Love 2.0: Reimagining Our Relationships

This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 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 two point o 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 Koons. 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 a 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 Anthony. Flash, impetuous leader of once invincible legion. Dreaded adversary on the field of battle. The Hollywood …