I've been married to my wife for nearly a year now, but prior to that we'd been dating for 12 years, since we were both 15. Prior to getting married, we both felt as if it was a fait accompli, like a checkbox, a formality, and although we were excited to get married and have a wedding and all of these things, there was also a sense in which we both felt like, "this is not the hard part, we already did the hard part." But, and I can only attempt to articulate this, being married really did change something. I think it went like this.
Prior to getting married, our relationship was not a distinct thing, it was just the name of a connection between two people. That thing was just made up of my feelings for them, and them for me, and yes they were very romantic feelings and yes they were often in deep and breathtaking alignment, but it felt like an exchange of information, a back and forth, a conversation. I said and did things, and she received them, and she said and did things, and I received them, and she lived in me, and I lived in her. But after we were married the space through which we were connecting became its own thing. Now we had a marriage. Now we sent things to each other, still, but they left a mark in this marriage, in a place we now both were seeing, and slowly from these brushstrokes of faint emotion a picture developed, and could be observed, critiqued, discussed.
I think it's normal for people in romantic relationships to discuss their relationships, and less normal for friends to do so. But to me the biggest difference in married life has been the salience, the thingness, of the marriage itself. It is perhaps not legible to the rest of the world the way it is to us, but I think it is accessible at least in a way that our relationship wasn't.
I think historically marriage was viewed as more of a practical matter and women married those who they thought would give them a better life for themselves and any potential children. Remnants from this line of thinking still exist to this day - which is why women usually prioritize the earning potential of their partner more than men do. As women enter the workforce though (more women get college degrees now than men!), this dynamic is gradually shifting and possibly why we see women prioritizing other attributes in men (e.g. emotional availability, humor, intelligence, etc.).
Perhaps the better question is not necessarily marriage itself, but why do we want to fall in love at all? Maybe it could be evolutionary and we're hardwired to want children. Maybe it's mimetic and everything we see - in media, in history, in the people around us - contain examples of people falling in love and we want that for ourselves. Maybe it's a fear of loneliness and the idea of dying alone terrifies us. Maybe we just want to feel wanted and there's nothing more intoxicating than the one you want most wanting you back.
Interesting question. I've once heard the theory that romantic love is a by-product of parental love. Not in a Sigmund Freud way but rather that instead of possessing the ability to specifically love your children, you have the more general ability of loving very deeply, the love you received as a child felt really good so you want to experience that again and as a coincidence romantic love appears.
Which would explain why many people want romantic love to be unconditional too, fall in love with people similar to their parents or expect their partner to fulfil every need and read their mind.
Food for thought: the concept that your spouse is your best friend is very modern (Boomer and after).
Before that husband and wife were roles. Important ones. Special ones. But not friends. There is a need to friends that a spouse cannot fill and vice versa. Unfortunately, in the last 70 years or so this concept that your spouse is your everything has crept into Western culture.
That puts an extremely unreasonable amount of expectations on another person that is impossible to meet.
Ideally you love your spouse and you like your spouse (yes, those are two different things), but they are not your friend.
a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.
If you want to use the dictionary definition.
But we have always as humans separated the two as they serve different functions. No woman on this planet can do what my boys do. Full stop.
Women use to have social circles to fill different needs than of a spouse as well.
Humans have always separated the two up until recently. They serve different functions.
To be honest, I question if you asked this question sincerely or as a person who has made their spouse their everything and needs to project outward because what I said makes you feel uncomfortable.
well, I don't have a spouse, so there. And I wouldn't consider making someone my spouse who wasn't my friend. On the other hand, I don't need a spouse to provide economic sustenance for me; I've done that for myself, quite comfortably for decades, thank you very much. Were I ever to take on a spouse, I'd have to have a use for one, and friendship + sex are the only uses I can think of. Never had an interest in kids or family. Time have changed. Time for new ways to look at all forms of relationships.
“I prefer you above all others, and I want you to prefer me above all others?” The thing is, that’s a snapshot in time. As life continues, you meet more and more of those “others”. Not to mention one’s preferences change (which I think is the bigger issue). As each year goes by, can you with honesty still say that you prefer the other and vice versa to these new “others”? Eventually that becomes less and less likely.
Romantic love is trying to make permanent something that is inherently impermanent. I would argue that the people entering into Platonic Partnership are inadvertently attempting the same thing, by going into a fixed state with the expectation that it will allow them to somehow avoid the pain they associate with romantic partnership. If the answer to What is Partnership For is safety, it will ultimately fail. No love is safe, whether because we all die, or because safety is not typically a condition of change, and everything changes. Hopefully, we grow.
