Courtship Today: The
View from Academia
By Daniel Cere
The Public interest Spring 2001
http://www..com/archives/2001spring/article2.html
Courtship charts pathways
to marriage. Its customs and rituals help individuals negotiate the complex
transition from sexual attraction, through love, to lasting marriage. It
provides, for better or worse, the moral and emotional education for married
life. And yet, courtship no longer occupies a vital place within contemporary
American culture; the word itself now seems quaint and outdated. Social
historians such as Beth Bailey and Ellen Rothman have documented the decay of
courtship traditions in twentieth-century
The decline of courtship
may reflect broader cultural trends. According to Anthony Giddens,
one of
However, as the
consequences of family fragmentation have become more apparent, there are signs
of a renewed interest in finding ways to strengthen marriage. A large body of
research shows that healthy marriages protect the well-being of spouses and
their children, and that a number of significant social costs are generated
when marriages fail. This renewed appreciation for marriage's importance may be
triggering some interest in the question of courtship. In the popular realm, a
number of new books on courtship, both secular and religious, have sold well.
Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider's popular 1996 book, The Rules, purports to
teach battle-scarred women a practical, no-nonsense script for finding a
fabulous husband. Joshua Harris's 1997 Christian best-seller, I Kissed Dating
Good-Bye, urges young people to eschew recreational dating and return to older
"scriptural" courtship practices. And Leon Kass
and Amy Kass's well-received anthology of readings on
courtship and marriage, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar, offers readers
wisdom on the nature of courtship and marriage culled from 5,000 years of the
Western tradition. The success of these books indicates a yearning among many
young people for clearer and more effective pathways to marriage than the
culture now provides. The spread of marriage education, in both schools and
religious communities, also suggests that the case for courtship is not
completely closed.
But what does contemporary
scholarship have to say about the courtship question? According to Norval Glenn, the dean of American family sociologists, the
study of courtship is now "virtually moribund." Academics do not
appear particularly interested in discussing pathways to marriage. There are,
however, a number of scholarly theories poking around into topics of related
interest: heterosexual attraction, mate selection, pair bonding, and close
relationships. Three schools of scholarly thought merit attention: exchange
theory, sociobiology, and close-relationship theory. While these approaches
contribute little to the study of courtship itself, they do provide fascinating
articulations of the dominant ideologies guiding today's discourse on
heterosexual pair bonding.
The commodification
of courtship
The contemporary cultural
disarray over dating, courtship, and mate selection reflects deep-seated historical
developments that have been the subject of scholarly discussion for a few
generations. The transition to modernity and then to postmodernity
was accompanied by a diminishment of social scripting of interpersonal
relationships, including sexual relationships, courtship, and marriage. Over 60
years ago, one of
Waller noted that new types
of bargains were being struck in the courtship process, "bargains which
have to do with merely the conditions of association outside of marriage."
Over the course of the twentieth century, dating and courtship patterns
gradually drifted into free-floating social space, devoid of any meaningful
connection to the goal of marriage. Rising rates of premarital sexuality,
cohabitation, and out-of-wedlock births since the 1960s signaled a decline in
the cultural and social stature of marriage as the unique repository of sexual
life and childbearing. These trends eroded the traditional connection of
courtship to marriage.
Critical social theorists
such as Eva Illouz in Consuming the Romantic Utopia
and Beth Bailey in From Front Porch to Back Seat have attempted to trace one
important aspect of this story, namely, the commodification
and commercialization of courtship practices in modern capitalist economies.
They argue that nineteenth-century courtship practices lay within the sphere of
civil society: Churches, families, kinship groups, and cultural communities
largely shaped courtship rites and practices. However, twentieth-century
courtship increasingly moved to the beat of modern capitalism. Courtship was driven
out of the home and into the marketplace: Movie theaters, automobiles,
restaurants, dance halls, and clubs, rather than homes, church halls, and
community celebrations, became the privileged spaces for courtship activity.
