have a clear set of rules about which partner should do what in their marriage. But they do have a clear set of rules about what each partner should not do. And society has a clear set of rules for how everyone else should and should not relate to each partner. These commonly held expectations and codes of conduct foster the predictability and security that make daily living easier.
Arrangements other than marriage are still treated as makeshift or temporary, however long they last. There is no consensus on what rules apply to these relationships. We don’t even know what to call them. Divorced families may be labeled “broken” families, even when they actually work very well. Until recently children born to unwed parents were called illegitimate—and treated as such in law and social life. The relationship between a cohabiting couple, whether heterosexual or same sex, is unacknowledged by law and may be ignored by the friends and relatives of each partner. Marriage, in contrast, gives people a positive vocabulary and public image that set a high standard for the couple’s behavior and for the respect that outsiders ought to give to their relationship.
If we withdrew our social acceptance of alternatives to marriage, marriage itself might suffer. 2 The very things that make marriage so potentially satisfying are for the most part inseparable from the things that make unsatisfying marriages less bearable. The same personal freedoms that allow people to expect more from their married lives also allow them to get more out of staying single and give them more choice than ever before in history about whether or not to remain together.
There are those who believe that because married people are, on average, better off than divorced or single people, society should promote lifelong marriage for everyone and lead a campaign against divorce and cohabitation. But using averages to give personal advice to individuals or to construct social policy for all is not wise. On average, marriage has substantial benefits for both husbands and wives. That’s because most marriages are pretty happy. But individuals in unhappy marriages are more psychologically distressed than people who stay single, and many of marriage’s health benefits fade if the marriage is troubled. A three-year study of married couples in which one partner had mild hypertension found that in happy marriages, the blood pressure of the at-risk partner dropped when couples spent even a couple of extra minutes together. But for those who were unhappily married, a few extra minutes of time together raised the blood pressure of the at-risk spouse. Having an argumentative or highly critical spouse can seriously damage a person’s health, raising blood pressure, lowering immune functions, and even worsening the symptoms of chronic illnesses like arthritis. 3
Women are at particular risk in a bad marriage. A man in a bad marriage still gets some health benefits compared with single men, because even a miserable wife tends to feed her husband more vegetables, schedule his medical checkups, and shoulder much of the housework and the emotional work that make life function smoothly. But there are no such compensations for an unhappily married woman. Unhappy wives have higher rates of depression and alcohol abuse than single women. A bad marriage raises a woman’s cholesterol readings and decreases her immune functioning. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that unhappily married women in their forties were more than twice as likely to have medical symptoms that put them at risk for heart attacks and strokes as happily married or never-married females. A long-term study of patients in Oregon even found that unequal decision-making power in marriage was associated with a higher risk of death for women. 4
Promoting good marriages is a worthwhile goal, and we can help many marriages work better than they currently do. I argued in the last chapter that in
Arrangements other than marriage are still treated as makeshift or temporary, however long they last. There is no consensus on what rules apply to these relationships. We don’t even know what to call them. Divorced families may be labeled “broken” families, even when they actually work very well. Until recently children born to unwed parents were called illegitimate—and treated as such in law and social life. The relationship between a cohabiting couple, whether heterosexual or same sex, is unacknowledged by law and may be ignored by the friends and relatives of each partner. Marriage, in contrast, gives people a positive vocabulary and public image that set a high standard for the couple’s behavior and for the respect that outsiders ought to give to their relationship.
If we withdrew our social acceptance of alternatives to marriage, marriage itself might suffer. 2 The very things that make marriage so potentially satisfying are for the most part inseparable from the things that make unsatisfying marriages less bearable. The same personal freedoms that allow people to expect more from their married lives also allow them to get more out of staying single and give them more choice than ever before in history about whether or not to remain together.
There are those who believe that because married people are, on average, better off than divorced or single people, society should promote lifelong marriage for everyone and lead a campaign against divorce and cohabitation. But using averages to give personal advice to individuals or to construct social policy for all is not wise. On average, marriage has substantial benefits for both husbands and wives. That’s because most marriages are pretty happy. But individuals in unhappy marriages are more psychologically distressed than people who stay single, and many of marriage’s health benefits fade if the marriage is troubled. A three-year study of married couples in which one partner had mild hypertension found that in happy marriages, the blood pressure of the at-risk partner dropped when couples spent even a couple of extra minutes together. But for those who were unhappily married, a few extra minutes of time together raised the blood pressure of the at-risk spouse. Having an argumentative or highly critical spouse can seriously damage a person’s health, raising blood pressure, lowering immune functions, and even worsening the symptoms of chronic illnesses like arthritis. 3
Women are at particular risk in a bad marriage. A man in a bad marriage still gets some health benefits compared with single men, because even a miserable wife tends to feed her husband more vegetables, schedule his medical checkups, and shoulder much of the housework and the emotional work that make life function smoothly. But there are no such compensations for an unhappily married woman. Unhappy wives have higher rates of depression and alcohol abuse than single women. A bad marriage raises a woman’s cholesterol readings and decreases her immune functioning. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that unhappily married women in their forties were more than twice as likely to have medical symptoms that put them at risk for heart attacks and strokes as happily married or never-married females. A long-term study of patients in Oregon even found that unequal decision-making power in marriage was associated with a higher risk of death for women. 4
Promoting good marriages is a worthwhile goal, and we can help many marriages work better than they currently do. I argued in the last chapter that in
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