Social institutions are a living and therefore, ever-changing dynamic that both drive and reflect the state of society.
There is much talk about the decline of marriage, especially among conservatives who exploit it as a fear tactic to try to turn back the clock on social change like LGBTQ+ and women’s rights.
It is therefore surprising to learn that in 2022 marriages saw a surge, while divorces took a dive.
For the past two decades, the number of marriages stayed around 7 to 8 per 1,000 people a year, according to new data released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
But in 2020, during the Covid 19 pandemic, the marriage rate went down to 5.1 per 1,000 people, the data showed. The rate started to climb the next year, and by 2022, the number of marriages had reached 6.2 per capita and over 2 million in a year, according to the report.
At first glance the surge could be explained merely as the rebound from the slowdown that occurred in all social functions thanks to the lockdown from the pandemic. Life essentially came to a standstill.
But according to Marissa Nelson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Washington, DC., there is more to it than that. Trends suggest that we are changing the ways we pick our partners. Out with sexual attraction, in with “friendship.”
Ian Kerner, a licensed marriage and family therapist and CNN contributor, stated, “In my practice over the last decade, I’ve noticed a gradual shift from the ‘romantic marriage’ to the ‘companionate marriage,’ meaning that people are increasingly choosing spouses at the outset who are more like best friends than passion-partners.”
Is romance dead? Attraction has been the cornerstone of marriage in Western societies, but it has never been a priority in societies where arranged marriage was the norm. In countries like India and China—or for that matter in Western societies before the twentieth century—there were many other considerations that were more important in the choice of a life partner. Factors like cultural affinity, financial stability, advantageous in-law networks, these are prime examples. As popular wisdom suggested in these cultures, “love grows with a shared life.”
As experts like Kern and Nelson suggest, today people seem to be choosing partners based on qualities likely to promote long-term stability and satisfaction.
“At its bare minimum, the concept of commitment implies the experience of being bonded with another. At its very best, it means being bonded with someone who is a consistent safe and secure home base that will be there for you in the face of any adversities,” said Dr. Monica O’Neal, a Boston psychologist, in a recent CNN article.
The Covid lockdown may have contributed to the rise of the trend, as being forced into close proximity presented couples with unprecedented challenges, but also made them reflect about how they approached important things like finances, compromise and autonomy. Nelson calls this new reflection, “intentionality.” Many people walked out of that experience with a better sense of what they need in a life partner, and romance was not it.
At the same time, divorce rates are going down and intentionality may also be behind this trend.
In 2022, the divorce rate was 2.4 per 1,000 people. Although that isn’t the lowest it has ever been – in 2021, it was 2.3 – it continues a downward trend, according to the data.
By comparison, the rate of divorces in 2000 was 4 per 1,000, which means the current rate is a big decline from two decades earlier.
The lockdown forced a lot of couples to face problems in their relationship head-on, Nelson said, and while that may have led to some broken marriages, in more cases it led to laying better groundwork for a stable future.
Other changes over the past two decades may also have helped drive the positive rate for marriage and negative rate for divorces: therapy has become more normalized, roles in marriages have become more flexible, and people are more used to talking openly about how they want their marriages to work.
The takeaway from these trends? If we are to believe these experts, it takes more than physical attraction and romance to make a marriage work. You’re probably better off marrying a partner who offers affinity, companionship and stability rather than an exciting sex life.
