Category Archives: marriages in cultural contexts

How Online Dating Changed Cross-Cultural Love and Relationships

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The last several decades have witnessed the emergence and extensive development of dating websites. This progress greatly changed the way partners meet, love, and how their relationships evolve.

How Dating Websites Emerged and Expanded

It may look surprising that the first dating websites came only in the 1990s. In 1995, Match.com went online. In the early 2000s, a new wave of dating sites like OKCupid came out. When Tinder came out in 2012, it changed dating even more. There are now more than one-third of marriages that begin online. This data, however, varies across cultures.

These websites have obviously had a significant influence on dating behavior. However, evidence is mounting that their impact is far more substantial. Interesting statistical data from research shows the variety of places and ways in which partners met each other over the last decades.

How Traditional Networks of Dating Work

The social networks associated with family, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances were the most prevalent sources of prospective dating partners. People are strongly connected to a small group of neighbors and only loosely connected to people who live far away. It turns out that these loose connections are very important.

Loose ties have traditionally played an important role in meeting partners. While most people were unlikely to date one of their best friends, they were much more likely to date someone from their group of friends, such as a friend of a friend. Men and women met their partners through their families, at church, through mutual friends, in bars, in educational institutions, at work, and so on.

The Modern Way of Online Dating

The networks of dating have changed with the onset of online dating. Nowadays, heterosexual couples meet through online dating, which is the second most popular method. It’s the most popular choice by far for homosexual couples.

Online dating has led to significant consequences, extending the pool of potential dating partners. “People who meet online tend to be complete strangers,” say Josue Ortega from the University of Essex in the U.K. and Philipp Hergovich from the University of Vienna in Austria, the authors of the recent study.

Online Dating Is Conducive to Intercultural Marriages

These new opportunities extended chances for intercultural relationships, love, and marriages. Some societies are more favorable for intercultural marriages than others.

The statistics of intercultural marriages in the United States of American present a good example for analysis. For instance, J. Ortega and P. Hergovich compared the rates of interracial marriages in the U.S. over the past several decades and found that the number of interracial marriages increased for some time, but the rates were still low.

However, the rates of increase in interracial marriages substantially changed at about the time that online dating became popular. The researchers say,

“It is intriguing that shortly after the introduction of the first dating websites in 1995, like Match.com, the percentage of new marriages created by interracial couples increased rapidly.”

When online dating became even more popular, this increase in interracial marriages became even steeper in the 2000s. Later, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages expanded again. “It is interesting that this increase occurred shortly after the creation of Tinder, considered the most popular online dating app,” researchers say.

Married Couples Who Meet Online Are More Stable

It is worth noting that, with about 50 million users, Tinder produces over 12 million matches daily. In the meantime, research into the strength of marriage has discovered some evidence that married couples who meet online have lower rates of marital breakup compared to those who meet in traditional settings.

How Assertion and Hesitation Help Sustain Love in Bicultural Marriages in Japan

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Authors: Clifford H. Clarke and Naomi Takashiro

Intercultural partners experience many challenges in building and sustaining love in bicultural marriages. In the previous article, we reviewed the key problems that Japanese and American partners encounter in their bicultural marriages. We explored those cases of third-culture marriage in Japan by observing their interactions and interviewing them.

We clarify misinterpretations through the use of kotowaza, or proverbs and sayings that illuminate the values behind cultural interactions. Understanding the deeper values leads to modified interpretations of each other’s behavior that become more isomorphic and mutually acceptable to partners committed to constructing together a successful Third-Culture Marriage.

In our recent chapter 51 in the International Handbook of Love (Clarke & Takashiro, 2021), we elaborated on the eight primary qualities of third-culture marriage interactions. They are important when partners commit to constructing together a successful intercultural marriage.

Here is one more advice.

Context of the Interaction Assertion and Hesitation in Bicultural Marriages

Partners in bicultural marriages have varying degrees of action-oriented versus being-oriented inclinations (the oft-noted ‘A’ or ‘B’ type personalities). When these are not in sync they cause tension. For example, in planning everyday schedules, leisure trip activities, even with the pace in which house chores or shopping get done, and many other occasions in which joint preparations are desired.

Time Is a Key Value

Time is a commodity in both cultures however it is worshipped differently.   Preciseness of departure times or eating times or sleeping times cause communication issues when there is a significant difference between marriage partners’ commitments to preciseness or being laissez-faire toward time (letting things take their own course.) But proper timing is also important and that can vary by context and objective.  