“And I actually don’t think that contract is so different in nature from the romantic contract” is flawed in my opinion. The “romantic” expectation that you can lay claim to another, that this person will place you above all others in every context, is not friendship. The difference, as you mention, is obligation, and expectation thereof.
Obviously it’s possible that married people can be friends. Obviously many of us have meaningful marriages. In my experience, in a marriage of 10 years, answering What Partnership is For was not possible without the process of being in it, of collaborating within it.
I mentioned Carrie Jenkins’ Sad Love in another comment; it’s worth stating that what doesn’t work for many of us is our cultural stories and expectations surrounding Romantic Love. If we are able to see partnership as collaborative in our projects of meaning-making and not as fixed solutions, obligations or ownership, we allow each other to be fully human, to grow and change over time.
Yes, collaboration is not just the cornerstone of partnership, but the purpose. I think we’re overthinking it here. What is partnership for? For joint endeavors, of course!
The freedom to craft that on our own terms, with our partners, has always been there for business and creative partnerships, and to a certain extent, platonic friendships. Strip away the social strictures of past generations and it’s there for our romantic and sexual relationships, too. We get to/have to be more deliberate than our grandparents were in communicating our desires to our partners.
One issue (for me) with the “what I want from a romantic partnership is someone who’ll let me passionately lick negligently spilled olive oil off them for the rest of our lives” is that last bit. It orients the partnership in a goal-focused way that doesn’t allow success to be defined until you’re looking back on the whole thing from the edge of your grave. What I want from a romantic partnership is someone who’ll let me passionately lick negligently spilled olive oil off of them *today*. (Yes, among other intentions that require more time to see through).
It’s as if Bill Gates and Paul Allen had said “let’s become partners for the purpose of being rich and famous philanthropists in our later years.” They didn’t; they said “let’s do this computer thing together and see where it goes.” The rest just happened along the way.
“It orients the partnership in a goal-focused way that doesn’t allow success to be defined until you’re looking back on the whole thing from the edge of your grave.” Agree; and also, if you happen to want something else before the rest of your lives arrive, it makes every relationship a failure.
Personally it’s been interesting to learn that it was never possible to predict what I would want in, say, 10 or 20 years, and yet we claim to know certain things we’ll want “forever.” It seems a lot more ridiculous at 40 than it did at 20 or 30!
I love the idea of lovers and partners as collaborators. It has brought more meaning to my life than that expected from following the prescribed trajectory.
Perhaps people would benefit from looking at relationships from the lens you’re talking about; at the very least our objectives might be clearer going in!
“The word my therapist frequently uses when talking about love is awe” 😭 this was so beautiful and confronting and i’m going to think about it for a while
Marriage is like two black holes merging into one and forming a shared event horizon after crossing into each other's point of no return, but not as sexy.
I wish I read the comments earlier, right after I'd read the piece. What a beautiful comment section you have, Ava! Alas, just wanted to come here and thank you for posting this and for sharing that very thought provoking piece on Agnes ... something sparked in me after reading this, and the NYT piece after, all of it leading me to such an introspective and creative place that I haven't been in in forever. 💖🙏🏻
I’ve been in three serious relationships one of them being an actual lawful marriage so I certainly have no answers. Love the article, very thought provoking and great discussion. 🩵
this is something ive been lowkey thinking about this for a couple of months its always nice to see my thoughts articulated in such a manner i never could
I think I know that I don't personally want anything to do with marriage, so I dare say I wasn't strictly in the target group for this one but BOY was I engaged! As a polyamorous queer freak it's also refreshing to burst the bubble every now and then! And you do it so eloquently and strongly and earnestly.
i think this is the best piece you have written so far !! loved reading it and thinking of it and placing the theoretical framework onto my monogamous relationship (it fits rly well btw :p) more of this ❤️
I love these thoughts and also thank you for sharing those pieces! Just read the Rachel Aviv piece about Agnes Callard. I find it very funny/fitting that the three philosophers have that untraditional living situation since they're able to really question our basic assumptions and institutions around what a marriage should be.
It does feel like marriage is based on a really outdated custom but it still seems like we cling on to it as a society. For me personally I see it as a practical thing, it's something that makes your relationship "legitimate" to the government. But I think it would be really nice to see it more romantically. (I guess I'm not sure when we as a society started seeing it romantically? It seems like it's always been a practical/political thing in the past.)
Probably around the time of Jane Austen. I believe that's one of the reasons why her works were so popular / revolutionary - the concept that marriage should be motivated by romantic love rather than practical considerations.
