“First comes love, then comes marriage …” why though?

by Anne

A visual depiction of asking for one’s hand in marriage. (Pay close attention to 1. Affect, 2. Colors, 3. Setting, 4. Whose face was chosen to be painted.) (Renoir, 1870)

I’m so excited that summer of ‘25 is psychology summer! I always joke that psychology is not a field that you choose, but a field that chooses you. Particularly when you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. For me, I began cementing my feet into the world of psychology a few months after ONE OF THE WORST EXPERIENCES OF MY LIFE. Anyone who knows psychology knows that it is deeply connected and rooted in philosophy. In essence, philosophy is the formalization of question asking. I mention this because sometimes we do not have the humility to really look inside ourselves and ask "why" until something requires us to. There's something about being at the lowest point of your life that makes you sit down and ask: "what", "why", "how", and so on. Voluntary hospitalization was my something. I just so happened to want to study my ailment and the systems surrounding them rather than being defined by them! But that all started with asking myself tough questions, just like the one this piece is about. 

At the very bottom of this post is a link to a playlist that is the personalization of me. 

After I created it, I texted Hailo this, and it's so true!

I can't grab tea with everyone who comes across this post, but you can listen to this playlist while you drink tea and think of me kindly.

Acknowledgment: I am a cisgender woman in a monogamous relationship with a straight cisgender man. I acknowledge that my identity shapes how I see the world and influences my arguments. I welcome and encourage your critique, as my gender and sexual identities are often positions of relative privilege, which may create blind spots. I also understand that this is a controversial topic, along with the subtopics I reel in to support my "claims". I did my best at honoring inclusivity of gender, sexuality, etc. (while being mindful of length), but I am not perfect, and neither is this piece. Please assume positive intentions.

With the utmost respect,

Anne

I went shopping for engagement rings last week! Originally, I wanted a minimalistic ring with a small diamond, but now I really want something big that I can pass down.

Definitions and clarifications: 

• Can: used to indicate possibility (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-a). 

• Likely: having a high probability of occurring or being true: very probable (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b).

• Rationality: having reason or understanding (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-c)

• Gross Domestic Product (GDP): the total amount of products a country produces within its borders. Typically, excluding territories.

• “Women” should be interpreted as a replacement for “me and my friends”

• Young women = “me and my friends”

• Darwinism is a theory. It is not a fact.

Last night I was having a conversation with my boyfriend (as one does). The conversation came from us discussing our plans for the weekend. This Saturday, he was planning on driving down to his aunt's house to celebrate the 4th of July. The family has been through some tough times over the past few weeks to months. His mother was an anchor in many storms (She is one of the strongest women I know). In appreciation for all that she does, the extended family decided to throw her a party in celebration of her, alongside celebrating the 4th. As he was explaining Saturday’s plans and convincing me to come (I can be such a hermit/work-focused at times), he mentioned that his cousin would be proposing to his long-term girlfriend. This means that they were going to enter a marriage.

I always stiffened up at that eight-letter word. For one, I find it irrational to have such a complicated relationship with a string of letters that produce a particular sound when spoken. For two, I’m not sure what it means to me, besides what Merriam-Webster defines it as, and what society has bespoken it to be. For three, it has been a predominate thought in my head since I was thirteen.

Rationally, financially, and logistically, I understand the value in marriage. What I do not understand is why young women seem to center it significantly more than young men do.

At YSOM, I brought this up to an associate professor and realized that my premise is flawed. My primary question should be: Do young women really center marriage more than young men? Because this is not a formal proclamation of inquiry of any kind (I’m just thinking publicly.), I’m going to speak from a gut-level only and that happens to begin with a heuristic: young women center marriage more than young men. Why?

It's something that I've done and am trying not to do in my early 20s. When I grab lunch with my colleagues, who happen to mostly be young women in academia, the conversation somehow always spurs into romantic relationships (how to manage them alongside work, the two-body problem, family planning, etc). These topics almost never come up when I talk to male colleagues. Now, there are a bajillion reasons why there’s a lack of them in our conversations. I’ll spare you bajillion reasons and just provide three: 1) I’m a woman, 2) Because I am a woman, they may [correctly] assume I don’t really know what it’s like to navigate these things as a man, 3) it’s not really something they think about.

Like all things in my life, I brought it up to my partner, “Nick, when did you start thinking about wanting to get married?”

“It’s not really a dominating thought. It's more of an if it happens, that’s cool; if it doesn’t, that’s cool too, thought. Ideally, I’d like to be married, but, you know, I was never dreaming of it as an adolescent.”

“Huh.”

For Nick (a 22-year-old man), the thought of marriage was passive. It was not a box to check.

But for women (solely meaning, me and my close colleagues), the inverse was true. Thoughts of marriage have some centrality in our lives, irrespective of our relationship status. Oftentimes, they are present well before reaching the legal age of marriage.