According to Bailey, the language of the market came to dominate academic
theories of courtship and romance, as well as popular culture:
As it emerged in the twentieth century, courtship largely was construed
and understood in models and metaphors of modern industrial capitalism. The new
system of courtship privileged competition (and worried about how to control
it); it valued consumption; it presented an economic model of scarcity and
abundance as a guide to personal affairs. The rules of the market were
consciously applied; the vocabulary of economic exchange defined acts of
courtship.
But a systematic application of economic theory to courtship
had to await the work of economist Gary Becker. It was Becker and his school's
special, but limited, achievement to apply the tools of the economist to the
arena of love, and to do so, moreover, at the very moment in history when the commodification of courtship was largely completed.
Exchange theory explicitly assumes that acts of marriage, like other acts, are
the choices of rational selves. "Persons marry," Becker wrote in his
1974 essay "A Theory of Marriage," "when the utility expected
from the marriage exceeds the utility expected from remaining single." In
the self-contained world of exchange theory, any desire, even the desire to love
and care for another human being, must be shoved within the cramped confines of
a person's "utility function."
Exchange theory views the passion and poetry of mate
selection as mere marketing strategies. The utility of a marriage depends on
the "commodities" produced by the potential partner: standards of
living, quantity and quality of children, sexual gratification, social status,
and others. The marriage market consists of three critical components: supply,
preferences, and resources. Men and women actively looking for a spouse
represent the "supply." "Preferences" are the
characteristics men or women, as customers, look for in a spouse.
"Resources" are the various attributes that men and women offer in
order to gain those preferences.
This "exchange theory" model of courtship, the
oldest of our three expert stories, is by no means dead. The "marriage
market" model, with all its bland economic vocabulary (supply and demand,
preferences, bargaining, exchange, and investment), continues to influence some
prominent discussions of mate selection - and still generates research into
such areas as the relationship between employment and the marriageability
of men.
For those interested in marriage as a social institution,
the advantage of this perspective is that it still views courtship as the
pathway to marriage. But in exchange theory, the marriage vow has been dumbed down to a mere contract intended to serve the narrow
interests of the individuals investing in the relationship. No-fault divorce
laws make marriage agreements far flimsier and more vulnerable to shifting
preferences than most business contracts. Exchange theory nicely reflects this
cultural shift and spotlights the increasingly utilitarian motivations that
guide entrance into these fragile marriage "deals."
Yet by assuming that, by definition, individuals act as
rational consumers, "exchange theory" is of limited use in
understanding the social and interpersonal aspects of courtship and marriage as
institutions. It fails to appreciate the irrational or unselfconscious ideas
that may move people to marriage and may keep them in it long after a
"rational consumer" would have traded in their old clunky model for a
jazzier new one. Many of the essential features of love - the longing for
permanence, the desire to give oneself to another - must in the economists'
story of courtship be either submerged into "contract theory" or
dismissed altogether as irrational. For a full understanding of how and why
people marry, we must look elsewhere.
It's all in the genes
Sociobiology is one of the most popular of the new
theoretical perspectives on courtship, marriage, and sexuality. In the quest to
unravel the convoluted scripts of heterosexual bonding, sociobiology has
emerged as an attractive alternative, basing arguments on an appeal to genes
rather than morals. In contrast to rational choice or exchange theories of
courtship, sociobiologists search for deeply rooted
evolutionary factors that govern sexual and romantic preferences in mate
selection.
Evolutionary psychology maintains that males and females
have radically divergent sexual psychologies. Innate evolutionary factors have
conditioned women to value and select men on the basis of their ability to
provide nourishment, protection, security, and social status for themselves and
their offspring. Females seek "dominant males." Status signals such
as power, money, social position, intelligence, education, skills, and the
ability to father rank high for women. Males, on the other hand, are "hardwired"
to seek sexual liaisons with women who show signs of reproductive viability,
such as health, youth, and physical attractiveness.
In this highly charged and competitive world of courtship,
male and female interests are essentially incommensurable, yielding divergent
strategies and counter-strategies of seduction. Females deceive about their age
and physical attractiveness; males dissemble about their financial resources,
career prospects, and willingness to commit. Women deceive and seduce
cosmetically, men deceive and seduce through ritualized displays of
acquisition. Women concentrate on dressing for dates, men concentrate on
planning and paying for dates.
