LAURA: IT BEGINS WITH TINY STEPS.
FIRST, HE SLEEPS OVER AT YOUR HOUSE BECAUSE HE’S TOO DRUNK OR TOO TIRED TO GO BACK TO HIS. THE NEXT TIME, HE LEAVES HIS TOOTHBRUSH. A COUPLE OF DATES LATER, HE MOVES A FEW SHIRTS INTO YOUR CLOSET.
AND BEFORE THE TWO OF YOU KNOW IT, YOU ARE, WHAT AUTHOR HANNAH SELIGSON CALLS: “A LITTLE BIT MARRIED.”
I’M LAURA SESSIONS STEPP AND THIS IS SEX.REALLY. FOR THIS PODCAST, I INTERVIEWED SELIGSON ABOUT HER NEW BOOK, A LITTLE BIT MARRIED. IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE LIKE HER – YOUNG PROFESSIONALS, IN RELATIONSHIPS, WHO FOR VARIOUS REASONS, HAVEN’T SAID “I DO.”
THE NUMBER OF UNMARRIED COUPLES HAS INCREASED DRAMATICALLY OVER THE LAST FEW DECADES. ESPECIALLY UNMARRIED TWENTY-SOMETHINGS.
Laura: Well Hannah, thanks for being with us today. We’re delighted to talk about your great new book. And I would like you to start by just explaining the title: A Little Bit Married. What does that phrase mean?
Hannah: It’ sound oxymoronic. Like, a little bit pregnant.
Laura: Either you are or you’re not!
Hannah: Right, so this is this new romantic right of passage, and it really came from personal experience. I was a little bit married. My boyfriend’s mother used to ask me on a daily basis, “What are you going to name the kids?” We would go on each other’s family vacations, we would do things that sixty or seventy years ago would of most likely culminated in marriage. And the relationship ended, and I was just distraught, and I said, “This is like a divorce!” And then— badam-ching!—it was because we were a little bit married. As I looked around, though, while it was inspired by my own personal experience, I saw practically every single one of my twenty-something friends ebb in and out of these long-term relationships.
Laura: Why do you think this is? How does that evolve into being a little bit married?
Hannah: Right. We now have this concept of immerging adulthood. It used to be that you just became an adult, and now you immerge into adulthood. So there is this long period of just trying to figure out who you are. The other factor is, you know, my grandmother got married at sixteen and she and my grandfather grew up together, and today the concept is: I want to be a fully-formed person before I get married. And it takes a long time to be a fully-formed person.
ONE BIG REASON YOUNG COUPLES ARE POSTPONING A TRIP TO THE ALTAR IS THAT WOMEN ENJOY MORE CAREER OPPORTUNITIES THAN THEY USED TO. MARRIAGE IS FAR FROM THEIR ONLY OPTION FOR FINANCIAL SECURITY. AND THESE DAYS, NEITHER MEN NOR WOMEN FEEL THE SOCIETAL PRESSURE TO MARRY THAT PREVIOUS GENERATIONS DID.
IN AN EMAIL I RECEIVED, A WOMAN NAMED ELIZABETH WRITES THAT THE TREND AWAY FROM MARRIAGE IS SO STRONG, THAT HER FRIENDS TRIED TO TALK HER OUT OF IT.
NOW A TEACHER IN THE WASHINGTON AREA, ELIZABETH SAYS SHE NEVER INTENDED TO GET MARRIED EARLY. BUT IN HER SENIOR YEAR OF COLLEGE, SHE FELL IN LOVE. HER FRIENDS LET HER HAVE IT.
“I WAS THE RECIPIENT OF MUCH CRITICISM WHEN I MADE THE DECISION, SHE WRITES. “THIS CRITICISM CAME FROM A VARIETY OF SOURCES: COLLEGE PROFESSORS, MY THESIS ADVISOR, SORORITY SISTERS, AND PEERS I KNEW FROM CLASSES—ESPECIALLY MY WOMEN’S HISTORY CLASSES. PEOPLE MADE ME FEEL I WAS THROWING AWAY MY LIFE.”
HANNAH SELIGSON SAYS YOUNG ADULTS BEGIN TO CONSIDER GETTING MARRIED SOMEWHERE IN THEIR MID-20S. IN HER EXPERIENCE, WOMEN GET TO THAT POINT MORE QUICKLY THAN MEN. HER OBSERVATION IS BORNE OUT BY DATA SHOWING THAT MEN ARE ABOUT TWO YEARS OLDER THAN WOMEN WHEN THEY GET MARRIED.
Hannah: There you have the marital readiness gap, where women are ready to get married before men. It used to be that men had to get married because it was too dangerous to have sex outside of marriage and women needed a base of economic support, and those factors are no longer there. I heard from a lot of women that they were ready to get married before the men were.
The other big issue too, that I found with both men and women, was just the communication in the a little bit married life state—that people were doing things that one person might of thought was leading toward marriage, but ultimately the other person thought that it wasn’t. So there was a lot of misreading going on.
Laura: What’s it like to be a little bit married? Is there a difference between what used to be called living together and now being a little bit married?