Beautifully written! I feel all of this deep in my heart. What a magnificent adventure ahead for us romantics! I'll absolutely be using the Passion Test and Olive Oil Test in future endeavors :)
I've been married to my wife for nearly a year now, but prior to that we'd been dating for 12 years, since we were both 15. Prior to getting married, we both felt as if it was a fait accompli, like a checkbox, a formality, and although we were excited to get married and have a wedding and all of these things, there was also a sense in which we both felt like, "this is not the hard part, we already did the hard part." But, and I can only attempt to articulate this, being married really did change something. I think it went like this.
Prior to getting married, our relationship was not a distinct thing, it was just the name of a connection between two people. That thing was just made up of my feelings for them, and them for me, and yes they were very romantic feelings and yes they were often in deep and breathtaking alignment, but it felt like an exchange of information, a back and forth, a conversation. I said and did things, and she received them, and she said and did things, and I received them, and she lived in me, and I lived in her. But after we were married the space through which we were connecting became its own thing. Now we had a marriage. Now we sent things to each other, still, but they left a mark in this marriage, in a place we now both were seeing, and slowly from these brushstrokes of faint emotion a picture developed, and could be observed, critiqued, discussed.
I think it's normal for people in romantic relationships to discuss their relationships, and less normal for friends to do so. But to me the biggest difference in married life has been the salience, the thingness, of the marriage itself. It is perhaps not legible to the rest of the world the way it is to us, but I think it is accessible at least in a way that our relationship wasn't.
I think historically marriage was viewed as more of a practical matter and women married those who they thought would give them a better life for themselves and any potential children. Remnants from this line of thinking still exist to this day - which is why women usually prioritize the earning potential of their partner more than men do. As women enter the workforce though (more women get college degrees now than men!), this dynamic is gradually shifting and possibly why we see women prioritizing other attributes in men (e.g. emotional availability, humor, intelligence, etc.).
Perhaps the better question is not necessarily marriage itself, but why do we want to fall in love at all? Maybe it could be evolutionary and we're hardwired to want children. Maybe it's mimetic and everything we see - in media, in history, in the people around us - contain examples of people falling in love and we want that for ourselves. Maybe it's a fear of loneliness and the idea of dying alone terrifies us. Maybe we just want to feel wanted and there's nothing more intoxicating than the one you want most wanting you back.
Interesting question. I've once heard the theory that romantic love is a by-product of parental love. Not in a Sigmund Freud way but rather that instead of possessing the ability to specifically love your children, you have the more general ability of loving very deeply, the love you received as a child felt really good so you want to experience that again and as a coincidence romantic love appears.
Which would explain why many people want romantic love to be unconditional too, fall in love with people similar to their parents or expect their partner to fulfil every need and read their mind.
Food for thought: the concept that your spouse is your best friend is very modern (Boomer and after).
Before that husband and wife were roles. Important ones. Special ones. But not friends. There is a need to friends that a spouse cannot fill and vice versa. Unfortunately, in the last 70 years or so this concept that your spouse is your everything has crept into Western culture.
That puts an extremely unreasonable amount of expectations on another person that is impossible to meet.
Ideally you love your spouse and you like your spouse (yes, those are two different things), but they are not your friend.
Define “friend” please.
a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.
If you want to use the dictionary definition.
But we have always as humans separated the two as they serve different functions. No woman on this planet can do what my boys do. Full stop.
Women use to have social circles to fill different needs than of a spouse as well.
Humans have always separated the two up until recently. They serve different functions.
To be honest, I question if you asked this question sincerely or as a person who has made their spouse their everything and needs to project outward because what I said makes you feel uncomfortable.
well, I don't have a spouse, so there. And I wouldn't consider making someone my spouse who wasn't my friend. On the other hand, I don't need a spouse to provide economic sustenance for me; I've done that for myself, quite comfortably for decades, thank you very much. Were I ever to take on a spouse, I'd have to have a use for one, and friendship + sex are the only uses I can think of. Never had an interest in kids or family. Time have changed. Time for new ways to look at all forms of relationships.
“I prefer you above all others, and I want you to prefer me above all others?” The thing is, that’s a snapshot in time. As life continues, you meet more and more of those “others”. Not to mention one’s preferences change (which I think is the bigger issue). As each year goes by, can you with honesty still say that you prefer the other and vice versa to these new “others”? Eventually that becomes less and less likely.
Romantic love is trying to make permanent something that is inherently impermanent. I would argue that the people entering into Platonic Partnership are inadvertently attempting the same thing, by going into a fixed state with the expectation that it will allow them to somehow avoid the pain they associate with romantic partnership. If the answer to What is Partnership For is safety, it will ultimately fail. No love is safe, whether because we all die, or because safety is not typically a condition of change, and everything changes. Hopefully, we grow.
“And I actually don’t think that contract is so different in nature from the romantic contract” is flawed in my opinion. The “romantic” expectation that you can lay claim to another, that this person will place you above all others in every context, is not friendship. The difference, as you mention, is obligation, and expectation thereof.