Given these courtship dynamics, sociobiology predicts the
emergence of a "marriage gradient" with women "marrying up"
and men "marrying down." This puts a "marriage squeeze" on
high-status women. High-status males have an immense pool of potential female
mates from which to choose, but high-status women seeking to "marry up"
face a very restricted pool of available males. The male tendency to
"marry down" tends further to sideline high-status females. Feminists
often disparage this pattern as a patriarchal strategy aimed at female
subordination: Men socially entrench the subordination of women by marrying down
and ruling over their younger and lower-status women. This male strategy also
contributes to the social marginalization of high-achieving women.
Sociobiologists smile at these expressions of moral
outrage. From their perspective, feminists are usually high-status women with
careers, resources, and power; however, feminists predictably refuse to
"marry down." They are in the market for "challenging" men
- a feminist euphemism for "dominant males." In his 1998 book What
Women Want, What Men Want, John Townsend notes that the feminist disparagement
of "marrying-down" males echoes the age-old rhetorical strategies of
high-status females, who typically denigrate low-status female competitors
while simultaneously berating high-status males for daring to overlook them.
These courtship strategies have a profound impact on
hierarchical structuring of human societies. Male and female mate preferences
generate very different social outcomes. The traits that men value (female
youth, health, and attractiveness) have relatively little impact on social
order, aside from the impetus they give to the development of cosmetic and
clothing industries. But the traits that women value - status, productivity,
dominance, resources - fire up the male "will to power." Men need to
make a difference in the world if they are to be noticed by women. Mary Batten,
author of Sexual Strategies: How Females Choose Their Mates,
argues that female mating strategies play a major role in driving men to
compete for power and wealth, thereby fostering in all human societies the
"social dominance orientation" of men.
Sociobiology offers a rollicking comic spoof on the world of
romance and power. In the world of sociobiology, lovers are bustling about,
stumbling through their relationships, deceiving one another, wooing and
warring with one another from very different, even contradictory, scripts of
love - and yet, somehow, when all is said and done, these mismatched lovers
land in bed together, men on top, cunningly trapped by the inexorable logic of
reproductive success. Meanwhile, in the public sphere, men exhaust themselves
to succeed in the worlds of high finance and global politics in order to be
"attractive" to the next pretty blond that happens to pass by. In the
words of Henry Kissinger: "Without an office, you have no power, and I
love power because it attracts women."
Sociobiology also offers an intellectual spin on the growing
climate of cynicism that pervades contemporary explorations of marriage in
literature, popular film, and music. According to David Buss in The Evolution
of Desire, we must "lift our collective heads" out of the romantic
sands and recognize that heterosexual relationships are about power, sex,
property, deceit, and control, rather than love, self-giving, romance, and commitment.
Sociobiology replaces the tale of Cupid's arrows with a story of another
outside agent: our own impish genes, which manipulate us and mock our purposes
in their blind, relentless search for survival and replication.
Power males
Some scholars believe that sociobiology offers scientific
support for monogamous marriage. Townsend's colorful exploration of
evolutionary perspectives on mate selection ends with a homiletic flourish on
the role evolution played in the development of the stable monogamous marriage.
Yet if we follow the logic of maximum reproductive success to its endpoint, we
seem to find a case made for male polygyny, not
monogamy. To the extent that sociobiology suggests or implies a particular
social-sexual order, dominant male polygyny, not
strict monogamy, may eventually emerge as its central plank.
Townsend himself has trouble shaking loose from the inner
logic of this position. "Men in position of power," he admits,
"tend to practice polygyny: legitimate polygyny where it is allowed; functional polygyny where it is not." Townsend notes that polygyny is accepted in over 83 percent of human societies.
He concedes that Western societies have firmly prohibited polygyny
but argues that many elite males are "in effect, polygynous."
Divorce and remarriage or a series of sexual partners are forms of "serial
polygyny." The illicit sexual relationships that
garnish the lives of many high-status males are forms of "functional polygyny." As sociobiology cleans the dust from our
evolutionary psychology, out springs an aggressive and promiscuous male genie.
