What's So Great About Marriage?

In a recent post on the secrets of happiness, I mentioned the importance of marrying a suitable partner (https://fakenous.substack.com/p/the-secrets-of-happiness-and-the). Some readers wondered whether marriage is really important or good. Let’s talk about that.

1. Skepticism

Some popular jokes seem to express skepticism about marriage:

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one. The trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

“When you first get married, they open the car door for you. Eighteen years now … once he opened the car door for me in the last four years. We were on the freeway at the time.” —Joan Rivers

“My husband and I have never considered divorce. Murder sometimes, but never divorce.” —Joyce Brothers

“Getting married is like trading the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one.” —Mae West

Not meant as a joke, but:

“In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.” —Arthur Schopenhauer

It is estimated that about 40% of marriages end in divorce. Probably most of those people would say they wish they hadn’t gotten married. This statistic is generally regarded as quite bad, although it leaves room for ~60% of marriages to be good.

2. What Is a Marriage?

People say it’s a contract. In the standard vows, you and your partner promise to remain together for life. However, you know that many marriages in fact end in divorce, and that either party can unilaterally sue for divorce at any time. The government will not make you stay together if one party wants out. So you might wonder how meaningful the promise is.

However, it’s true of all promises that it’s possible for a person to break them, and most promises won’t be enforced by the government either. Presumably this doesn’t make all or most promises empty. So it doesn’t make marriage vows empty either. As a matter of empirical fact, most people mean the marriage vow sincerely at the time, and they take it very seriously afterwards. The reasons for which people get divorced are probably, in general, at least as serious as the reasons for which we normally consider promise-breaking justified. So there’s no reason to think we don’t take marriage seriously as a promise.

3. The Social Function of Marriage

All or nearly all human societies have an institution of marriage, even if they have different rules governing it. This probably means that it serves some pretty important function.

Compare the institution of property, which I believe to be equally universal. It addresses a universal problem of human life, the problem of conflicting uses for scarce resources (https://fakenous.substack.com/p/why-have-property). Without it, perhaps we would have to decide ad hoc, each time more than one person wanted to use a resource, whose preferred use would be realized. Property rights let people know in general who gets to use which resources, without having to decide case-by-case.

Similarly to property rights, marriage makes romantic and sexual relationships predictable. People want to know that they have a mate, and who it is; they don’t want to wonder every day, or to have to renegotiate a relationship every day.

A key part of the social function is child rearing. It’s probably good for children to have at least two stable parents, not to get shifted around from one guardian to another. It’s also good for the guardians to be the child’s biological parents. For evolutionary reasons, people evolved instincts to love their own biological children, because in our past, caring for one’s own biological offspring resulted in more copies of one’s genes being sent into future generations. The same was not true of caring for other children. For this reason, the best people to raise a child are usually that child’s biological parents (or people who believe themselves to be the child’s biological parents). So marriage is good for children in that it tends (given other common features of human societies) to cause children to be raised by their biological parents. The social rules surrounding marriage also usually ensure that people pretty well know who a child’s father is.

Marriage also probably reduces social strife. In particular, it probably results in fewer men fighting over women, because there is a social institution that recognizes who is whose mate. This is similar to how clear rules defining property rights result in less fighting over resources. Of course, you can still have conflict if someone decides to break the rules. But you get a lot more conflict if society doesn’t even have clear rules to begin with.

(Why did I not mention women fighting over men? Well sure, marriage also results in fewer women fighting over men. But women wouldn’t fight that much in the first place, so this is a much less important benefit.)

4. The Personal Benefits of Marriage

“Okay sure, it’s good for society,” you might think. “But what do I care about that? Why would I want to get married?”

4.1. Longevity

Studies regularly show that married people live longer than single people. Both men and women benefit, but the benefits are larger for men. People have offered several explanations for why this might be (https://www.thedailymeal.com/entertain/10-reasons-married-people-live-longer-slideshow/).

a) One plausible possibility is that married people have lower stress due to having constant companionship and someone to share problems with. It is widely accepted that stress lowers life expectancy.

b) Another possibility is that married people have fewer health problems that would indirectly result from unhappiness. E.g., maybe single people are more likely to drink, use drugs, or commit suicide.

c) It could also be that your spouse prevents you from taking foolish risks, e.g., telling you not to go motorcycling without a helmet. (This benefit would be much greater for men.)

d) Maybe your spouse keeps an eye on your health, encourages you to go to the doctor, encourages you to eat healthy, etc. Maybe he/she also physically helps you to do these things, e.g., by preparing healthy food.

e) We can’t rule out a selection effect. E.g., maybe healthier people are more attractive and thus more likely to find a spouse, in addition to being more likely to live longer.