Hannah: I think when you think back to the 1970’s, it was much more counter-cultural then to it; that it was making a stance against marriage; we’re going to live together and do this really radical thing. Today, it’s much more domestic; it’s not as much of a political statement. So it looks like marriage—you have a dog, you cook dinner together, you decorate. Maybe you write down on a loose-leaf piece of paper who bought the IKEA furniture and who bought the dishware. It looks like two people setting up house after they’ve gotten married.
Laura: You’ve said that you were in one, which provoked you to write this, and you’re now in another one, right? What did you learn in that first situation that you’ve applied to the one you’re in now?
Hannah: I think the main thing that I’ve learned was not to make assumptions. That just because I thought, well we go on each other’s family vacations, or we really have a lot of the same interests, that we never talked about marriage, and there were just assumptions. So I’ve been much more cognizant and aware of pushing clarity and asking questions, and not assuming that certain things mean things that they don’t. Because dating today is just in chaos; you don’t know what things mean anymore. It used to be that you move in together—that means you’re married. Or you sleep with someone—that’s a tacit agreement that you’re going to get married. And now those different signs and symbols don’t have meaning anymore, and it’s really confusing.
Laura: Even to the people in it!
Hannah: Even to the people in it, exactly. There is no script. Not that I’m kind of yearning for the days when there was a dating script, but it made things a lot more clear.
Laura: Do you want to be married?
Hannah: Yeah, I want to be married.
Laura: Why?
Hannah: Well, because I think there still is this cultural march to marriage. And also, there’s something about expressing your commitment to someone else at the highest form our society currently offers. Also particularly for children, and I think I’m reflective of a generational trend, in that I want to be married when I have kids. So, I’m just curious where the sweet spot is where you’ve reached enough emotional and financial security where your relationship is out of that peril divorce danger zone, and when you can still have babies. It’s complicated for women—much more complicated for women than it is for men.
Laura: Do you like it this way? I mean, you’re smack-dab in it. You’ve written a book about it. Is this the ideal way to partner up with someone?
Hannah: I mean, right now I’m very happy. I think living together is great. And I actually thought that I would never live with someone before I got married.
Laura: Really. Why?
Hannah: I thought I would be traditional. And that it was this like, special thing. But as I’m doing it now, I’m like, how could people not live together before they get married? It’s so case-by-case; I have no definitive argument that you should or you shouldn’t, I really think it’s each relationship. But for me, I think it’s allowed us both to figure out how we operate as a team and as a unit in a house, which is what you ultimately do when you get married. I don’t know— it’s like batting practice.
Laura: So what is your batting average right now?
Hannah: I ‘m not going to say anything about that. But you know, practice makes perfect.
Laura: How many times can you be a little bit married before you give up?
Hannah: You mean before you get married?
Laura: Or you say heck, I’m going to just stay single all my life.
Hannah: It’s a good question. Many times.
Laura: Do you think you get better at it as you do it more often?
Hannah: Hopefully. That’s the idea.
MY LAST QUESTION TO SELIGSON WAS THIS: IN EUROPE, COUPLES OFTEN LIVE TOGETHER THEIR WHOLE ADULT LIVES, AND RAISE CHILDREN TOGETHER,WITHOUT GETTING MARRIED. WHY IS MARRIAGE IMPORTANT HERE?
Hannah: I mean, the irony is that you don’t need to be married, because you can have everything that married people have without being married. But we’re a marriage-obsessed culture. We sort of have a dysfunctional relationship with marriage—because we idealize it on some level, but then we have one of the highest divorce rates in the world. But I still think that when it works, it works. And that young people still see it as an ideal-ordering of society. Think about it, why do gays want to get married? I mean there are a host of also tax benefits and economic reasons to be married. And at some point, I think a lot of people asks themselves well, why aren’t we? What’s wrong with the relationship? And whether that’s a question that they should be asking, or whether it means that there is something wrong with the relationship if you’re not married, it’s still kind of like that last medal you haven’t gotten. And so if you aren’t doing it, why not?
“IF YOU’RE NOT DOING IT, WHY NOT?” THAT’S NOT EXACTLY A RINGING ENDORSEMENT FOR MARRIAGE. BUT IN TRUTH, 20-SOMETHINGS’ AMBIVALENCE ABOUT MARRIAGE IS SHARED BY MANY AMERICANS. CHECK OUR DIVORCE RATE – OR FOR THAT MATTER, OUR RATE OF INFIDELITY.
IN HIS BOOK, THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND, SOCIOLOGIST ANDREW CHERLIN SAYS AMERICANS VALUE THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE, AND ALSO VALUE THINKING ABOUT WHAT MAKES THEM HAPPY AND FULFILLED. THE TWO THINGS, HE SAYS, DON’T ALWAYS COINCIDE.
I’M LAURA SESSIONS STEPP AND THIS IS SEX.REALLY. JOIN US IN TWO WEEKS FOR A PODCAST COVERING A CONFERENCE ON SEX AND TECHNOLOGY IN – WHERE ELSE? – SAN FRANCISCO.