And today, male elites command resources, technologies, and
services far beyond the wildest dreams of their predecessors. They are able to
sustain relationships with a variety of women, as well as make significant
investments in their offspring. Indeed, we may be in the midst of a subtle and
imperceptible drift toward some form of socially acceptable concubinage
for dominant males. Sociobiology might accelerate this trend by making the
concept of polygyny appear to be a reasonable
accommodation to some of the more problematic exigencies of dominant male
psychology.
Sociobiology does bring one crucial advantage to current
debates. It reconnects courtship with procreation, offering a powerful exploration
of the intrinsic connections between sexuality, heterosexual bonding,
reproductive success, and investment in offspring. And it provides a corrective
to other theoretical approaches, which tend to separate the question of
children and child-rearing from courtship and mate selection. However, it is
important to note that according to sociobiology, sexual attraction per se is
not dependent on conscious awareness of the linkage between attraction and
procreation. This linkage was forged in our distant evolutionary past. Once the
evolutionary hardwiring is in place, men are instinctively attracted to young
voluptuous women, and women are instinctively attracted to dominant males. They
are not attracted because physical beauty or social dominance signal reproductive potential; they are just attracted.
But what happens when these ancient evolutionary drives are
loosened from their moorings in reproduction? What happens when, aided by
technology, we can weaken or dissolve altogether the linkage between sex and
procreation? Sociobiologists assure us that our
drives are now genetically secure enough to dispense with any direct concern
with procreation. In days of old, procreation was a critical fact in the slow
evolutionary hardwiring of heterosexual attraction, but that work is done. The
dynamics of heterosexual attraction can now thrive in freestanding forms. So
where, in the final sociobiological analysis, do
children fit in? In social terms, nowhere.
In sum, for all of its explanatory power regarding the interactions
among sexual desire, procreation, and social processes, sociobiology is unable
to understand or strengthen marriage as an institution. In the current
environment, sociobiology also reinforces trends of dubious value. Its
particular version of sexual realism corresponds well to contemporary cynicism
about heterosexual love and marriage. Sociobiology has a very modest interest
in marriage; if other arrangements can meet our "evolutionary
desires," sociobiology is more than willing to consider them. There is
also its barely veiled celebration of dominance, exploitation, and raw power.
Insofar as sociobiology helps shape our standards, it supports efforts to give
dominant males more latitude to make full use of their resources in the realm
of sexual pursuit. Finally, sociobiology has a nice way of acknowledging
children for their unique contribution to the evolution of our sexual drives,
then politely showing them the door.
Postmodern courtship
One of the most prominent perspectives in contemporary courtship
research is that of "close-relationships" theory. In 1988, Steve Duck
edited a major anthology, Handbook of Personal Relations, which marked the
tenth anniversary of a new discipline, "the science of close
relationships." Current research in the field continues at the
"incredible rate" of expansion that Duck celebrated in 1988. This
work has been spearheaded by a diverse group of scholars who have formed
professional associations, such as the International Society for the Study of
Personal Relationships and the International Network on Personal Relationships.
They have also launched two journals, the Journal of Social and Personal
Relationships and Personal Relationships, as well as a number of major
publication series, such as the Sage Series on Close Relationships and Advances
in Personal Relationships. The field employs a variety of research
methodologies, from standard social-science surveys to intensive one-on-one and
small-group interviews.
The dynamics of initiating and developing close, sexually
based relationships are a major preoccupation of close-relationship theory.
Articles and monographs cover a very wide range of topics: "falling in
love," romantic love, attachment patterns, "love styles,"
interracial and interethnic dating, physical attractiveness (body shape, health
status, hair length, height, voice intonation), age preferences, jealousy, love
triangles, dating infidelity, fatal attractions, family-of-origin influences,
socioeconomic status, self-disclosure processes, topic avoidance, deceit,
nonverbal signals, the use of humor, coping with peer and parental criticism,
relationship dissolution, and romance grieving processes.
This complex body of theories probing a baffling array of
topics might appear to resist general commentary and review, but certain common
themes do emerge: Marriage is knocked off its pedestal, and its purpose of
child-rearing gets short shrift. And the transcendent ideal of love is replaced
by the "love styles" of individual selves seeking sexual satisfaction
in episodic relationships. Courtship, rather than leading to marriage, becomes
just one damn relationship after another.
