What if Marriage Were Temporary?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/what-if-marriage-were-temporary




For most of the history of marriage, till death do us part did not mean 50 years wedded to the same person. A century ago, death regularly transformed a new mother to a corpse in the blink of an eye. A sip of water from an infected source or a slip on the road could quickly fell the young and the fit. Cholera, consumption, smallpox…death had many names and predictable results: widows and widowers usually found another partner and remarried, sometimes more than once.

As sanitation, hygiene and medical advances prolonged human life in the 20th century, married couples in the West faced a new and unprecedented prospect: living with the same person, decade in and decade out, until the ailments of old age took one of them away. The marriage was now expected to withstand the stresses of all stages of life: childrearing, work, the empty nest. As the nuclear family in the single-detached home replaced the more fluid and populated living arrangements of the past, marriage began to carry new burdens. Two people must be all things to each other for all time, in tight quarters and with little relief.

Little wonder that the loosening of divorce laws soon followed.

In practice, marriage today in the U.S. is often temporary (approximately half of all married couples end up divorced), but most people still enter the contract as if they will remain wedded for the rest of their lives. A gigantic wedding industry cashes in on the fantasy. This expectation, entirely unrealistic for a good chunk of the population, results in contortions that are hardly conducive to human happiness, or even sanity. Too many people face the shamed search for emotional and physical connections outside the marriage, producing soul-maiming hypocrisy and mendacity, and much collateral damage. Bitter divorces that enrich lawyers and tear families apart are often the sad result. Many who stay married lead lives of quiet desperation, unhappy in their circumstances, but unable to envision an alternative to one-size-fits-all-till-death-do-us-part.

[Sienna86]

1. How about a prenup requirement and annual renewal?

I've always thought it would save money and anguish if a prenup was required for every marriage. Also, what if you could choose to renew the marriage every year or it would legally dissolve? Would it change the way we treat relationships?