Marriage has never been harder — or happier — than it is today, argues new book

A reporter once asked Gloria Steinem why she changed her mind about marriage and got hitched to activist David Bale at age 66.

“I didn’t change,” Steinem famously replied. “Marriage changed.”

Indeed it did. Had Steinem married in her 20s, during the 1960s, she wouldn’t have been able to get a credit card in her name, she’d have had no legal rights to her husband’s property and, depending on where she lived, she’d have had little say in her birth control options.

Fewer institutions have changed more. We don’t need marriage for the things we used to need it for — survival, financial security, the oppor- tunity to raise children, social currency. But it retains a gilded spot in our culture. We celebrate its onset and mourn its dissolution. We argue over who should partake.

Northwestern University professor Eli J. Finkel has written a book that looks at our history with the institution. The All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work looks at how marriages moved from pragmatic institutions to partnerships based on love and sentimentality. Our unions, Finkel argues, have the potential to make us happier than any time in history, but we have to commit significant energy to get there.

As the importance of “self” has grown, Finkel maintains, so has our expectation that marriage will sus- tain not just the couple at the centre, but each of its two halves. Spouses are now expected to facilitate each other’s voyages of self-discovery.

But focusing too closely on oneself isn’t always “marriage-promoting,” as Finkel puts it. Just ask someone who’s married to (or divorced from) a narcissist. The key, he argues, is to focus on finding meaning in your life — and to help your spouse do the same. It can feel daunting.

“There are those lamenting how much we’re asking of marriage,” Finkel said. “But we used to ask marriage to help us survive, which is kind of a big deal. And I don’t think it’s a bad idea to ask a lot of marriage.”

Because the payoff, when both spouses deliver, is tremendous.