Generic brand relationships
Close-relationship theorists argue that we need to bring a
common theoretical and methodological approach to the study of all
"sexually based primary relationships." In their 1989 book The Sexual
Bond: Rethinking Families and Close Relationships, John Scanzoni,
Jay Teachman, and Linda Thompson argue that
alternative sexual life styles are not "qualitatively other from what is
known as the benchmark conventional nuclear family." Courtship, spousal,
and familial relationships can and should be "subsumed under the broader
construct of close or primary relationships."
In the taxonomy of sexually based adult relationships, the
existence or nonexistence of a legally recognized bond, such as marriage, is a
secondary consideration. Marriage is merely a de jure
category, not an actual scientific reality. Close-relationship theorists argue
that the family is "essentially a lay or commonsense construct"
rather than a meaningful scientific model. The terms "family" and
"families" are "valid poetic and literary descriptions of
folk-culture reality" that may be of value in "fostering communication
among lay persons" about the "slippery realities" of personal
relationships. However, such "lay" constructs distort and limit
scientific work on intimate adult relationships. Scholars and professionals
will "find it more fruitful both practically and scientifically to think
and work in more general or generic terms - specifically in terms of close or
primary relationships."
A close relationship is "dyadic." It is an
"interaction" between two individuals that is characterized by strong
and coherent patterns of interdependence, self-disclosure, exchange,
investment, commitment, and conflict. These dyadic bonds constitute an
interpersonal microcosm with their own unique processes and dynamics. One
side-effect of redefining all relationships as inherently dyadic is that it
obscures the communal side of marriage. The family itself fades away as a unit
of analysis. For close-relationship theorists, the only way to understand the
family is to break it down into bidirectional dyadic pairs: husband-wife,
mother-child, father-child, or brother-sister relationships.
In The Sexual Bond: Rethinking Families and Close
Relationships, Scanzoni, Teachman,
Thompson, and Karen Polonko suggest that legal
theorists should consider expanding their thinking about sexually bonded
intimacy beyond the confines of the family to include all "close
relationships." The American Law Institute recently proposed model
legislation that does just that, offering most cohabiting partners with
children many of the legal rights heretofore reserved for married couples. The
Canadian Bar Association recently published a lengthy report, Recognizing and
Supporting Close Personal Relationships Between
Adults, which advocates fundamental reforms of Canadian laws in the light of
close-relationship theory. It argues that the law must now stress the
"substance of relationships" rather than favoring certain types of
"arrangements" such as marriage. Any relationship marked by
interdependence, mutuality, intimacy, and endurance merits legal recognition.
The report contends that governments "should recognize and support"
all significant adult close relationships so long as
they are "neither dysfunctional nor harmful."
If marriage and family fade from view, so too do children.
Close-relationship theorists tend to ignore the procreative dimension of sexual
relationships. This child-free understanding of courtship also shapes, and
often distorts, these theorists' view of social reality. One would assume, for
example, that our society's high rates of teen pregnancy and unwed childbearing
would be relevant to the study of contemporary heterosexual courtship. Yet
these trends receive scant attention in close-relationship theory. Its narrow
concentration on the interpersonal dynamics of dyadic relationships precludes
any serious consideration of the procreative dimension of heterosexual
coupling.
Yet children do happen, and their arrival does, therefore,
present a theoretical quandary. Close-relationship theorists respond to this
problem by drawing attention to the vexing impact of children on adult close
relationships. For example, Steve Duck encourages us to abandon the traditional
view of children as "bundles of joy," and instead to understand them
as "one of the greatest stressors of a relationship." According to
Duck, the transition to parenthood is "hazardous to marriage," since
it is typically accompanied by sharp declines in relationship satisfaction. In
a popular rendition of close-relationship theory, Partnering: A New Kind of
Relationship, Hal and Sidra Stone devote two chapters
to the exploration of obstacles to satisfactory dyadic relationships. One
chapter surveys a variety of potential threats to relationships, such as drug
addiction and alcohol abuse; the other chapter focuses entirely on children.