Obviously it’s possible that married people can be friends. Obviously many of us have meaningful marriages. In my experience, in a marriage of 10 years, answering What Partnership is For was not possible without the process of being in it, of collaborating within it.
I mentioned Carrie Jenkins’ Sad Love in another comment; it’s worth stating that what doesn’t work for many of us is our cultural stories and expectations surrounding Romantic Love. If we are able to see partnership as collaborative in our projects of meaning-making and not as fixed solutions, obligations or ownership, we allow each other to be fully human, to grow and change over time.
Yes, collaboration is not just the cornerstone of partnership, but the purpose. I think we’re overthinking it here. What is partnership for? For joint endeavors, of course!
The freedom to craft that on our own terms, with our partners, has always been there for business and creative partnerships, and to a certain extent, platonic friendships. Strip away the social strictures of past generations and it’s there for our romantic and sexual relationships, too. We get to/have to be more deliberate than our grandparents were in communicating our desires to our partners.
One issue (for me) with the “what I want from a romantic partnership is someone who’ll let me passionately lick negligently spilled olive oil off them for the rest of our lives” is that last bit. It orients the partnership in a goal-focused way that doesn’t allow success to be defined until you’re looking back on the whole thing from the edge of your grave. What I want from a romantic partnership is someone who’ll let me passionately lick negligently spilled olive oil off of them *today*. (Yes, among other intentions that require more time to see through).
It’s as if Bill Gates and Paul Allen had said “let’s become partners for the purpose of being rich and famous philanthropists in our later years.” They didn’t; they said “let’s do this computer thing together and see where it goes.” The rest just happened along the way.
“It orients the partnership in a goal-focused way that doesn’t allow success to be defined until you’re looking back on the whole thing from the edge of your grave.” Agree; and also, if you happen to want something else before the rest of your lives arrive, it makes every relationship a failure.
Personally it’s been interesting to learn that it was never possible to predict what I would want in, say, 10 or 20 years, and yet we claim to know certain things we’ll want “forever.” It seems a lot more ridiculous at 40 than it did at 20 or 30!
I love the idea of lovers and partners as collaborators. It has brought more meaning to my life than that expected from following the prescribed trajectory.
Perhaps people would benefit from looking at relationships from the lens you’re talking about; at the very least our objectives might be clearer going in!
“The word my therapist frequently uses when talking about love is awe” 😭 this was so beautiful and confronting and i’m going to think about it for a while
Marriage is like two black holes merging into one and forming a shared event horizon after crossing into each other's point of no return, but not as sexy.
I wish I read the comments earlier, right after I'd read the piece. What a beautiful comment section you have, Ava! Alas, just wanted to come here and thank you for posting this and for sharing that very thought provoking piece on Agnes ... something sparked in me after reading this, and the NYT piece after, all of it leading me to such an introspective and creative place that I haven't been in in forever. 💖🙏🏻
asking similar questions myself. love the tweets.
This is actually the best thing I’ve ever read in my life
I’ve been in three serious relationships one of them being an actual lawful marriage so I certainly have no answers. Love the article, very thought provoking and great discussion. 🩵
this is something ive been lowkey thinking about this for a couple of months its always nice to see my thoughts articulated in such a manner i never could
I think I know that I don't personally want anything to do with marriage, so I dare say I wasn't strictly in the target group for this one but BOY was I engaged! As a polyamorous queer freak it's also refreshing to burst the bubble every now and then! And you do it so eloquently and strongly and earnestly.
i think this is the best piece you have written so far !! loved reading it and thinking of it and placing the theoretical framework onto my monogamous relationship (it fits rly well btw :p) more of this ❤️
I love these thoughts and also thank you for sharing those pieces! Just read the Rachel Aviv piece about Agnes Callard. I find it very funny/fitting that the three philosophers have that untraditional living situation since they're able to really question our basic assumptions and institutions around what a marriage should be.
It does feel like marriage is based on a really outdated custom but it still seems like we cling on to it as a society. For me personally I see it as a practical thing, it's something that makes your relationship "legitimate" to the government. But I think it would be really nice to see it more romantically. (I guess I'm not sure when we as a society started seeing it romantically? It seems like it's always been a practical/political thing in the past.)
Probably around the time of Jane Austen. I believe that's one of the reasons why her works were so popular / revolutionary - the concept that marriage should be motivated by romantic love rather than practical considerations.
If you haven’t already, read Sad Love by Carrie Jenkins.
Beautifully written! I feel all of this deep in my heart. What a magnificent adventure ahead for us romantics! I'll absolutely be using the Passion Test and Olive Oil Test in future endeavors :)