The kotowaza, Seite wa koto o shisonzuru or ‘Hasty ones make blunders’ reminds us of the issue of proper timing, such as when to end or leave a conversation or party. This also suggests the importance of enryo or hesitation as a pause before sasshi can occur (Miike, 2003) as in giving consideration or guessing a meaning.

Necessary Elements of Place

Besides the perspective of ‘time’, there are also considerations of ‘Place’ that bicultural couples must appreciate and resolve.   There is an appropriateness of time, place, and occasion, “TPO” to speak honestly in private with honne or tactfully in public with tatemae. 

Tatemae & honne (public & private speech) create style ambiguities that result in challenging attributions that question each other’s integrity, based honesty, shōjiki, or on harmony, “Wa”, as the primary value in society (Prince Shotoku Taishi, 604; Clarke, 1992; Nawano, Annikis, and Mizuno, 2006; Oosterling, 2005; Pilgrim, 1986).

Here Is an Example of One Scenario

A long-term U. S. man, a professor, complained often of his Japanese partner never having an opinion of her own, even about where to take a weekend trip or what to eat.  The American wanted her honest feeling regardless of potentially having her opinion overruled.  Having “no opinion” created comfort in the Japanese woman while not in the U. S. man. It rather limited the scope and depth of the bicultural relationship.  The man did not value awaseru, to adjust, adapt, or match, as the woman did because without ‘the truth’, her shōjiki, how could he know that he was pleasing her? 

She on the other hand was practicing enryo, hesitation, in order to let him choose.  Whatever his decision, she was sure that she was happier to awasu, to adjust to his preferences and would easily gaman, endure, the consequences.  She would be ‘the wise hawk that hides its talons’ – No aru taka wa tsume o kakusu.

Here Are the Tools for Cultural Exploration

Kotowaza (sayings and proverbs – some are the same as sayings and proverbs in English) can uncover deeper values and assumptions, which are often unknown to non-Japanese (Galef & Hashimoto, 1987).  Kotowaza, like those from Confucius or Musashi, reveal models for strategic thinking and behaviors and can provide a basis for conversations about different styles of communication. 

In this case the Japanese wife chose to enryo, hesitation, and awasu, to adapt to his expressed wishes.  The husband chose to act in a way that could have conveyed rikutsuppoi, argumentative, or display what she may have perceived as ki ga tsuyoi, strong mindedness, and jikoshucho, self- assertiveness, not characteristics admired in Japan.  

Learning Through Experimentation

Differences across these two cultures due to assumptions about integrity, honesty, persuasion, and adjustment often result in dissatisfaction within the marriage. However, just deeper understanding is inadequate without exploring the necessary changes in attitude, accepting the conflicting values, and experimenting with new behaviors.

One Pathway to Conflict Resolution

There are two social paths by which to display integrity.   One is by being honest; the other is by being harmonious.   In Japan, Prince Shotoku Taishi wrote in 604 A. D. “Above all, there is harmony” in what is known as Japan’s first constitution. 

Honesty is not as core a value in Japan as in the U.S. due to the predominance of tatemae rather than honne in the language, which enables the construction of greater harmony. 

One kotowaza shows the necessity of what Americans call lying; Uso mo hoben, similarly, ‘a white lie is a necessary evil’ teaches us that lying is sometimes expedient in order to save face and build harmony, as in diplomacy or office politics.

How Japanese and Americans Sustain Love in Bicultural Marriages in Japan

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Authors: Clifford H. Clarke and Naomi Takashiro

Intercultural lovers experience many challenges in attempts to build bicultural marriages. In this article, we consider the key issues that arise in the dozens of bicultural marriages we have known through observation of interactions and interviews in Japan. We clarify misinterpretations by use of kotowaza or proverbs and sayings that illuminate the values behind the cultural interactions. Understanding the deeper values leads to modified interpretations of each other’s behavior that become more isomorphic and mutually acceptable to partners committed to constructing together a successful Third-Culture Marriages.

A Third-Culture Marriage (TCM) builds upon earlier concepts of Ruth & John Useem’s (1967) Third-Culture Kid (TCK) and David Pollock’s (1999) Adult TCK.

What Is Third Culture Building Model?

Fred Casmir (1993, 1999) recognized the need for a building model or conceptual framework for individuals interacting across cultures for extended duration.  He developed the conceptual Third Culture Building Model (TCBM), which inspired Clarke & Takashiro (2019) to research and develop an applied process of communicating between Third-Cultural Marriage partners in Japan.