4.2. Happiness

Many studies find that married people tend to be happier than single people. There are obvious reasons for this. Of course, there is the happiness directly resulting from being with your loved one. (Note: Only works if you love your spouse, so choose wisely.) Relatedly, human beings are not designed for solitary existence, and in modern society, a spouse is the main source of companionship; most single people spend a lot of time alone.

Admittedly, a selection effect can’t be ruled out here either. Maybe people with a happier disposition are more attractive and hence more likely to find a spouse.

4.3. Sanity

Speculation: Many people tend to develop crazy thoughts if there isn’t someone close to them to provide balance. E.g., maybe you made a minor mistake during the day and you start to think that it means you’re worthless. When you tell your spouse about it, he or she corrects your crazy thoughts.

4.4. Money

Married couples save a lot of money. The costs of housing are probably the biggest area of savings. There’s also of course the tax advantage.

5. Objections

Objection #1

“I could get a lot of those benefits by just having a series of short-term partners.”

Reply: This only works if you’re young or Leonardo DiCaprio. As you reach middle age and older, it will be increasingly hard to find suitable people to date, for a few reasons: (a) most other people are already married, (b) you’re less attractive, (c) other people are less attractive.

(Of course, (b) and (c) will happen as you get older anyway, but it will matter less if you’re married, because you will already love your partner.)

It will also be hard to develop the kind of deep bond that comes from having been with a person for many years. Your husband or wife of many years will do a lot of stuff and put up with a lot of stuff that some person you just met would not.

Objection #2

“Okay, but a long-term relationship doesn’t have to be a marriage. What do I need marriage specifically for?”

Reply: Fair point; the main benefits of marriage are the benefits of having a long-term, committed relationship; marriage is just a convention for socially recognizing such relationships. (In some places, you can even be deemed “common law married” without having gone through any ceremony or getting a license.)

Are there any benefits to getting officially married, over and above the benefits of having a committed relationship? Yes:

a) Legal benefits: You’ll be treated as a married couple by the government. E.g., you can file taxes jointly, you can be on your spouse’s insurance plan, one of you can make medical decisions for the other if the other is unable to do it, etc.

b) Social benefits: In some cases, other people will treat you differently (and more appropriately) if you are a married couple, i.e., you have taken the steps prescribed by your society to be recognized as a permanent couple.

c) Communication & commitment device: Getting married is partly a commitment device. Because of the large costs of divorce, you signal strength of commitment by getting married. You also in effect strengthen your spouse’s commitment to you. I.e., it is a lot harder to lose your wife than it is to lose your girlfriend. Thus, if you have a good relationship, you may want to lock it in by getting married.

Example: If your boyfriend or girlfriend takes a job in another city, this will very often end the relationship. This can happen even if you had been together monogamously for a few years, and even if you were living together. But it won’t happen if you’re married. Your husband or wife won’t leave you for a job opportunity (unless they’re a terrible husband or wife). For most people, getting married completely removes “splitting up” from their mind as an option that they would entertain. Once you’re married, the assumption is that, whatever else happens, you work it out so you remain together.

d) Modifies your own feelings: I think getting officially married tends to change your own feelings, to make you feel more committed and more satisfied. This might be partly because human beings are emotionally influenced by their society, so we feel better when our relationships are officially recognized by the conventions of society.

6. Caveat

Most of the above only applies if you get a good partner. If you get a bad partner (which most people probably are), you can of course wind up much less happy, then wind up getting divorced, which is very costly (per point (c) above).

How can you get a good partner? I don’t know. I already took the best woman in the world, so I’m afraid you’ll have to look for maybe the second-best woman, whoever that is. I only found her by chance, so I can’t advise others on how to find the 2^nd- or 3^rd- best woman.

Anyway, equally important is to be a good partner. If you are yourself a bad partner, you can alienate your partner, again resulting in an unhappy marriage and/or divorce. I suspect that most people spend a lot more time thinking about how to make their partners better than they spend thinking about how to be better. This is probably the source of a lot of problems. Keep in mind also that one way of making your partner better is to be better yourself.

How can you be better? I only have space for two brief thoughts:

(1) Try to remain attractive. E.g., don’t let yourself grow much fatter just because you figure you already have a partner locked in. (Your partner probably won’t leave you, but they’ll be less happy.)

(2) Avoid complaining, starting arguments, or trying to control your partner. Almost none of the things people complain about matter. The relationship matters more than all the things you might want to complain about combined.