By Vicki Larson
In November
1891, the British sexologist Havelock Ellis married the writer and
lesbian Edith Lees. He was 32 and a virgin. And since he was impotent,
they never consummated their union. After their honeymoon, the two lived
separately in what he called an open marriage. The union lasted until
Lees’ death in 1916.
This is not what most would consider a model marriage. But
perhaps because of its unusualness, Ellis was able to introduce an idea
that remains as radical and tantalizing today as it was in his time:
trial marriages, in which he envisioned couples exploring a temporary
union of varying levels of commitment that allowed them to have sex,
access birth control and have an easy divorce if desired, as long as no
children were involved. The idea captured the minds of many
progressives, including the British philosopher Bertrand Russell and the
Denver judge and social reformer Ben B Lindsey, who embraced the new
economic and cultural freedoms in the post-Victorian era.
While Ellis gave this type of temporary marriage a name,
others had been talking about similar unions years before, including the
German poet Johann von Goethe, who entertained the idea in his
Elective Affinities (1809), and the American paleontologist E D Cope, who wrote in his book
The Marriage Problem
(1888) that marriages should start with a five-year contract that
either spouse could end or renew with a further 10- or 15-year contract
and, if all still went well after that, a permanent contract.
In 1966, the American anthropologist Margaret Mead suggested
a two-step version of marriage – an ‘individual commitment’ that would
fit college students of limited means and could be easily dissolved or
else converted into a ‘parental commitment’ if they were ready and
willing to take on the obligations of children. In 1971, the Maryland
legislator Lena King Lee proposed a Marriage-Contractual Renewal Bill so
couples could annul or renew their marriage every three years. In 2007,
a German legislator proposed a seven-year contract; in 2010, a women’s
group in the Philippines proposed a 10-year marital contract; and in
2011, Mexico City legislators suggested a reform to the civil code that
would allow couples to decide on the length of their marital commitment,
with a minimum of two years.
Clearly, lifelong marriage was due an overhaul. Despite all
the talk, however, no laws were ever passed, and the idea of renewable
marriages remained just that – an idea. But temporary marriages have
actually been successfully practiced for centuries, among Peruvian
Indians in the Andes, in 15th-century Indonesia, in ancient Japan and
the Islamic world, and elsewhere. And it appears that we might be ready
to put them into practice again.
In a recent survey, many Millennials indicated that they’d
be open to a ‘beta marriage’, in which couples would commit to each
other for a certain number of years – two years seemed to be the ‘right’
amount – after which they could renew, renegotiate or split, as Jessica
Bennett wrote in
Time magazine last year. While it wasn’t a
scientific survey, it points to a willingness to see marriage as
something other than ‘until death’, which, in fact, it is not. In 2013,
40 per cent of newlyweds had been married at least once before,
according to the US think tank the Pew Research Center. Since 10 per
cent of first marriages don’t even make it past five years, a renewable
marriage contract makes more sense than ever.
Our current contract – ‘until death’ – might have worked
when people didn’t live all that long (according to the American
sociologist and author Stephanie Coontz, the average marriage in
colonial times lasted under 12 years); or when many women died in
childbirth, freeing men to marry multiple times (which they did); and
when men of means needed women to cook, clean and caretake, and women
needed men for financial security. But that isn’t why we marry nowadays.
Still, we congratulate couples on their anniversaries and get nostalgic
as the years add up – 15, 25, 50, 75. Are they years of wedded bliss?
Not always; many long-term marriages are loveless and sexless, and
sometimes full of anger and resentments. But if they make it until a
spouse dies – success!
Longevity alone shouldn’t be the marker of a happy, healthy
marriage. Rather than staying in marriages ‘until death’, renewable
marriages would allow partners to tweak their marital contract
accordingly, or agree that it’s beyond tweaking and end it without the
shock or drama of a contentious divorce or lingering doubts about what
went wrong. And as the late Nobel-winning economist Gary S Becker noted,
if every couple had to personalize their marital contract based on what
they consider important, there would be no more societal stigma or
judgment over what are essentially private decisions.
If society is truly concerned about the decline in marriage,
perhaps it’s time to rethink ‘until death’. And if brides- and
grooms-to-be truly want a happy marriage, then it is time for them to
take responsibility for defining their goals and expectations in a
renewable contract, and stating – out loud or on paper – ‘I choose you
again’ as often as they mean it.
In November
1891, the British sexologist Havelock Ellis married the writer and
lesbian Edith Lees. He was 32 and a virgin. And since he was impotent,
they never consummated their union. After their honeymoon, the two lived
separately in what he called an open marriage. The union lasted until
Lees’ death in 1916.As the game moved across the globe, different patterns and rules became popular in different regions. “The Chinese version of chess is called xiangqi and there is sittuyin in Burma,” Crumiller says. “In Thailand and in Cambodia, there’s makruk. You can use those sets to play a game of chess, but those games are played with different rules.”
Loneliness is bad for your health, that much we know.
