The good relationship these days is central to our idea of happiness. We tell researchers that, apart from staying free of serious illness, the quality of our relationships is our biggest single source of happiness. Marriage is one of the most important guarantors of that happiness. Research findings show that on average, married people have better health, longer life, more and better sex, greater wealth and better outcomes for their children. Married people engage in less risky behaviour (they smoke less, drink less, have less unsafe sex); while marital breakdown actually induces unhealthy lifestyles for some. The married have more money; economies of scale mean that two can live as cheaply as one or at least less expensively than two. Being better off adds to their health advantage, too. With marriage comes a network of help and assistance, companionship, mutual support, emotionally satisfying “on-site sex”, a connection to other individuals, social groups and institutions.
Does the good relationship have to be rooted in marriage? Although few studies have compared married and cohabiting couples, several writers have pointed to an essential difference between marriage and cohabitation – cohabitation is a declaration of an existing state of affairs with no implications for future conduct, whereas marriage presumes permanence. That presumption encourages partners to plan for the future; it provides a framework for developing responsibilities and a sense of purpose. The expectation of a long-term, if not life-long, relationship encourages investment – the building of assets, both emotional and economic.
Marriage, then, contributes to a good life. Then why do fewer people enter into it and why are ever more people trying to get out of it?
The common wisdom is that declining marriage rates and rising divorce rates are a legacy of the liberalisation of attitudes that emerged in the “swinging sixties”, when individualism emphasised self-development, a concern with achieving individual goals and equal opportunity. The social role of marriage changed. It used to play a central part in the sequence of growing up and reaching independence, as the launch-pad for adulthood: the marriage contract consisted of an exclusive package of rights that gave status and meaning to a person’s life. Marriage no longer has the monopoly in providing this rite of passage. Staying single, cohabiting either with a view to marriage or as a non-committed sexual relationship, same-sex relationships – all have become accepted alternatives.
With greater acceptance of diversity in the forms of our relationships, we have also revised our view of what constitutes the good relationship. This revision is commonly described as a shift from institution to relationship. Marriage as an institution – a legal contract based on social and economic considerations – has, according to this analysis, given way to marriage as a relationship – an emotional bond founded on intimacy, companionship, sharing and communication.
The modern relationship model retains some important features of the institutional model. But according to the relationship model, the essential purpose of marriage has shifted from a social purpose to a personal one: the self-fulfilment of the two individuals. In the 1990s young men and women embarking on marriage have higher expectations than their parents’ generation that marriage will meet their needs for companionship, personality development and emotional security. They (at least women) seek the skills to fulfil these expectations – they buy huge quantities of books to tell them how to communicate better, how to have great sex, how to manage conflict creatively. Books, videos, therapists, learning courses : an industry is being built on achieving the good – the perfect – relationship.
The very use of the term relationship indicates that the tie between the partners is freely chosen and, consequently, freely abandoned when it no longer achieves its purpose. If the point of staying together is to be happy, then why stay when you are not? And why bother to learn how to communicate better or have better sex unless you actually want the relationship to continue? The basic commitment is essential yet it has been overlooked in the scramble for the continuously fulfilling relationship. So the central question about relationships and the good life is not “how do we become better at relating?” It is: “how do we become better at being committed?”
Commitment is not just about making a promise when a relationship is good, it is about keeping that promise when the relationship is not so good. In a longitudinal study of marriage, couples were interviewed just after the wedding and again five years later. These interviews provide insights into the art of staying together. There appear to be two interdependent elements of the marriages: the relationship and the partnership.
The partnership is the joint project of the partners, the purpose of staying together. It anchors their relationship and in turn, their relationship sustains their partnership. So, at times when their relationship doesn’t feel good, the partnership is crucial since it articulates future commitment. And at times of change, when the partners become parents for example, having a good relationship will help the partners to work out how to revise their partnership to accommodate changing circumstances.
Today, many couples no longer accept that their partnership is defined by traditional marriage. The partners now define their partnerships, marriage no longer defines the couple. And partnerships come in different forms (determined by the particular purpose). Legal marriage is not essential to the creation of such a partnership, but recognition of the partnership by others, particularly those people who matter to the partners, will be significant in helping the couple to reinforce their commitment to each other. To this extent the partnership is social, while the relationship is private.
The benefits of the good relationship require time; commitment – the sense of being committed and being the focus of another’s commitment – buys that time. By stressing the good relationship we obscure the need for frameworks which relationships need to develop and grow. The desire to be free from constraints has made us forget the paradoxical nature of human relationships: that we may find freedom through choosing to limit our choices.
Like semi-hardy plants, relationships are delicate. Traditionally trained up a stake called marriage, by and large, they grew into the same shape. Then came the cry from the romantics: “Throw away the stake! Let the relationship grow and blossom as it will without being tied back.” But if love is to be enduring it must be responsible love; not a duty, but a mutual obligation. A framework for developing that mutuality is essential.
Not everyone wants the traditional structure of marriage but we do need some structure for our relationships to hold on to if they are to develop. Instead of a single stake, what is needed is something more like trellis-work, a structure that offers different patterns for different relationships to discover their own routes towards goals they have chosen. Governments want people (especially children) to have all the benefits of marriage but know they cannot force adults into its traditional structure.
The state’s role is therefore to enable men and women to define and validate new patterns of partnership. Call them marriages or not, these new forms of partnership need to be recognised and supported by appropriate policy and legislation.
Penny Mansfield is director of One Plus One. This article appears in “The Good Life”, published by Demos, £9.95
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