I don’t…or do I?

“Happily unmarried” is the new catchphrase for couples who have long term monogamous relationships, often with children, but without tying the knot. This makes sense when a Christian concept of marriage no longer has any real cultural currency, and when even the social mores held over from when it did are fading fast. According to an article in Time, there has been a 200% increase of heterosexual, cohabitating couples in the US since 1980. Another study shows that, in 2007, 40% of infants were born out of wedlock. In light of the push for legalized gay marriage, it is ironic that there seems to be a rise in straight singleness — at least legally speaking.

This trend is particularly prevalent in Hollywood, where cohabitation is as common as marriage, if not more so. With the propensity of the famous to have highly publicized break-ups, this trend has the allure of practicality. No need to cough up alimony if the relationship goes south. Commonly held reasons for marriage-long-term commitment, stability in which to raise children-are found just as easily outside of it by a growing percentage of couples. While  a variety of explanations are offered for this trend, one intriguing justification is highlighted by Time:

In lieu of a marriage license, [Raymond McCauley] and [long-term partner Kristina] Hathaway have drawn up legal documents

that grant them rights automatically afforded married couples, covering everything from child custody to property. And yet this

arrangement still gives him some sense of freedom. “Every day we’re making this decision and this commitment anew,” he says. “I’m

not with you because there would be legal speed bumps to get through if we weren’t. I’m with you because this is where I want to

be.”

The notion that it takes more commitment to stay when there’s no wedding ring to take off has grown in acceptance. When there are no vows, these couples reason, staying anyway demonstrates your commitment. This reasoning doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny, however.

The supposition that legal marriage is an inviolable entity might have worked as an argument in the eighteenth century, but sounds absurd in the twenty-first. Acrimony aside, divorce proceedings are some of the least painful legal proceedings available. Unfortunately, the emotional, social, and practical ramifications of the breakup of a long term union, especially one involving children, are excruciating whether or not the state recognizes the relationship. Comparatively, the legal hassle is  minor.

Susan Sarandon, a famous “committed unmarried” once said, “When you are not married, I think it is not as easy to take each other for granted. When you say ’till death do us part,’ you don’t have to reaffirm your love for each other as often.” This expresses some of the current sensibility that cohabitation is romantic and committed, whereas marriage is obligated drudgery.

The reasons for this conclusion are unclear. To stick around when it is marginally easier to get out (at least from a legal standpoint) may require a marginally greater degree of volition. But it may just as easily be argued that the greater risk - and, hence, the greater romance – is taken when a permanent commitment is made for better and for worse. This cultural argument presumes that faithfulness unwilling to ‘put its marriage where its mouth is’, faithfulness scared to presuppose the future, is superior because it hasn’t promised itself to anything.

Though pervasive, the supposed superiority of committed cohabition is not yet unquestioned.. Though the popular media rushes to affirm the love and commitment of those who haven’t undergone an archaic legal hassle, a surprising number of romantic comedies still end in a wedding. Though religious and cultural mandates for marriage are fast bleeding out of culture, the desire to get married eventually, for the kids, or for respectability, or for legal status, wins out a surprising number of times. For something with so little overt cultural backing, the sprawl of the wedding industry alone should assure us that our culture is not through with marriage yet.

In the recent film “He’s Just Not That Into You,” Jennifer Anniston’s character is portrayed as naive and misguided in wanting her live-in boyfriend to marry her, surrounded as she is by indifferent and downright poisonous marriages. Her boyfriend (played by Ben Affleck) is as committed and caring as any husband could be, and so doesn’t see the point of getting married. It takes Anniston’s character the course of the film to see reason, to see that his commitment is  better than most regardless of whether they are married. At the end, however, he proposes, in order to make her happy. This encapsulates the ambivalent cultural relationship to “committed unmarrieds”: affirming the good sense of their decision, while still desiring the romance of “til death do us part.”