The Third-Cultural Marriage is defined by its process wherein two partners from different original cultures commit to a lifetime of utilizing periodic processes to investigate each other’s perceptions, values, and communication styles with approaches grounded in intercultural communication competencies. The goal of the Third-Cultural Marriage is to sustain commitment to the relationship in a way that demonstrates increasing mutual understanding, respect, appreciation, empathy, trust and love.

The Third-Culture Marriage interaction process they developed was built upon Barnlund’s (1976) holistic interpretation of intercultural communication processes and Ruben and Kealey’s (1979) augmented seven intercultural communication competencies.

In their recent chapter 51 in the International Handbook of Love, Clarke & Takashiro (2021)elaborated on the eight primary qualities summarized below.  These eight primary qualities below are not sequential steps of interaction processes but rather must be applied simultaneously with consistent awareness.

Here Are Eight Primary Qualities of the Third-Culture Marriage Interaction

  1. For Third-Cultural Marriage (TCM) creation, instead of trying to fit into others’ categories, construct together from your own experiences, with new definitions and communication scenarios, the intercultural interactions that are relevant to each partner. The ICC (Intercultural Communication Competencies) that are required is that of personalizing one’s perceptions, in other words, the ability to communicate one’s own values, beliefs, and assumptions as personal and not universally applicable and accept that personal preferences may need modification or to be changed altogether. This usually requires learning about oneself by analyzing how it impacts its new environment, the society and the marriage.
  2. TCM focuses on creating a process for communicating about any issues of your choice that you would like to create clarity around, such as making sense of each other’s attitude or approach to something or interpreting what each partner perceives as common sense in order to build common grounds. Develop mutual commitment to your communication process even as you make changes together along the way. It is this process that is your goal rather than building final unchangeable standards. The ICC skill for this process is being non-judgmental about whatever one hears from one’s partner, while seeking to understand and accept whatever that may be. 
  3. TCM is based on principles of fairness and democracy, focus on each other as equals and build an atmosphere of caring and respecting the other, avoiding confronting or trying to persuade each other. No one’s needs take priority over the other’s needs. An ICC for this quality is to communicate respect in a way that is acceptable to the other partner and that requires listening to the other’s preferred ways of receiving respect that generate happiness and self-esteem. 
  4. TCM requires a process that searches for new insights to oneself as well as the other’s including personal backgrounds, preferences, knowledge, and feelings. Think of this process as an exploration into the unknown of both parties and a negotiation that constructs shared experiences and new learnings. ICC that support this process are perseverance and patience because the end of the process never ends. For such sharing patience needs to be demonstrated and not only felt internally. Patience is required because exploring the culture that each partner brings to the relationship and then constructing together a new culture takes dedication and perseverance. 
  5. TCM processes are engaged with mutual enthusiasm and deliberateness. It requires conscious effort and discipline to establish structures, systems, artifacts, shared values, and styles of communicating that can enrich the quality of the couple’s lives together. Their process should be aimed at creating trust, respect, and meaningful interactions that both partners can understand, explain, and support. The ICC skill for this process is to show an ability to tolerate ambiguity when working together without demanding clarification or conformity to one’s own standard or common sense.
  6. TCM is grounded in proactive communication that avoids crises, conflicts, and problems because it takes a proactive problem-solving approach that can enable healthy interactions with modifications of external circumstances or ingrained cultural behaviors. The ICC skill for a proactive problem-solving approach is to display personal empathy for the partner when a situation seems to be creating a problem. The challenge is to learn how to exhibit empathy in the partner’s preferred way. That requires keen observation, trial and error, or inquiry in a way that shows appreciation for any answer. 
  7. TCM is strengthened by a striving for positive outcomes that will be beneficial and satisfactory to both partners for the present and into the future. It is designed to enable partners to build, create, and shift frameworks if needed by any situation but does not advocate any specific outcome as it is a process for constructing a new culture for a third culture marriage of partners from two different cultures. An ICC skill that suits this process is demonstrating role flexibility by the willingness to experience new roles within the marriage and the society, as an active learner eager to try new behaviors with the partner. 
  8. TCM definitely requires time because it is a communication process that serves to integrate thoughts, feelings, and behaviors from two cultures into one new culture. It requires of partners considerable reflection, exploration of new information, new standards or norms for the new culture.  Expanding one’s behavioral repertoire also requires practice with mutual support. The ICC skill needed for integrating diverse thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the partners is a demonstration of perpetual reciprocal concern for each other. Concern for another is a feeling of compassion that is best communicated by action with or without words.

