it's tempting to think of marriage as
old-fashioned why not just live with
someone and be done with it what need
for a public ceremony why the weird
traditions all those churches temples
hymns vows and prayers marriage must be
a silly relic from the religious
childhood of humankind not designed for
the more logical modern world and yet it
survives the essence of marriage is to
tie our hands to frustrate our wills to
put high and costly obstacles in the way
of splitting up why do we do this
originally we told ourselves that God
wanted us to stay married but even now
when God is not invoked we keep making
sure that marriage is rather hard to
undo for one thing you carefully invite
everyone you know to what you say you'll
stick together you willingly create a
huge layer of embarrassment were you
ever turn around and admit it might have
been a mistake furthermore even though
you could keep things separate marriage
tends to mean deep economic and legal
entanglements you know it's gonna take
the work of a phalanx of accountants and
lawyers to prise you apart it could be
done but it will be ruinous it's as if
we somewhere recognize that there might
rather strangely be some quite good
though uncomfortable reasons why making
it difficult to split up a union can be
an advantage for its members the
marshmallow test was a celebrated
experiment in a history of psychology
designed to measure children's ability
to delay gratification and track the
consequences of being able to think long
term some three-year-old children were
offered a marshmallow but told they
would get two if they held off from
eating the first one for five minutes it
turned out a lot of children just
couldn't make it through this period it
was too tempting the less immediate
benefit of gobbling the marshmallow in
front of them was stronger than the
strategy of waiting crucially it was
observed these children went on to have
lives blighted by a lack of impulse
control and fed much worse than the
children who were best at subordinating
immediate fun for long-term benefit
relationships are perhaps no different
here too many things feel very
were angry and want to get out were
excited by a new person and need to
abandon our present partner at once and
yet as we look around for the exit every
way seems blocked it would cost a
fortune it would be embarrassing it
would take an age this isn't a
coincidence
marriage is a giant inhibitor of impulse
set up by a conscience to keep our
labeed honest ungrateful wild desiring
selves in check what we're essentially
buying into by submitting to its
dictates is the insight that we are as
individuals likely to make very poor
choices under the sway of strong
short-term impulses to marry is to
recognize that we require structure to
insulate us from our urges its to lock
ourselves up willingly because we don't
trust ourselves it's a very unusual
marriage indeed in which the two people
don't spend a notable amount of time
fantasizing that they weren't in fact
married but the point of marriage is to
make these feelings not matter very much
it's an arrangement that protects us
from what we desire and yet no in are
more reasonable moments we don't truly
need or even perhaps want at their best
relationships involve us in attempts to
develop mature and become whole
we often get drawn to people precisely
because they promise to etch us in the
right directions but it's too easy to
seem kind and normal when we keep going
out with someone new the truth about us
on the basis of which self-improvement
begins only becomes clear over time
chances of development increase hugely
when we don't keep running away to
people who will falsely reassure us
there's nothing too wrong with us over
time the argument for marriage has
shifted it's no longer about external
forces having power over us what we are
correctly now focused on is the
psychological point of making it hard to
throw it all in for the last 50 years
the burden of intelligent effort has
been on attempting to make separation
easier the challenge now lies in another
direction in trying to remind ourselves
why immediate flight doesn't always make
sense
in trying to see the point of holding
out for the second marshmallow
you