The Stones argue that children pose the major threat to "primary
relationships" between adults, since these relationships are "very
frequently ... destroyed by the presence of children."
Love under construction
In close-relationship theory,
relationships have no teleology or common goal: not marriage, certainly, not
even love. In
this view, love has no objective existence; it is a construct of the
individual, a shifting metric by which each of us defines whether or not
relationships are "good enough" to continue. Constructivism
challenges the old "love and marriage, horse and carriage" view. It
notes that some of the most exquisite forms of romantic love, such as the
courtly love tradition of the medieval era, stood outside of conjugal and
familial life, and concludes that intimate dyadic love can flourish in many
freestanding forms.
The "love researchers" of close-relationship
theory attempt to provide tools for measuring how people construct and
conceptualize love. This project turns our attention away from any substantive
exploration of "real love" or "true love" (the phrases
themselves seem so quaint) to a consideration of "how" love is
"constructed" or "represented" by diverse individuals or
communities. Constructivism seems to be our emerging cultural conclusion on the
meaning of love.
In The Psychology of Love, John Alan Lee puts forward one of
the most thoroughly constructivistic views of love in
close-relationship theory. Lee states that he is "not concerned with
defining love itself" but with helping lovers distinguish between
different love constructs. These "love
styles" represent "competing ideologies of love" that Lee culled
from an extensive study of Western literature and philosophy. His
"constructive typology" consists of six types of love, which, he cautions
his readers, are far from exhaustive. Eros is passionate love. Erotic lovers
seek intimate sexual and emotional involvement. Ludus
is flirtatious; love is a game. Ludus lovers avoid
commitment or self-disclosure. Storge is companionate
love or friendship. Mania is an obsessive love that is intense, explosive,
jealous, and possessive. Agape is an altruistic and self-giving love based more
on will than emotion. Pragma is a utilitarian love
concerned with a sensible match that will effectively meet the social and
emotion needs of each partner.
The key word is "style." There are "love
styles" just as there are "life styles." The differences between
lovers consist only of different "styles" of loving, "each valid
according to each person's taste." In this view, love styles can be constantly
adjusted and changed, since they are grounded in no external or objective
standards but instead in the subjective satisfactions of the
"customers." One might find a particular love style (or love-styler) "dissatisfying," so, John Lee asks,
"why not change?"
The value of various constructed styles of love is pegged to
levels of subjective satisfaction. Yet there is considerable debate over the
standards for measuring satisfaction. Is it a matter of the partners'
subjective feelings about their relationship (how the relationship feels)? Or
is it about their actual relationship behavior (how it works)? In their
contribution to the volume Satisfaction in Close Relationships, Susan and Clyde
Hendricks distance themselves from attempts to offer more objective criteria of
relationship success. They maintain that close-relationship theory is
"fixed on people's subjective, affective experiencing of their own
happiness and contentment with their close relationship."
The essay by Larry Erbert and
Steve Duck in the same volume insists on the importance of "subjective
evaluation by each relational partner": "Satisfaction measures are
not designed as objective assessments of relational interaction, but as
measures of the attitudes and feelings of the relational partners." The
authors argue for a "dialectical theory of relationship satisfaction"
that challenges and deconstructs the "ideal type" implicit in most
measures of satisfaction. They contend that these measurements conceal an
ideological bias favoring stability over change, reliability over uncertainty,
togetherness over individuality, and agreement over conflict. These valuations
also entrench "a rigid structural prison that serves to limit the
validation of other types of relationships." By instead emphasizing
subjective feelings and dispositions, these theorists hope to validate more
fluid and variable relationships.
All about me
And how are we to understand the "self" that close
relationships are intended to serve, satisfy, and enhance? Julia Wood and Steve
Duck insist that we can no longer view the "identity" of the self as
"enclosed in a stable core." Instead, "selves are recognized as
contingent, forming and reforming within diverse relationships and
circumstances." The self only assumes identity "in response to
others." According to Kenneth Gergen and Regina
Walter, relationships are the "ontological prior," by which they mean
that "the individual is essentially an extension of relationship."