The foundational ICC that were mentioned in these eight steps are the authors’ modifications on Ruben & Kealey’s (1979) Intercultural Communication Competencies. (Refer to: Clarke & Takashiro, 2021)

We believe these pieces of advice and experiences about sustaining love and building bicultural marriages among partners in Japan will be helpful for partners living in bicultural marriages not only in Japan but also in other countries.

Authors: Clifford H. Clarke and Naomi Takashiro

Love and Loving in Middle-Class Pakistan

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The article by Ammara Maqsood, Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at University College London, tells us the modern story of love in Pakistan and how modern urban women manage their desire for love in Pakistan.

Traditional marriages in Pakistan are arranged marriages. However, I previously talked about how love coexists with modern arranged marriages in Pakistan. I also explained the controversies surrounding love marriage in Pakistan.

Modern transformations in the notions of love, romantic love, intimacy, and conjugal relationships occur in Pakistan as well as in South Asia overall. The author challenges the traditional depiction of the transitional processes of love transformation in Pakistani culture as a straight lineal transition from the cultural values of ‘traditional’ (collective) obligations to the values of individual desires in modern individualistic societies.

Taking these ideas as a starting point, the author of this article examines how different types of intimacy coexist in a middle-class urban setting in Pakistan. The author does this by concentrating on the emotional experiences and modern relationships of young mobile women of the middle class in Lahore and Karachi, the two major cities in Pakistan.

“Within these families, like elsewhere in Pakistan in other South Asian contexts, arranged marriages are the norm, both in prevalence and in social approval. However, love unions, in the form of love-cum-arranged marriages – where partners engage in a pre-marital romance but then seek parental approval and follow typical marriage proceedings – and elopements that are on the rise.”

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 3).

How Different Ideas of Love in Pakistan Coexist

The article highlights the ways in which different ideals of love and intimacy coexist, the ways in which they are entangled in everyday practices, and the places, situations, and spaces in which they separate.

Young women, who live mostly in joint-family arrangements, need to negotiate between two values in their lives. On the one hand, they value their private desires for a life within a nuclear family and the associated forms of consumption. On the other hand, they respect the economic pressures and emotional obligations that necessitate their collective living in the nuclear family.

They live in a persistent presence of liminality, the psychological process of transitioning across the boundaries and borders of these two groups of values. In these conditions and contexts of their lives, the women make it possible for these competing desires to be experienced and managed in a certain way.

Love in Liminality

In this cultural context, their understanding of liminality opens their doors to experimentation and potentiality and provides a space in which they experience novel desires and behaviors.

However, at the same time, their “emotion work” to manage these situations and controversies bends and brings these new emotional paths into line with the moral codes that are culturally common in Pakistani society.

One young woman, who had married against her family’s wishes, commented on the hurt that she experienced when

“none of the women in the family did come to her wedding. Her husband’s family organised a small event, to mark the marriage, and invited her family members, in a bid to normalise relations. In response, her two brothers came but left without eating. She said, ‘more than anything, I felt bad .. still feel sad … that my younger sister in law did not come. My mother, I can understand, she was forbidden but she loves me, but my sister in law, she could have convinced my brother [her husband]’

(Maqsood, 2021, p. 7).

Professor Ammara Maqsood also tells in her article other dramatic stories of love and marriage in modern Pakistani urban cultures.

As the author concludes, these individual experiences are not gradual transformations from collective to individualistic ties and persona values. These young women do not disrupt pre-existing ethical codes. These emotional practices are rather the management of differing demands and desires that constitute ‘feeling’ middle-class.

“Friends with Benefits”: Single Men and Women in Relationships

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Throughout the last couple of centuries, traditional ideals of romantic love have suggested people find their soul mate, marry the loved one, have children, and live happily ever after. The cultural beliefs in love marriages have long shaped people’s dreams of a happy married life and kids.

However, many modern single men and women can also experience joy and be apparently happy in their lives. It turns out that for many, being single doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Marriage may appear to be desirable, but it is not always a necessary condition of well-being and happiness. 

Kim Mills, in her recent interview with Geoff MacDonald, a professor at the University of Toronto in Canada, asked:

“Now when you’re studying people who are single, does that mean that they can’t have relationships, that they can’t have intimacy with other people?”

“Speaking of Psychology: Living a happy single life,” Episode 215

In his answer to the question, Geoff MacDonald explained that single men and women have lots of opportunity for relationships and intimacies with their friends and family relationships.

Being single, they still have romantic and sexual connections. Culturally, over the last few decades, social norms of relationships have shifted toward more variety and flexibility. Currently, social norms allow more opportunities for casual relationships and sexual encounters. The line between dating and not dating is blurry. For instance, people can be some kind of “friends with benefits.”

