The Meaning of Marriage
Recently, a friend sent me a link to an article indicating that Kansas is on it’s way to becoming the 4th state to pass a law providing for covenant marriage. This sent me off on a few rabbit trails regarding covenant marriage, one of which was the website for the Covenant Marriage Movement (CMM). The site distinguishes covenant marriage by way of comparison with contractual marriage and in the midst of the explanation <much to my surprise> I found myself nodding along in agreement at regular intervals with some of the points being made.
In particular, the vast majority of Americans marries at some point in life, and about half of those marriages will end in divorce. Of course, there are myriad sociological speculations on the rising divorce rate (e.g. changing norms about pre-marital sex and cohabitation from the sexual revolution; increased economic independence allows women to leave unhappy/abusive relationships); but interestingly, most people still marry, still plan to marry, and still remarry following a divorce. In light of the continuation of marriage as a normative practice and goal in spite of its apparently changed meaning and potentially abbreviated duration, the relevant question with regard to marriage is not whether one wants to or plans to marry, but how one defines marriage.
It sounds altogether simple, I suppose: marriage is a couple of people in love who agree to stay that way indefinitely and make this pledge to one another publicly so as to bind themselves together through the social norms enacted through the open declaration of this contract. <Like I said, “simple,” right?> But the CMM explanation goes on to suggest that most people probably don’t fully understand the implications of the vows they recite during the marriage ceremony. Naturally, phrases drawn from the typical vows like “in richer and poorer” and “til death do us part” are so widely known as to evoke little reflection on their meaning. They are a bit like cliches whose meaning or significance one never contemplates because they are automatic recitations.
CMM goes on to argue that–
Too many people today view marriage as a legal contract. Contracts are based on rights and responsibilities and are motivated by self-centeredness rather than unconditional love. A legal contract is necessary to begin, and likewise to end, a marriage, but a covenant is more than a contract. It is more than a legal document declaring a state of interdependence.
Though I believe it is an overstatement to suggest that many approach marriage simply as a legal contract, I think the larger definitional question is a valid one. That is, to what extent do individuals contemplate the significance of the marital union before they enter into it? The difference between a committed cohabiting partnership, a contractual marriage, and a covenant marriage is really psychological at bottom. There’s nothing objectively real about the signing of a legal contract that necessarily entails a change in the nature of the companionship. But we believe that it does, we treat couples differently who do so, and so it matters. Still, do couples think about this, about the meaning of marriage and the nature of commitment?
Perhaps, we all want to marry or most have that as an end goal, but why? What do individuals understand that to mean? I would wager that, for many, marriage is actually just one of those markers on the conveyor belt of life through which we expect ourselves (and others expect us) to progress but without contemplating whether or why. I have no data on couples who opt into covenant marriage (and therefore agree to standards, which make divorce a more difficult option). But I do know that it includes premarital counseling and “couple support.” If such marriages are ultimately more “successful,” which I suppose means enduring and happy, perhaps it is because this form of union provides mechanisms that allow couples to determine whether they share a certain ideological approach to marriage (read: definition of marriage) from its inception as a possibility and then provide social networks and norms that reinforce the salience of the union’s stability in the face of conflict. Such social forces are powerful forms of conservation.
