State of the unions
Our week-long series looking at modern marriage kicks off on
Minutes after we boogied up the aisle as man and wife last fall, our friends and family beaming like the late September sun that washed over our lakeside altar, my new husband and I quickly stole away from the action.
Standing in our rented cabin, we looked at each other, high-fived — maybe our rings clanked, I can’t remember — and took the moment in. Not only had we pulled off an event that took months to plan, but we’d made the biggest decision of our lives — to legally legitimize our team that had been a few years in the making, to promise to keep building on that and to do the hard work that will make us strong. “Don’t blink” was the most common (and the best) advice we received about our wedding day — to be present and appreciative of what had just taken place and what it meant. The “take five” was actually scheduled into our day.
We did that, I think, because we wanted to acknowledge that we had made a carefully considered choice, something that the act of marriage has evolved to become at a time when the reasons to marry — financial, social, moral — seem to have diminished in overall importance for younger generations of Canadians. Choice — and the privilege to now be able to make it — is what makes the act so meaningful.
It’s not like it was a rebellious decision. Despite handwringing from certain corners over divorce rates and so-called eroding family values, married couples still make up the majority of Canadian households, and while the overall proportion of common-law couples is increasing, the institution of marriage is still in pretty good shape.
The wedding industry in Canada rakes in about $5-billion a year and thrice-annual wedding shows bring in record crowds armed with inspiration from slick bridal blogs and Pinterest.
The legalization of same-sex marriage a decade ago gave both the institution and the industry an overall boost — one estimate pegged the same-sex wedding market as adding more than $500-million to the Canadian economy, overall.
More significantly, gay couples’ trips down the aisle have shown that marriage today is very much about acknowledgment — about making a public statement, about pledging to stand for something in a commitment-phobic world.
This is partly because our expectations around marriage have drastically changed over time, according to Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage.
“It’s precisely because we have so much abandoned our traditional expectations of marriage as an institution that we value more than ever, perhaps, its status as a symbol of the highest and most thoughtful commitment you can make,” Coontz says in an interview.
Marriage wasn’t always about love, of course — in the beginning, it was a social transaction, designed to better a family’s lot. But as love entered the equation, marriage became something like a key to happiness.
“People expect marriage to satisfy more of their psychological and social needs than ever before,” Coontz writes in Marriage. “Marriage is supposed to be free of the coercion, violence, and gender in- equalities that were tolerated in the past. Individuals want marriage to meet most of their needs for intimacy and affection and all their needs for sex.”
The expectation of equality is a very good thing, says Coontz.
“Having high expectations on the one hand makes people more cautious about going into marriage. But on the other hand it makes the act of saying, ‘I want to marry you’ an even greater expression of trust than it used to be.”
Decades ago, she says, people entered marriage “on a wing and a prayer” because it wasn’t something from which they could easily extricate themselves. Today, with nofault divorce, they more easily can, but that knowledge also has couples working harder to make sure that isn’t the case.
Vancouverite Katie Lewis is in her early thirties, and works as a writer for a bank. She married her husband Dave in San Francisco last summer with only the photographer as their witness, says she was surprised to find that she actually likes the “no-escape clause” of marriage.
“My husband and I went into our marriage knowing that we made a long-term commitment and truly believing we will get through anything (naive, maybe, but it is how we feel!),” she wrote in an email. “I think I gained great reassurance from the fact that there wasn’t an easy escape hatch — no expiration date — and there was a comfort in knowing that we made this really big commitment and regardless of the tough times in the short term, we knew that we would have time to work things out.”
London, Ont., university instructor Jennifer Mustapha, 38, says she valued the way a marriage ceremony had allowed she and her husband Steve make a commitment before their community eight years ago. She was raised Muslim, while his family is Christian; their service was non-denominational.
“I remember kind of agonizing over ‘what part of religious marriage still resonates with me?’ ” Mustapha recalls. “And I think at the time what resonated with me was making a promise to each other, with witnesses, and also bringing the divine somehow into this equation.”
Cultural, moral and religious beliefs form the main reason Canadians have married or want to marry their partner, according to the 2011 General Social Survey, at 35%. The next biggest reason, though, at 32%, was proof of love and commitment.
“There’s just something cozy and beautiful about being officially married,” says Joelle Segal, a Toronto-based designer and co-founder of recycled wedding supplies show ReBash Toronto.
“It isn’t a necessity — but for us, once we were married, it felt like we really were a team. It meant the beginning of our family.”
While a marriage is no longer legally required to legitimize a family, the ritual is still considered a marker of adulthood, says Ailsa Craig, a professor of sociology at Memorial University who researches sexuality and culture.
“People do still see it as ‘ You really mean it,’ ” she says. “‘You really mean this commitment, you really mean to make this partnership the cornerstone of our community.’”
That Canadians are also getting married later in life further cements this idea that marriage marks a new phase, one that comes when couples are ready to commit. The proportion of Canadians aged 25 to 29 who were never married rose from 26% in 1981 to close to 73% in 2011.
Late last year, The New York Times debunked an oft-cited statistic that the divorce rate was skyrocketing upwards of 50%. Actually, the divorce rate in the United States peaked in the 1970s and has been declining ever since. It has remained stable in Canada for the past 20 years. Marriage may not be in as dire straits as we tend to hear, particularly ones carefully entered.
That’s not to say our expectations of the fulfilment of marriage have become more realistic, or that these marriages will last a lifetime. Perhaps more couples are tying the knot knowing they can untie it when the relationship has run its course.
For one thing, the language around these unions has shifted to almost destigmatize a wedded unit’s undoing (think Gwenyth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s “conscious uncoupling.”).
We no longer use terms like “failed marriage” or “broken home,” says Nora Spinks, the CEO of the Vanier Institute of the Family, an Ottawa-based progressive think-tank.
And, in hearing about my approach and outlook on marriage, Spinks gave me some hope for the long-term health of what my husband and I locked down less than six months ago: “Your generation is redefining boldly, confidently what a committed long-term relationship is and what it looks like.”
Into the future we boldly go.