What Is a “Friend with Benefits” Relationship?

What kind of relationship does a “friend with benefits” have?

As Geoff MacDonald comments,

“We know that there are a number of single people who tell us that they’re sexually active. And what we do know is that single people who are higher in sexual satisfaction tend to be happier with singlehood.”

The data, on the other hand, suggests that

“Singles who are happier with their sex lives are also more likely to end up in relationships down the road.”

As Geoff MacDonald further explains, it is possible that

“…being with people in sexual and romantic relationships, it’s not shopping for a product where if you don’t like it you take it back. The human heart works such that relationships are kind of sticky. And even when you are in casual sexual relationships, for example, next thing you know you’re leaving a toothbrush, and next thing you’re leaving a set of pajamas, and next thing you know it’s easier to just move in because you’re already spending three nights a week there.”

So, it is likely that

“even though sexual satisfaction is definitely something that’s associated with happiness in singlehood, that might also indicate somebody who’s on the road to being in a committed romantic relationship.”

Geoff MacDonald, “Speaking of Psychology: Living a happy single life,” Episode 215

How “Progression Bias” Works

“Progression bias” is the tendency of people to make decisions that sustain relationships rather than dissolve them. For example, Samantha Joel and Geoff MacDonald (2021), in their recent study, showed emerging evidence of a progression bias in romantic relationships.

People are biased to make pro-relationship decisions over the course of relationship progression, according to the authors. In other words, they feel predisposed to making choices that favor the initiation, advancement, and maintenance of their romantic relationships.

Progression bias takes place in the contexts of relationship initiation, investment, and breakup decisions.

“getting into a relationship is often easier than getting out of one, and why being in a less desirable relationship is often preferred over being in no relationship at all.”

(Joel & MacDonald, 2021, p. 317).

“Progression bias” occurs in a situation:  

“when you get into a casual sexual relationship, and then it’s all of a sudden you find yourself more and more committed.”

Geoff MacDonald provides a couple of reasons why this “progression bias” can occur in the course of relationships. One of these is the evolutionary explanation.

In the cases of such relationship development, the mere exposure effect can be another psychological mechanism at work, supporting the progression bias.

How Marriage Evolved Into Singlehood

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In people’s minds, love and marriage relationships have been deeply associated with wellbeing and happiness. For a long time, many women and some men thought that marriage would bring them happiness in life. Yet, something unexpected occurred by the end of the 20th century.

Cultural Evolution of Marriage in the Second Half of the 20th Century

The cultural evolution of marriage and family since the middle of the late 20th century has been surprising for many people. Many social scientists did not anticipate these changes in marital relationships that occurred in many European and North American countries. 

In these and other modern Western societies, the “golden age of marriage” of the 1950s and 1960s brought to life the cultural ideologies of “love marriage” and “sexual revolution.”

As a result of cultural progress in relationships, women and men in love marriages should presumably become happier. Yet, the unpredictable evolution of marriage in the late 20th century reversed those romantic cultural ideals.

What Happened with Marriage and Family in the Late 20th Century?

In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, many dramatic changes occurred in marital and family relationships, both in positive and negative ways. Marriage became less popular among both men and women. Many significantly delayed their decisions to marry. Marriages became shorter-lived and ended in divorce.

Some simply did not wish to get married at all. Alternatives to marriage, such as cohabitation, have become common. Living together but not officially getting married became a frequent practice. Many men and women no longer consider marriage to be necessary in order to conceive, become pregnant, and have a child.

In the late 20th century, the cultural evolution of marriage led to a different model of parenthood. Many women postponed giving birth to a child and waited even later to get married. Unmarried women were more favorable for childbearing. Couples wanted fewer children.

Many men did not want to marry and take on marital and family responsibilities. They liked having relationships with women, but they didn’t want to be as emotionally or financially involved. They preferred to enjoy the pleasures of romantic relationships without commitments and obligations.

Thus, the cultural model of love-based marriage that triumphed as a socially normative value and practice in the 1950s and 1960s waned at the end of the 20th century. The value of marriage and family as love unions faded while the value of singlehood grew in the minds of many men and women in Western modernized societies.

Why Modern Men and Women Prefer to Be Single

According to recent data from the Pew Research Center (2019), more Americans than ever before are single. About half of all Americans are single. And nearly three out of ten adult Americans are not in a committed relationship.

They live with a partner in a committed or not-committed relationship without being married. About half of those singles said they were not looking for a relationship and not interested in dating. Many are perfectly happy to stay that way.

