2022-11-22
52 分钟This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedantam.
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 relationships 2.0 series has explored new ways to think about how we engage with the people in our lives.
We've talked about how to build new bonds with others, how to strengthen the bonds we already have.
We've looked at how we can respond to conflict and how we can work through disagreements more effectively.
This week on Hidden Brain, we turn to our favorite episode about marriage.
We'll take a closer look at the history of this institution and why our expectations for marriage have changed so much in recent years.
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.
And we'll discuss ways to improve our love lives, sometimes by asking more of our relationships and sometimes by asking less.
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 Coons.