On Modern Relationships

During an email conversation with a friend, he remarks and I respond:

I’ve found it notable that friends who might entertain the idea of cheating find the notion of an explicitly open relationship difficult to weather.

I definitely find the same to be true. I think it can be explained with a basic theory of maturity or development in relationships: the naïve or undeveloped are jealously guarded about the status quo in their relationship, whatever it may be. This may just be a manifestation of loss anxiety applied to a high-value personal asset (the relationship or partner), where the person feels judged for their own ability to keep their mate. In this view, marriage is a sort of release valve, where they can end most of their anxiety by pledging monogamy (and receiving loyalty) forever. But the very naïvete or lack of development that led to their anxiety often leads to the destruction of their relationship (sometimes via cheating) because they never learn to grow the relationship with their partner.

This type of reflection often strikes me as tragic with my knowledge of US history, especially considering things like post-WWII soldiers coming back to claim their wives and start their families. They had no reason to believe that locking a wife down and not worrying about it anymore wasn’t the right course of action. As women’s liberation continued in the ensuing decades, American men had the same or similar expectations to their fathers, but the set of possible relationship dynamics was expanding beneath their feet and they were socially ill-equipped for the change. Hence the sharply increased divorce rates and romanticizing about the good old days, back when a man could rely on his wife-for-life to raise his kids and be quiet about it.

The standard narrative is that there’s something wrong with modern couples—that they are somehow morally corrupted or at least lazy, and thus can’t hold a relationship together. But under this alternate reading, it’s clear that people are just trying to navigate new relationship styles with an old set of rules, which are often insufficient and destructive to the goal of shared happiness, gender equality, fulfillment of desires, etc. that have come out of the movement for women’s liberation. I think divorce (and maybe marriage) rates will go down over the next couple decades as people come to grips with their new-found freedoms and figure out how to navigate their relationships successfully, whether with a permanent partner or not.