Meanwhile, simply looking at marriage rates reveals that the number of singles is even higher. According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately half of all American adults, or approximately 127 million people, are unmarried. Those singles are an interesting bunch. Some people have never married. Some are divorced, while others are widowed. They are either older or younger. Some of them are parents. Others do not have children. All of these factors, as well as many others, may influence how people perceive singlehood.

So, the questions arise:

  • Whether the old belief that “marriage is important for happiness” is not valid anymore.
  • And whether single men and women can be no less happy than married ones

“What makes some people happy with singlehood while others are not?”

What Happened with Marriage in the Late 20th Century?

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The middle of the 20th century, from the 1950s to the 1960s, was the “golden age of marriage” and the triumph of romantic love. Many modern societies have experienced the rise of the cultural ideologies of “love marriage” and “sexual revolution.” The number of marriages increased above 90%. By the 1960s, the popularity of love marriage had become nearly universal. Becoming married appeared to be the happy destiny of romantic love. Men and women tended to marry at a young age (see Karandashev, 2017, for a review).

After more than 150 years of striving for romantic love ideals, love had a triumph and conquered marriage (Coontz 2005). The cultural ideals established the new norms of the love-based marriage in North America and Western Europe, as well as in many other modern countries.

However, the “golden age of marriage” of the 1950s and 1960s, which promised to make people happy in love marriages, surprising reversal of romantic cultural ideals.

Love conquered marriage after more than 150 years of striving for romantic love ideals (Coontz, 2005). The cultural ideals established the new norms of love-based marriage in North America, Western Europe, and many other modern countries. The “golden age of marriage” of the 1950s and 1960s promised to make people happy in love marriages.

 However, the popularity of romantic cultural ideals and marriage began to decline.

What happened in the late 20th century with the cultural evolution of marriage?

A Turning Point at the End of Marriage’s Golden Age

In the 1960s, marriage seemed to have achieved the right balance between love and social stability. Love-based marriage encouraged the right to choose a marital partner. That cultural ideology valued romantic love and personal choice over inherited social ties and family obligations. Young and educated people, especially women, found this cultural perspective on marriage to be very appealing (see Karandashev, 2017).

However, something unexpected happened with the ideals of love marriage. Significant cultural changes started to take place in the opposite direction in the late 1970s. Cultural evolution turned out to be too fast and too drastic. Instead of evolutionary progress, it became a cultural revolution.

What Changed in Love and Marriage in the Late 20th Century?

Mid-1970s love, sex, and marriage attitudes and behaviors changed too quickly. The radical cultural ideas reversed “traditional” marriage. Many of these changes occurred because of the unfulfilled marital expectations of men and women. Their dissatisfaction grew when they did not meet their marriage ideals of love, intimacy, and partnership. Many failed to find happiness in marriage.

The Age and Length of Marriage in the Second Half of the 20th Century

Love marriage had become a common cultural norm in many societies by the 1960s. Marriage appeared to be the happy destiny of the romantic love dreams of youngsters (see Karandashev, 2017, for a review).

In general, men and women married at a young age, and their marriages lasted longer than at any time in European and American history. For example, in 1900, the average marriage in America and Europe lasted 11 years. During the “golden age of marriage” of the 1950s, marriages lasted on average 31 years. However, between 1966 and 1979, the age when men and women married increased. However, the length of marriage shortened, and divorce rates accelerated and doubled by the 2000s. The marriages in the 2000s lasted, on average, seven years.

There was good news and bad news about the evolution of marriage by the early 2000s. The positive trend was that the number of divorces had been going down steadily over the last few decades of the 20th century. The negative trend was that fewer men and women were getting married at all.

The Declining Number of Marriages in the Late 20th Century

Another alarming trend of the late 20th century was the decline of marriages overall. In particular, by the late 1970s, there were high divorce rates as well as a decline in the number of people remarrying after divorce.

New alternatives to marriage, like cohabitation, emerged. Living together without registering the marriage became quite widespread. In the United States of America, for instance, the number of unmarried couples cohabiting increased seven times between the years 1970 and 1999.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many couples usually decided to get married when a woman became pregnant. However, in the 1990s, women and men no longer considered marriage as important to become pregnant or give birth. By the early 2000s, nearly 40% of cohabiting couples in the United States had children under the age of 18 living with them (Seltzer 2004; Smock & Gupta 2002, see for review Karandashev, 2017, p. 168).

What Happened After the Golden Age of Marriage?

