Marriage: Why Bother?

Companionate Marriage

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Marriage, as I have described it, is a recent invention. My previous post characterizes marriage as a relationship of loving care whose partners feel mutual affection rooted in sexual intimacy and pursue a lifelong commitment to each other’s wellbeing: they are loving partners for life. I also said that marriage is distinct from both friendship and family, the two social institutions it’s most closely tied to, and that being married in this sense is not the same as being legally married.

What I have described can be called companionate marriage: a bond in which the partners have equality and mutual consent and where companionship, rather than procreation or economic security, is the primary focus, regardless of whether the partners have children or jobs. Today I want to explore some challenges and debates around this recent invention.

Historical Irony

“Invention,” of course, is not the right word. As a social institution, modern companionate marriage gradually emerged from other historical forms of marriage. In the West, this process took about 200 years, from the late eighteenth century until shortly after World War Two. Before that, sexual intimacy, mutual affection, and lifelong commitment were not defining features of marriage. Rather, procreation, economic subordination, and strictly gendered roles were, in what we can loosely call patriarchal forms of marriage. Obviously, patriarchal marriages involved sexual relations and shared feelings, and they could last a lifetime. But intimacy, mutuality, and commitment were not definitive.

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Moreover, only in the past eight decades—during my own lifetime—has companionate marriage actually replaced patriarchal marriage as the preferred model for lifelong intimate relationships in the West. Ironically, the tendency to democratize marriage that set in with industrialization and the Enlightenment has come to fruition only in what some would describe as a postindustrial and post-Enlightenment (i.e., postmodern) society.

This irony gives rise to many of the questions the institution of marriage now faces. Let me mention three. First, why should people bother with marriage? If we can experience sexual intimacy and mutual affection with friends and other companions, why should we make a lifelong commitment to the wellbeing of a marriage partner and tie our intimacy and affection to that? Second, even if there’s a convincing case for being married, what’s the point of being legally married? Wouldn’t it be simpler and more honest to live together without legally tying the knot? Third, what about same-sex marriages? Are they worth the effort that partners put into them? Should they be legally recognized? And, when possible, should same-sex couples become legally married? I’ll take up the first of these questions here and save the others for a later post.

Why Bother?

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Clearly the “why bother” question is an existential matter and not simply a topic for dispassionate thought. To get married or to stay married is a weighty decision. In addressing this question philosophically, I do not wish to discount its urgency or tell others how they should live. Yet there is a point to stepping back and reflecting in a more general way. It can give us a better sense of why we decide to live as we do.

Why, then, should people bother with marriage? Why not simply find intimacy and affection in other ways? Here it helps to recall some social-philosophical background. As Elizabeth Brake’s article “Marriage and Domestic Partnership” shows, Western philosophies of marriage since the eighteenth century have divided into two camps: contractual views and institutional views. Contractualists (e.g., John Stuart Mill) think the obligations that marriage partners owe each other arise from the voluntary promises they make. By contrast, institutionalists (e.g., G. W. F. Hegel) think such obligations stem from the social purpose(s) the institution of marriage serves.

Unfortunately, neither approach adequately answers the question, Why bother with companionate marriage? The contractualist simply leaves it up to the individuals involved. If they decide there are better ways to find intimacy and affection than to stick it out together, then they should either not make a lifelong commitment in the first place or renegotiate their promises (e.g., file for divorce or decide to have an open marriage). In effect, there is no general answer to the “why bother” question. It’s up to each contracting individual to decide.

Such a laisse-faire attitude shocks people who think marriage involves a sacred union for the sake of raising a family or protecting sexual love. But their discomfort assumes an institutionalist view that also comes up short. For a legitimate companionate marriage need not serve the purpose of procreation or family, and it’s hard to find a convincing argument for the claim that monogamy—and only monogamy—upholds sexual love. If companionate marriage doesn’t necessarily serve the purposes for which the social institution of marriage is supposedly designed, then why bother with it?

Community of Memory

Nevertheless, there is a new institutionalist way to say why people should bother with companionate marriage. I take the cue for this from the work of German social philosopher Axel Honneth, a student of Jürgen Habermas and a leading figure in contemporary Critical Theory. In his book Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life, Honneth says three kinds of “personal relationships”—friendships, intimate relationships, and families—make up a “sphere of social freedom” in which individuals can realize themselves in reciprocal relations with others. Specific “role obligations” distinguish one kind from the others.

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In the case of intimate relationships, each partner “expects to be loved for the qualities that he or she regards as central to his or her identity.” Because such qualities change over time, these relationships are unavoidably future-oriented. In an intimate relationship, we can and do assume our partner will value us not only for who we are right now but also for who we will become. And this expectation governs the ongoing but changing “mutual desire for sexual intimacy and the comprehensive pleasure in the other’s physicality” that helps distinguish intimate relationships from friendships.

In Honneth’s striking formulation, intimate relationships are “a pact to form a community of memory [Erinnerungsgemeinschaft] in which looking back on a commonly shared history should be so encouraging and motivating as to last longer than the changes in both partners’ personalities” (pp. 146-47). This helps explain why even those of us in companionate marriages who are not legally married feel inclined to celebrate “wedding” anniversaries, perhaps under a different label.

Trust and Recognition

Although Honneth reserves the term “marriage” for legally sanctioned partnerships—a subset of “intimate relationships’’—what he says about intimate relationships applies directly to what I call companionate marriage, whether legally recognized or not. Companionate marriage is important and worthwhile because it is the one social institution in Western society where we can embrace each other unreservedly, reciprocally, and in full-bodied abandon, with all our warts and worries, for who we truly are, holding on into a shared future “till death do us part.”

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Most of us need this sort of future-oriented trust and intimate recognition in order to flourish. And in a society that puts a premium on an individual’s apparent glamour, success, and reputation, this need has only deepened—even as the same pressures make it ever more difficult for people to form loving partnerships for life.

So why should people bother with companionate marriage? I can give two reasons. First, it helps us meet a deep need for mutual recognition and trust. And second, it helps us resist societal pressures, many of them technological and economic, that would turn each of us into an anonymous apparition.

To lovingly know someone even as you are known is a precious responsibility and gift. Receive it; share it; and celebrate it with others.