Cosmopolitan
April 2004

Has Marriage Become a Joke?
By Kyle Spencer

Nowadays, some young couples walking down the aisle seem to be vowing only "Until boredom do us part."

Jason Alexander, Britney Spears' husband for just 55 hours, offered the following explanation of how he and the jeans-clad pop princess decided to become man and wife last New Year's: "We were looking at each other and said ‘Let's do something wild and crazy. Let's go get married for the hell of it."

If it seems as if getting hitched has become the latest source of entertainment, that's because, well, it has. Immensely popular reality-TV shows such as The Bachelorette may be fun to watch, but they're giving the impression that you can pick the guy you want to spend the rest of your life with from a random pool of people chosen by Hollywood producers. (Even though, with the exception of Trista and Ryan, every reality show union has gone bust). "On TV, marriage has become a stunt or a lark, something to do for fun," says Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, PhD, author of The Divorce Culture.

Or is it that these television shows are merely reflecting the degeneration of marriage in the larger culture? A study released in 2003 by The National Marriage Project reports that one-third fewer Americans are getting married today than they were in 1970, and fewer of those who do marry report being "very happy." Courtney Knowles of the Equality in Marriage Institute in New York City has a theory for the growing dissatisfaction with wedlock. "Our society is very different from when this institution was first born, so there really isn't a template for modern marriage," says Knowles. Lacking good guidelines, couples exchange their vows with the best of intentions but still have unrealistic expectations. Knowles goes on to say, "People tend to romanticize marriage and don't realize how much work is required to sustain it."

When the fantasy of marriage is inevitably shattered, they turn to divorce. "Rather than asking ‘How are we going to work this out?' they say ‘Maybe we can't work this out,'" says Whitehead. "They take the short view." Witness the rising concept of starter marriage, a short-lived union to be quickly outgrown. "Unfortunately, we're not born knowing how to be good partners," notes therapist Michele Weiner-Davis, author of The Divorce Remedy.

This may be what recently spurred President Bush to propose a 1.5 billion public education campaign that would sponsor pro-marriage advertising and mentoring programs, which sounds as unsexy as having to attend a driver's ed class. Is this really going to do the trick and keep couples together? Who knows. But the lesson in all this is to look at long-lasting partnerships within a more realistic framework. "Marriage is an ongoing journey of communication and compromise that can, eventually, lead to a happy ending," says Knowles. Just don't expect to find a TV time slot to fit all that into.