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Social scientists coined the term “golden age of marriage,“ referring to the period in the middle of the 20th century. In the 1950s and 1960s, the cultural ideology of “love marriage” and a number of marriages became popular and prevalent in many European countries, the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and some other modernized societies across the world. According to statistics, more than 90% of all women and men wanted to marry, and they married at a young age. Marriage had become nearly universal in those countries by the 1960s (for a review, see Karandashev, 2017).

The Triumph of the Love-Marriage Cultural Ideology

Love finally conquered marriage and transformed marital relationships (Coontz 2005). The ideals of romantic love, emotional closeness, and sexual satisfaction for both partners became accepted by educated and liberal people, especially those of a young age. The love ideology implied the possibility for men and women to select the bride and groom of their personal choice according to their preferences and love ideals.

The ideals of love marriage also anticipated companionate love relationships and partnerships. Happiness among married partners was expected to be high, and it was frequently found to be so. The divorce rate remained stable. They enjoyed personal freedom in their marital relationships. Married couples had a strong sense of autonomy from their extended family.

Sex and Marriage in the Golden Age of Marriage

In the 1960s and 1970s, sex became a private matter between two individuals. Men and women became more interested in the issues of sexual relationships and sexual pleasure. America and Europe were experiencing a sexual revolution. 

Women’s sexual attitudes changed. Previously, a woman could not achieve full sexual equality because of cultural reservations in this regard. New cultural norms not only permitted sexual pleasure for women but also encouraged it. The sexual revolution of the time recognized men and women’s sexual equality to have sexual satisfaction. 

The fear of an undesired pregnancy also played a role. While she and her partner could have “fun,” only she was primarily responsible for a child. Therefore, couples who had free premarital sex were expected to marry eventually (Murstein 1974, pp. 441–442).

The Beginning of the End of the Golden Age of Marriage

In the 1960s, marriage appeared to have found the optimal balance between the personal freedom of a love match and the constraints necessary for social stability. The ideology of love-based marriage affirms the right of the individual to choose his or her own spouse. Additionally, this cultural ideology emphasized the importance of the individual over inherited wealth and an ethnic group.

Social scientists predicted that many societies across the world would soon adopt this marriage pattern and these cultural values. This perspective on marital relationships was very appealing to young and educated individuals, particularly women (see Karandashev, 2017).

What Happened to Love Marriage Cultural Ideals? 

Surprisingly to many, significant changes began to occur in the opposite direction. In the late 1970s, the cultural revolution took place at a too fast pace and too drastically, getting out of control. The radical ideas of the late 1960s and early 1970s did not transform but overturn “traditional” marriage. Various changes in the realm of relationships occurred in the 1970s and 1980s.

The pace of change in marriage attitudes and behaviors became too fast in the mid-1970s. Many of these transformations likely occurred because people did not meet their needs in marriages. Men and women initially sought to find their fulfillment at home. However, when their idealistic expectations for marriage were not met, their discontent grew. Accordingly, people became critical of the lack of intimacy and unsatisfying relationships with their spouses. When they hoped to achieve personal happiness and tried to make this happen within marriage, their expectations failed. Personal discontent with 1950s marital intimacy ideals, combined with economic and political changes in the 1960s and 1970s, most likely overturned 1950s gender roles and marriage patterns.

An American Professor of History and Family Studies, Stephanie Coontz, commented in her book that “it took more than 150 years to establish the love-based, male breadwinner marriage as the dominant model in North America and Western Europe,” but “it took less than 25 years to dismantle it” (Coontz, 2005, p. 247).

The Golden Age of Love Marriage in Western Societies

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Love marriage appears to be a valuable cultural value in many countries throughout Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as many other modernized societies around the world. However, it was not always true in history. In the 20th century, industrialization, urbanization, increased social mobility, and social and cultural modernization brought the hope that love would finally conquer marriage.

When Was Love Marriage’s Golden Age? 

It turns out that the decade of the 1950s, which began in 1947 in the United States and lasted until the early 1960s there and until the late 1960s in Western Europe, was a truly remarkable time for marriage. Romantic love transformed marriage in the 20th century. Love finally conquered marriage. Romantic love and sexual fulfillment became the realities of premarital and marital relationships. In the Western world, marriage entered its heyday during this time period.

In that decade, there was a surge of support for the view that a happy marriage should be one in which each spouse feels they have received their fair share of sexual satisfaction, emotional closeness, and the opportunity to realize their full potential. The majority of people believed that they would not only find the greatest happiness in marriage but also the greatest meaning in their lives. Marriage had become nearly universal by the 1960s in many western European countries and North America (see for review, Karandashev, 2017).

