Eli Finkel

Lots of people argue that having these high expectations is problematic and it's harming the institution of marriage.

And frankly, among the people who used to argue that is myself.

Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Siren of the Nile.

Richard Burton as Mark Antony, rash, impetuous leader of once invincible legion, dreaded adversary on the field of battle.

We wanted to complement our emphasis on love, achieving love through marriage, with a new emphasis on achieving a sense of personal fulfillment in the way of personal growth.

So in the terminology of psychology, we wanted to self-actualize through our marriage.

We wanted to grow into a more authentic version of ourselves.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

She, in some sense, helps to epitomize both the strengths and the weaknesses of this modern contemporary approach to marriage, where we're looking to our spouse, again, not only for love, but also this sense of personal growth and fulfillment.

And

For the first time, you start to see cases where people would say, as I think Liz Gilbert would say, that she was in a loving marriage and he was a good man and treated her well.

But she felt stagnant and she really wasn't willing to endure a stagnant life for the next 30 or 40 years.

And she walked out.

Yes.

This would have been a very, very bizarre thing to say.

And marriage, you know, it wasn't really until the 70s that you started seeing no-fault divorce laws.

It used to be that you had to prove some type of serious mistreatment like abuse or desertion.

Yes, it's a very modern idea that we are entitled to a sense of real fulfillment and personal growth through the marriage.

And if our marriage is falling short, many of us consider it to be a reasonable option to end the marriage for that alone.

Well, one of the most exciting things that happened to me in the process of writing the book is I learned a lot about the history and the sociology and the economics of marriage, particularly reading people like Stephanie Kuntz, because my primary expertise is as pretty much a laboratory psychologist.