Thus the grounding of identity in our society, once secured by morality and
religion, has shrunk down to the small circles of shifting close relationships
in which selves seek recognition and meaning through intimacies with
"significant others."
For Gergen, the modern
"saturated self" is essentially a "pastiche personality"
that is continually constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in diverse
social contexts. Since the self is constantly "fashioned" and then
refashioned within processes of social interchange, the individual does not
have an "autobiography" in which, for example, courtship may
represent one chapter in a coherent life story. Instead, we now have "sociobiographies," in which diverse relationships
constantly help to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct personal identity.
For Julia Wood and Steve Duck, this "relational self" is a
"teeming mass of potentialities, any of which may be realized in
particular moments and none of which is invariant over time and context."
In this view, close relationships are significant only
insofar as they generate worlds of meaning that enrich and enhance the self.
Close-relationship theorists develop models to chart the
"self-enhancement" component in close relationships, and argue that
these relationships are "one especially satisfying, useful, and human
means of expanding the self through including each other in the self."
Close-relationship advocates Elaine and Arthur Aron
cite the ancient Upanisadic axiom that "all love
is directed toward the Self." Even in loving, the self is still profoundly
self-referential.
Microwave relationships
In close-relationship theory, romantic relationships are
said to constitute the "formation stage" of sexually based
relationships. For these theorists, courtship does not point toward a specific
end, such as stable, successful marriage. The intense, fluid, exploratory world
of courtship-as-romance - not courtship leading to marriage - is the paradigm
for all sexually intimate relationships, including marriage.
And so marriage lands finally in a very curious spot.
Instead of courtship being defined by the goal of marriage, marriage is defined
by the dynamics of courtship. Close-relationship theory agrees with the old
cosmetics advertisement slogan: The test of a good marriage is its capacity to
maintain the "thrill of courtship." The phrase "You would never
know they are married" becomes the highest praise for conjugal love. Of
course, intense courtship cannot be sustained forever. But it may be precisely
the necessarily limited duration of courtship that makes this bond so
fascinating to close-relationship theorists. Close-relationship theory tends to
focus particularly on "initiation" and "disengagement,"
since these are "particularly striking phases" of intimate
relationships. It tends to pass over the dreary world of "relationship maintenance"
(marriage).
The relational self is supremely adapted to an endless ebb
and flow of romantic encounters and liaisons. In the post-modern world,
"Purpose is replaced with pastiche." Relationships are pastiche,
marriage is purpose. Gergen and Walter exclaim the
wonders of intense, but fragile, romances. These passionate liaisons are
"joint creations" that offer accelerating, mutually generated forms
of "reverberating activity" - "my pleasure increases as I
experience your pleasure, yours increasing as a result of mine, mine increasing
further because of yours, and so on."
Gergen argues that courtship now refers to
an ongoing process that involves the formation of many different sexually
bonded relationships throughout life. He defines these interactions as
"microwave relationships" - cooked up fast, served, and consumed. The
layers of emotional residue left by the multiple passages through episodic
relationships are not lamented but celebrated: "The pace of relationships
is hurried, and processes of unfolding that once required months or years may
be accomplished in days or weeks ... The single person may experience not a
handful of courtship relationships in a life time but dozens."
In this postmodern world, stability, domesticity, and
fidelity evoke little interest. Relational life is episodic, consisting of
closures of old relationships to make way for self-disclosing new intimacies.
Flat and dull
A research model primarily aimed at understanding the
internal dynamics of close, sexually intimate relationships is obviously
ill-equipped to understand marriage or what leads to marriage. Yet times change. The new world imagined by
close-relationship theory - essentially a world of serial coupling - is, more
and more with each passing day, the world in which we live. Close-relationship
theory is thus an articulation of an increasingly popular, and perhaps soon
dominant, ideology of personal relationships.
In Couples: Scenes from the Inside, Sally Cline argues that
we are in the midst of a "relationship revolution." In this new
world, five ideas stand out. First, the distinction between marriage and other
intimate partnerships is all but eliminated. Courting couples are now said
simply to be "in a relationship," which puts them in the same generic
category as married couples, subject to the same norms and processes of
relationship quality, maintenance, and dissolution. Second, while the need for
basic human attachment and intimacy must still be satisfied, we now privately
choose the specific "love styles" with which we gratify those needs.