What Was Good About the Golden Age of Marriage?

During that period, about 95% of all men and women strived to marry and married younger. During the 1950s, the norm of young marriage was so prevalent that an unmarried woman as young as twenty-one might be concerned about becoming an “old maid.” Many men and women relished the opportunity of courting and dating the partners of their own choice. They enjoyed marrying at their leisure and establishing their own households. The life span increased, married people felt happy, and divorce rates held steady. Married couples felt independent of their extended family ties. They enjoyed the freedom of their marital relationships (Coontz 2005, pp. 226–228).

By the 1960s, it looked like marriage had found the perfect balance between the personal freedom of a love match and the limitations needed for social stability.

Would the Golden Age of Marriage Spread Throughout the World?

Many social scientists thought that as industrialization spread around the world, love-based marriage and the male breadwinner family would replace the many other marriage and family systems in collectivistic societies. They predicted that love marriages would prevail over the consanguinity and arranged marriages widespread across many societies in traditional cultures.

For example, American sociologist William Goode (1917–2003), an expert on family life and divorce, conducted cross-cultural analyses of marriage and divorce across many societies. He examined family data from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, India, China, and Japan available at the time.

Based on his analysis, Goode revealed that the above-mentioned cultural evolution of conjugal family systems and the “love patterns” in mate selection were evident in all of these world regions and societies. In his pioneering and seminal book “World Revolution and Family Patterns” (1963), he presented these results and conclusions in an explicit and direct way.

People across cultures prioritized their material and psychological investments in the nuclear family as well as their emotional needs. They believed that each spouse could legitimately expect to rely on the other, prioritize their relationship, and put their loyalty to their partner ahead of their responsibilities to their parents.

The Love Marriage Ideology 

According to William Goode (1959), the ideology of love-based marriage declares the individual’s right to choose his or her own spouse. This cultural ideology also emphasized the value of the individual over inherited wealth and ethnic group. Goode provided statistics and other data to show that love marriages were gaining popularity around the world at the time.

Many social scientists agreed with Goode and supported this conclusion. They believed that in Western societies, love marriage and the nuclear family increased their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s. They thought that the cultural evolution of marriage had prevailed in Europe and North America and had reached its culmination.

Their scientific prediction was that the rest of the world’s cultures would soon follow this marriage pattern that will soon be prevalent across many societies. This way of thinking about relationships was very appealing to young and educated people, especially women (see for review, Karandashev, 2017).

The Italian Value of Beauty and Love

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Many cultural characteristics distinguish national beauty standards. In this and previous articles, I describe Italian beauty based on many sources from the last several centuries. Let us explore the archival legacy of love scholarship (Finck, 1887/2019). Here are some of the ways that Henry Finck and other writers of the 19th century described the beauty of Italy. 

The origin of Italian beauty is in the mixture of cultures that evolved from the contacts with Greeks and Africans in the south and the barbarian invasions in the north of the country.

What Makes Italian Beauty Natural?

An English poet, Lord Byron, characterized Italy as “the garden of the world” and said that its “very weeds are beautiful.” These unique qualities can be due to the race as well as the soil. It is because they live in a garden, where the air is balmy and the sun is mellow. Italians can, to some extent, disregard personal hygiene laws. They can thrive in the conditions that would torture others to death.

The cosmetic value of fresh air and sunshine is striking in Italy.

Miss Margaret Collier notes in her book “Our Home by the Adriatic” that in rural Italian communities, even among the wealthy, requesting a bath raises concerns about one’s health.

And Berlioz referred to Italian peasant girls in one of his writings:

 “Carrying heavy copper vessels and faggots on their heads; but all so wretched, go miserable, so tattered, so filthily dirty, that, in spite of the beauty of the race and the picturesqueness of their costume, all other feelings are swallowed up in one of utter compassion.”

Berlioz also spoke of “the beauty of the race,” notwithstanding the national indifference to the laws of cleanliness.

Italian Beauty, Love, and Marriage

The value of beauty and love in matrimonial relationships in the 19th century varied across social groups of Italians.

In rural regions, French cultural practices regarding marriage appear to be prevalent. Miss Collier recalls a young woman who came to see her to wish her luck in her upcoming wedding. When Miss Collier asked the girl the name of her future husband, the girl answered naively, “I don’t know; papa has not yet told me that.”

The peasants, on the other hand, had the freedom to choose their own mates. So, the value of Italian beauty was most prevalent among them. Individual mate selection was also more permissible in nineteenth-century France. Instead of being cynical and making fun of it, the Italians worshiped love as if it were a law.