited or socially unacceptable), sure, they’ll continue the marriage — but just as a sham where one or both commit adultery (or merely act completely like single people but never get legally divorced). Such marriages are really no better than divorces. Well actually, they’re worse, because you have two people living a lie.

Of course, outlawing adultery might address that, but somehow, I really don’t think Congress will ever go for that.

My wife, who’s an active feminist, believes the women’s movement actually has a lot to do with the rise in divorce rate in that women are no longer willing to tolerate unacceptable situations like abuse (both physical and mental), or their husbands sleeping around. Not too hard to believe if you look at the state of women’s rights in places in the world where husbands can literally get away with raping their wives, pouring acid on their faces, or outright murdering them (Update 4/13/04 Tyler Cowen cites an interesting study pointing out that adopting “no-fault” divorce has “reduced suicides among women, sparked a dramatic reduction in domestic violence and led to a decline in women murdered by their partners”).

So I don’t think divorce is really the problem but an effect of the problem. The real problem is marriages that should never have happened in the first place.

Which is why I think it’s worth exploring…

What Makes a Good Marriage?

What makes a good marriage? Well, I’ve only been married for almost three years, so perhaps I’m no expert, but I’ve known my fair share of people whose marriages failed badly, so there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder at my fabulous luck and why our marriage works as well as it does despite the unlikeliness of it all (some background on our unique situation here). So I’ve put a good deal of thought into it, and this is what I came up with: compatibility, commitment, trust, communication, and love. In that order. Yes, love is last, and desire to raise children is not even on the list. Let me elaborate a little… who am I kidding? Let me elaborate a lot.

Compatibility is, by far, the most important, because two people just can’t spend too much time together unless they get along. You can have all the chemistry and love in the world and yet still be horrible roommates (and note, this goes for friends as well as lovers). And I think most of the nastiest arguments you see in marriages are exactly because they are horrible roommates who allow a litany of annoyances to accumulate. But also important (though, arguably, not nearly as much) is sexual compatibility. This is the quandary faced by many people still looking for the right partner. Sometimes the sex is awesome, but they just don’t get along. Sometimes they get along just great and connect on so many levels, but the sex is awful. And I would suspect that many failed marriages result in somebody settling for one of those partners instead of finding one where they are fully compatible.

Of course, compatibility is not nearly enough. About equally important is commitment. Couples that cohabitate before marriage because this is missing (from one or both) are merely avoiding this key issue. A common problem is that at least one of the partners isn’t really committed to the relationship and is perfectly satisfied with a relationship without commitment (indeed, typically preferring it). If the other partner instead treats the relationship as a prelude for marriage and eventually pressures the other one into it, this is a recipe for disaster. Because once a relationship hits a rough spot (and all relationships do), both people need to be committed to getting through it, no matter how much work it might take. Unfortunately, this is a hard requirement to gauge and perhaps the hardest one to address. The only advice I can offer is to filter out people who aren’t looking for the same thing you are pretty early on in the dating process so that you don’t face a quandary after investing so much into a relationship.

I hope that trust and communication are obvious requirements for any healthy relationship, let alone a marriage. They are perhaps the easiest qualities to notice when they are missing — yet are often overlooked and overshadowed by the powerful forces of love and sex. Counseling is, of course, an invaluable aid for this.

As for love, well, I’m not sure it’s really a requirement. Many societies have a long tradition of successful arranged marriages. Indeed, the whole idea of marrying for love seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon. Historically, it was more of a legal contract for reasons of property or politics, and yet a surprising number of arranged marriages work out just fine. Indeed, in many nations, the divorce rate for arranged marriages is lower than for love marriages (even in Japan, where love marriages far outnumber arranged marriages). While love sometimes develops and grows in those, sometimes it doesn’t and the marriage amounts to little more than a formalized close friendship. But while love might not be strictly required, to me it’s kinda the whole point. The spark that makes all the work required by any relationship worthwhile. But maybe arranged marriages work precisely because they don’t know what they’re missing, and more importantly, they don’t come to the marriage with unrealistic romantic expectations.

So that’s my take on what makes a good marriage (Update 4/13/04 for better advice, check out this essay from Kent Nerburn). And if you were paying attention, you’d realize that every single thing I just said applies equally to gay couples as well as straight. Which shouldn’t be all that surprising, because gay couples really aren’t that much different from straight couples. The only difference is in how they have sex, and sex is hardly what defines a marriage. But I’ll get back to gay marriages later.

What Causes Bad Marriages?

As I mentioned, the real problem isn’t divorce, but marriages that should never have happened in the first place — marriages that are lacking in one of the above. Why do these marriages occur? Well, because many people are marrying for the wrong reasons.

I think the biggest reason people get married to an unsuitable partner is cultural, societal, and parental pressure to marry. When somebody is over thirty and not yet married, everybody seems to be wondering what’s wrong with them — especially for women. I’m sure most of you have experienced the parental pressure first or secondhand. Also note that the idealistic “happy ending wedding” is prevalent in our movies (which also leads to unrealistic expectations of marriages). Sometimes there’s also peer pressure as well (all your friends have gotten married), and for those with strong religious beliefs, sexual pressure.

