Love 2.0: Reimagining Our Relationships
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This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. No matter how many weddings you've been to, it's hard to shake that contagious feeling of optimism. Couples pledge to love one another in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer. Family members dab tears from their eyes, agreeing that these two people are meant to be together forever. But so many marriages become unhappy. Some dissolve. Some end in divorce. And even the successful ones are not without challenges. No one would deny that long-term relationships are hard. And in fact, there's evidence they're getting harder. Over the past few weeks, our Love 2.0 series has explored new ways to think about how we engage with romantic partners and spouses.
We've talked about how to build new bonds with our significant others, how to strengthen the bonds we already have. We've looked at how we respond to our partner's most annoying habits and how we can let go of our desire to change them. Today, we bring you a classic episode that many listeners have told us is one of their favorites. It's about the changing nature of marriage in the United States and other parts of the world.
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.
How our expectations of marriage have evolved and a paradoxical way to achieve more happiness in our relationships... This week on Hidden Brain. To understand marriage today, we thought it best to go back to a time and place when marriage was very different.
Well, I've been studying the history of family life for many, many years, but I specifically got interested in marriage as we got into these debates about what traditional marriage was.
That's Stephanie Koontz. She's an emeritus professor at the Evergreen State College and the author of the book Marriage, a History, How Love Conquered Marriage. I interviewed her back in 2017. Stephanie says the earliest marriages had nothing to do with the feelings of two people or their attraction to one another. As you probably know, marriage was much more about economics and acquiring powerful in-laws.
Marriage originally arose in more egalitarian band level societies as a way of sharing resources and establishing peaceful relations with groups that you might otherwise only see occasionally and you might not know if they were going to be friends or enemies.
It was a way of circulating obligations and goods.
I marry my child off to you and that means you owe me things but I also owe you things.
Stephanie brought up a famous example from history, the union between Cleopatra of Egypt and Mark Antony of Rome.
Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra, Siren of the Nile.
This is from a 1963 film version.
Richard Burton as Mark Antony, rash, impetuous leader of once invincible legion, dreaded adversary on the field of battle.
The Hollywood version of the story portrays Cleopatra and Antony as being very much in love, but Stephanie paints a slightly different picture.
There may have been passion, but it was more passion for power than sexual, although sexual probably entered into it too.
Cleopatra and Antony's marriage was primarily about strategy.
Rome and Egypt were the two most powerful empires in the world. So getting them, anybody who got them together and got an alliance between them would be unstoppable.
The story goes that Cleopatra was married to her brother. And without getting into all the details, let's just say she wasn't too happy with that. So she started an affair with Julius Caesar, the ruler of Rome. Cleopatra became pregnant. When the baby was born, he was named Caesarian. The child gave Cleopatra and Caesar a claim to each other's throne. It was something they both desperately wanted. Sounds like an episode of Game of Thrones, right?
Well, then Caesar died, and Mark Anthony came along. And, of course, the story tells that she seduced him. But, you know, when you really look at what was happening practically, this was another political alliance.
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Speakers
9 identified
Shankar Vedantam 48 min
Eli Finkel 23 min
Listeners (Cassandra, Raquel, others) / Unknown 4 min
Stephanie Coontz 4 min
Movie clip actors / Unknown 3 min
Michelle (listener) / Unknown 1 min
Unknown 1 min
Movie/clip narrator lines / Unknown 1 min
Esther Perel (clip) / Alison (listener) ambiguous — Unknown