Third, the new world is only big enough for the dyad, the couple. Children are
essentially screened out. Despite complaints about the narrowness of the old
nuclear family, the world of "close relationships" is far narrower,
and also far more boring. Fourth, the new dyadic relationships are measured not
by their capacity to foster traditional virtues such as courage or
self-sacrifice, but solely by their capacity to satisfy what the self views as
its needs. All externally based criteria for what is needed, or for what might
constitute satisfaction, are banished; all standards become radically
subjective. Finally, the openness, emotional intensity, and relative brevity of
courtship are the very traits that make it superior to marriage as an
expression of, and as a way of understanding, relationships. Consequently,
romantic relationships replace marriage as life's main arena for the discovery
of personal meaning.
In the end, close-relationship theory reduces courtship and
marriage to the loving interactions of ever-changing dyad partners. This shift
may be the soft underbelly of contemporary theory and practice. For when the dust of this revolution settles, only
"relationships" remain - thin and shadowy vestiges of formerly powerful
vocations. Despite postmodern celebrations of uncertain futures and
new-found freedoms, the road ahead seems flatter and less interesting. Don't
bother to fasten your seat belts.
Courtship, culture, and postmodernity
Today's three most influential schools of academic thought
on courtship - exchange theory, sociobiology, and close-relationship theory -
do provide some useful insights. But these insights are fragmentary and quite
limited. Exchange theory illuminates our growing capacity to understand
marriage in essentially utilitarian terms. This approach has predictive power,
insofar as our actual marrying behavior increasingly conforms to the
expectations of the theory. Sociobiology exemplifies our cultural fatigue with
idealistic views of romance. Its emphasis on the irrational nature of sexual
desire and conflict nourishes contemporary cynicism. Its harsh realism further
erodes those moral and religious ideals which, for earlier generations, sought
to elevate sexual desire into lasting marital love.
Close-relationship theory illuminates our growing tendency
to blur the distinctions between marriage and other relationships. Its
theoretical insights ring true precisely to the extent that marriage itself is
increasingly diluted and reduced to the fluidity and plasticity of just another
"relationship." In short, the older understanding of marriage as
covenantal, life-long, genealogical, self-sacrificial, and child-centered is
gradually being replaced by an understanding of marriage as merely another dyadic
intimate relationship. To the extent that this operation succeeds,
close-relationship theory will resonate ever more clearly with our actual
personal and social experiences.
And yet, while the models of courtship generated by these
schools of thought illuminate certain current realities, they blind us to
others. Marriage retains a central importance in American culture, both
practically and as an ideal. While nonmarital sex and
childbearing are much more common, it is also true that about 90 percent of
Americans marry, and Americans of all ages and social classes continue to list
a "happy marriage" as vital to their lives. Scholars would do us all
a great service if they would rediscover their interest in marriage and the
pathways leading to it. Marriage is not just a close relationship, or a sexual
barter, or a consumer good. Illuminating these distinctions will require
theoretical models that begin, above all, with curiosity about what marriage
is.
This is not a plea for homespun "family values"
and virtues. "Family values" discourse may actually contribute to our
cultural apathy about marriage by obscuring the more radical, startling, and
unsettling characteristics of monogamous marriage. Marriage is an erotic bond
that bridges the fundamental sexual divide within the human species. It is an intersexual coupling, but it is not just about
self-enhancing satisfaction; it is a procreative bond that generates human
life. It resonates through the poetry, religion, art, myth, and symbols of the
human spirit. Marriage embraces the life, the passions, the beauty, the
journeys, the betrayals, the dreams, and, ultimately, the death of the other. A
symptom of the curious flatness of our postmodern sexual culture is its growing
inability to perceive the elemental depths and power of this primordial human
bond.
1 "The End of Courtship," The Public Interest,
Number 126, Winter 1997.
Daniel Cere is
director of the Newman Institute of Catholic Studies at