So some people marry whomever they happen to be with at the time they turn thirty, and some people marry the very first person who shows an interest in them. Sometimes the results are more subtle, where a person doesn’t realize they are overlooking obvious flaws in their partner or relationship because they have such a clear picture in their head of what they want it to be that they see what they want to see and downplay or ignore the rest. Why do these things happen? Because all the pressure shifts the focus from finding the right person to just finding somebody. Needless to say, marrying for the sake of becoming a married person is a really bad reason to get married — and greatly increases the odds of marrying someone they really shouldn’t be.

Another major reason for bad marriages is marrying too young, which seems to have been an issue for most of the divorced people I’ve known. I think it’s pretty rare to find someone really emotionally mature enough to handle such a life-changing decision like this until at least their late twenties or early thirties. Not to mention that people are continuing to change and grow a lot in their twenties, and many divorces are a result of people realizing their partner is no longer the same person they fell in love with and married. Of course, one major reason for people marrying too young is teenage pregnancy. Solving that problem would go a long way towards preventing these bad marriages — but society also needs to realize that “doing the right thing” in this case is not forcing two people to marry before they’re ready. It hardly does the child a favor.

Given high-profile examples of quickie weddings like with Britney Spears and Dennis Rodman (err, not with each other, but who knows, maybe that’ll happen too!), another obvious reason for bad marriages is couples rushing into a rash decision. Marriage is obviously not something to be entered in on a whim. I know of quickie weddings that ended up working out fine, but it seems obvious to me that such ventures are very much a risky hit-or-miss proposition. That most of these weddings seem to happen in Vegas should tell you something. Of course, you can’t force people to think hard before marrying, but you can at least mandate a waiting period.

One obvious culprit that I’ve touched upon is unrealistic expectations of marriage, often fueled by idealistic portrayals of it. Another obvious one is our society’s equating female sexuality with youth and masculinity with sexual conquests. Of course, this leads to the trophy wife syndrome and marriages involving large disparities in age. And I really have to wonder whether basic biology works against us. Very few mammals in nature mate for life, especially primates:

Dr. Emlen noted that, among primates, there are only two monkeys—the marmoset and its South American cousin, the tamarin—that are genetically monogamous. All other primates—monkeys, apes, and humans—often mate outside their socially monogamous partnerships.

It just might be that our brains and bodies are not wired for marriage, and the nuclear family is not the best model for human society. I know many of you may scoff, but there just might be something to “it takes a village.” Maybe a social structure modeled after the free lovin’ libertarian lunar society described in Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress would truly work better?

My wife thinks a big reason is that our society doesn’t teach children basic interpersonal communication skills or how to make relationships work. Children are pretty much left to figure out how to socially function on their own, and coupled with the starkly different expectations and socialization of girls and boys, this can lead to huge communication gaps between the sexes that create such a huge market for books like Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Also worth noting is that preventative premarital counseling would seem as vital to a healthy marriage as preventative health care is to a healthy body — yet it’s much harder to find premarital counseling than parent counseling, even though you’d think it ought to be a prerequisite.

I really think that covers the majority of bad marriages, but I want to mention one last cause: economic incentives for marriage. People get married for really bad reasons, like for health insurance, citizenship, lower taxes, or gold digging. I’m not sure what we can do about gold digging. But for the rest, I’m sure the rationale behind offering these benefits was to encourage marriage. Well, I don’t know why this wasn’t immediately obvious from the start, but encouraging marriages for the wrong reasons just makes things worse. Better to remove these incentives (or offer them equally to non-marriage relationships) so that the people who marry are doing so because they want to get married.

So, you’ve spent all this time reading all of this, and no doubt you’re wondering…

What Does Any of this Have to do with Gay Marriage?

Well actually, very little. Which is the whole point. Gay marriage doesn’t add to any of these problems at all. Why would it? And several studies have contradicted the notion that children raised by gay parents are any more likely to be gay (and some say gay parents are even better at raising well-adjusted children). Which is not surprising, given that most of the evidence points to homosexuality having a genetic cause.

Is that so far-fetched to understand? Sexuality isn’t something you can easily change at will. If you don’t believe me, think of the sickest fetish you just can’t stomach to imagine, be it bestiality or foot worshipping or whatever it is you just can’t bear. Now try a simple experiment: will yourself to become sexually aroused by it. I think you’ll find you really don’t have that much control over what turns you on and what turns you off. And even if you are eventually able to succeed, why would anybody intentionally put themselves through that exercise just for the chance to become ostracized by society? It just makes no sense whatsoever. And for those still unable to fathom that genetics can play a role in a behavior, remember that society used to consider left-handedness to be evil, and inflicted mental damage by forcing people to use their non-dominant hand. That alone indicates that the burden of proof rests upon those who would choose to discriminate against gays and lesbians to prove that sexual orientation is not genetic.

So in case it wasn’t already immediately obvious, I do favor giving gay marriages equal legal status as straight marriages. Of course, as a libertarian, I have no desire for the government to be involved in social engineering in the first place, so I would rather benefits be removed from marriage altogether (including implementing a flat tax). As I mentioned before, this has the added benefit of making sure people get married for the right reasons, and not for artificial incentives that, as all governmental social engineering attempts do, have perverse results.