He went on to say that, in an evolutionary sense, women might center marriage because their children are likely to have a higher success rate in terms of survival and self-actualization, and that historically, societies with high marital rates do better on average than those that do not have high marital rates.

To clarify: I am not saying that marriage rates, alone, determine a society’s success. They can be a marker (Lerman, 2002). Presently, in America, it is true that the greater your education level, the more likely it is that you will be married sometime in your life (Torr, 2011). Educational attainment is also frequently used as a marker of a society's “success”. This is a gross oversimplification, and because few people have taken a stats or research class, I want to emphasize that what I stated are two variables that are positively correlated to each other. This doesn't equal causation anymore than it makes it the rule. Marriage can be a byproduct of social stability, not necessarily the cause of it.

But I am not sure that is evolutionarily based or completely true. In Western Europe, cohabitation is much more prevalent than tying the knot (Eurostat, 2024).

 In as recent as 2020, it was found that 56.5% of children in Slovenia were born to parents who were unwed (World Population Review, n.d), but in 2023, the country was in the second spot for countries with the most doctorate holders (World Population Review, n.d). It should be considered that Slovenia also had a significantly lower GDP than the U.S., as well as universal healthcare. Additionally, the country was ranked 17th out of 41 in a 2021 UNICEF study ranking childcare and parental leave policies (UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti, 2021).

A higher level of cognition is required to get to: “Hmm, beyond the biological drive of just wanting to mate with this person, I also want them to be by my hip for the rest of our lives because me just mating with them has a high likelihood of us having children, especially if it's over a long period of time, and I want my children to be successful among the gene pool and…” (For the sake of this argument, let us pretend reproductive healthcare does not exist. Let’s also pretend everyone wants children.)

And that had me thinking about Darwin and the fifth edition of his book On the Origin of Species, and the theory of survival of the fittest, which is fundamentally biological (Darwin, 1869).

 He spent years breeding pigeons and used them to prove “if I can do this hullabaloo intentionally, nature is doing it unintentionally, over generations.”

We are obviously not pigeons. When we marry, we are consciously making the decision to stay with the person we may or may not mate with, but with whom we likely find reproductive ( “They’d be a great parent.”, “I want my children to have their eyes.”), emotional (“They’d be a great partner.”), and/or sexual value (“They’re hot.”) . Additionally, true monogamy (I.e., having sex with the same animal or plant exclusively) is exceptionally rare in the animal and plant kingdoms, respectively. 

What’s super cool is that animal friendships (inter and intra) often last many many years. 

The thought to marry someone for the rest of your physical lives is a conscious thought only rational human beings are capable of.

And that brings me to utilitarianism. Initially, the sum of the thirteen colonies we now call America belonged to Britain up until the tail end of the Age of Reason in Europe. This period gave the West, America more specifically, some of its defining values. Two seminal thinkers of this time were Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mills. For those unfamiliar with these guys’ whole spiel: Daddy Bentham created utilitarianism, Mills raised it. To honor the parental bomb, I just dropped: their baby was a theory that basically states outcomes justify actions. “Moral” outcomes are those that improve the well-being of all. “Moral” outcomes should be pursued, always.

If we toy with the idea of marriage increasing one’s ability to thrive/survive in a given environment for a bit, we can see that it aligns with one of the core premises of utilitarianism: the greatest good for the greatest number is the rational thing to do. The “moral” thing to do.

On marriage and “morality”: I’m trying to keep this a Substack post and not a book, but there is not one thing that this topic doesn’t touch and due to how controversial this may be, I feel the need to explain each pint profusely. I will likely have multiple parts!

So, again, why does the desire to be married seem stronger on the side of women, when marriage is supposed to be mutually and societally beneficial?

I really want you to think about why things are the way that they are and why! This is so important because so much of what the world tells you is valuable is covert and difficult to really get down to the nitty gritty of why it is!

Talk to me in the chat or in the comments!

Part 2 is coming soon. In the meantime, meditate on the question and listen to my playlist. <3

References

1. 4 Ever Green. (2020). 15 Best Animal Friendships in the World [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWNIcf9ftI

2. Darwin, C. (1869). On the origin of species (5th ed.)

3. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Can. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 4, 2025, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/can

4. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Likely. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 4, 2025, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/likely

5. Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-c). Rationality. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved August 4, 2025, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rationality

6. Torr, B. M. (2011). The changing relationship between education and marriage in the United States, 1940–2000. Journal of Family History, 36(4), 483–503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363199011416760 

7. UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. (2021). Where do rich countries stand on childcare? Innocenti Report Card 31. https://www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/where-do-rich-countries-stand-childcare

8. World Population Review. (n.d.). Out of wedlock births by country 2024. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/out-of-wedlock-births-by-country

9. World Population Review. (n.d.). PhD percentage by country 2024. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/phd-percentage-by-country