The Relic of Romance: Why Marriage is an Outdated Institution in the Modern World

 For thousands of years, marriage was the bedrock of civilization. It was the primary economic unit, the sole legitimate vehicle for raising children, and the definitive marker of adulthood. To remain unmarried was to be an outcast, a financial failure, or a social pariah. But in the span of just a few generations, the tectonic plates of society have shifted. We have moved from an agrarian society to a digital one, from strict gender hierarchies to striving for egalitarianism, and from a life expectancy of 45 to one pushing 85.

Yet, despite these massive transformations, we cling to a model of partnership designed for medieval villagers.

The argument is no longer just the domain of cynics or disgruntled divorcees. Sociologists, historians, and economists are increasingly suggesting that marriage—as a legal and social institution—has become an outdated technology. It is a strict, legally binding contract applied to the fluid, emotional realm of love, often creating more fragility than stability. When we strip away the fairy-tale conditioning, we are left with a stark reality: for many modern individuals, the costs of marriage now outweigh the benefits.

The Historical Hangover: Property, Not Passion

To understand why marriage feels disjointed from modern life, we must first understand what it was actually designed to do. As historian Stephanie Coontz details in her seminal work Marriage, a History, for the vast majority of human existence, marriage had absolutely nothing to do with love.

It was a business transaction. Marriage was a mechanism to acquire in-laws, expand a family’s labor force, seal peace treaties between tribes, and, most importantly, transfer property. Women were not partners; they were assets to be traded between a father and a husband to ensure legitimate heirs for the inheritance of land.

The "love match"—the idea that you should marry for romantic attraction—is a radical historical experiment that is barely 200 years old. When the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution ushered in the idea of individual happiness, we attempted to graft the volatile emotion of "love" onto the rigid institutional structure of "property transfer."

The result is a structural mismatch. We are trying to use a system designed for dynastic stability to manage personal fulfillment. This historical hangover persists in our rituals. The white dress symbolized virginity (value as a commodity), the father "giving away" the bride symbolized the transfer of ownership, and the woman taking the man's name symbolized the legal erasure of her identity (under the doctrine of coverture). While we have shed the laws, the institution itself remains rooted in patriarchal control, making it fundamentally at odds with modern ideals of autonomy and equality.

The Economic Shift: From Survival to Luxury

In the 1970s, Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker described marriage as a "trading" model. In an era where women were barred from high-earning careers and banking, marriage was a survival necessity. Men traded financial support in exchange for domestic labor and child-rearing. It was a clear, specialized division of labor.

That economic necessity has collapsed.

Today, women have surpassed men in obtaining university degrees in many countries and are fully integrated into the workforce. The "gains from trade" that Becker described have vanished. Women do not need men for financial survival, and with the advent of the service economy (Uber Eats, cleaning services, laundromats), men do not need women for domestic survival.

When marriage stops being a survival tool, it becomes a "luxury good." We no longer marry because we must; we marry because we want to. While this sounds romantic, it actually makes the institution precarious. When a relationship is based solely on emotional gratification rather than economic necessity, it becomes incredibly fragile. As soon as the "want" fades, the marriage dissolves.

Furthermore, for many women, the "deal" of marriage has soured. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild coined the term "The Second Shift" to describe the phenomenon where working women come home from their careers only to perform the majority of unpaid domestic labor and childcare. Despite the rise of the "progressive husband," data consistently shows that married women still carry the mental load of household management. For a modern, financially independent woman, marriage often represents a net loss of free time and an increase in drudgery, leading to the question: What exactly is the benefit here?

The Psychological Pressure Cooker

Perhaps the most profound argument against modern marriage comes from psychologist Eli Finkel, author of The All-or-Nothing Marriage. Finkel argues that we have dangerously overloaded the institution with expectations.

In 1850, you expected your spouse to help you survive the winter and not beat you. That was a successful marriage. Today, thanks to the cultural emphasis on self-actualization, the laundry list of requirements for a spouse is staggering. We expect our partner to be:

1. Our best friend.

2. Our passionate lover.

3. Our co-parent.

4. Our financial partner.

5. Our intellectual equal.

6. Our therapist.

7. Our career coach.

We are asking one human being to provide the emotional and social support that used to be provided by an entire village. It is a mathematical impossibility for one person to fulfill all these roles for decades.

This "suffocation model" sets us up for failure. When a spouse inevitably fails to be an exciting lover and a comforting parent and a shark-like business advisor all at the same time, the marriage is deemed a failure. We have set the bar so high that dissatisfaction is guaranteed. By funneling all our emotional needs into one relationship, we starve our other connections, leading to the isolation of the nuclear family. When the marriage crumbles under this weight, the individual is left with no support structure, having neglected friendships and community ties for the sake of the "soulmate."

The Longevity Trap

"Until death do us part" is a vow that was written when "death" usually came around age 40 or 50. In the Middle Ages, a marriage might last 15 years before one partner died. Today, if you marry at 30, you are signing a contract for potentially 60 years of cohabitation.

Human beings are not static. The person you are at 25 is rarely the person you are at 45, and almost certainly not the person you are at 65. We evolve, our values shift, our careers change, and our libidos fluctuate. The institution of marriage, however, assumes stasis. It assumes that a promise made by two distinct versions of people should be binding on their future selves, regardless of how much they have diverged.

Sociologists argue that humans may be naturally inclined toward serial monogamy—a series of deep, committed relationships that last for a season of life (e.g., the child-rearing years) and then dissolve to allow for new growth. By forcing lifelong exclusivity, marriage often stifles personal growth, trapping people in dynamics that no longer serve them simply because they signed a paper decades ago.

The Bureaucracy of Intimacy

There is also the "piece of paper" argument. Why does the state need to be involved in a romantic relationship?

Critics argue that marriage invites the government into the bedroom. It turns a private commitment into a bureaucratic status. The legal and financial entanglement of marriage makes it dangerously difficult to leave.

Consider the risk-benefit analysis. The barrier to entry for marriage is incredibly low—a small license fee and a signature. The barrier to exit, however, is ruinous. Divorce is one of the most traumatic and expensive events a person can go through, often costing tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, resulting in the loss of half one's assets, and causing immense psychological damage.

If we look at the statistics—with divorce rates hovering between 40% and 50% in many Western nations, and a significant portion of "surviving" marriages reported as unhappy—marriage is, statistically, a bad bet. No rational investor would put 100% of their assets into a venture with a 50% failure rate, yet society pressures us to do exactly that with our lives.

The difficulty of exit often keeps people in toxic or mediocre situations. If the commitment was genuine, it wouldn't require the threat of legal and financial ruin to hold it together. As the saying goes: "I don't need a license to prove I love you; the fact that I stay without one proves it more."

The Rise of Alternatives

The final nail in the coffin of marriage’s necessity is the viability of alternatives. For the first time in history, there is no "illegitimate" way to love.

Cohabitation has become the norm. Couples can live together, share expenses, and build a life without the legal handcuffs. In many jurisdictions, domestic partnerships and civil unions offer the necessary legal protections (like hospital visitation rights or insurance coverage) without the cultural baggage and difficult exit clauses of marriage.

Furthermore, we are seeing a rise in LAT (Living Apart Together) relationships, where committed couples maintain separate residences to preserve autonomy and romance, avoiding the drudgery of shared domesticity.

We are also seeing the questioning of monogamy itself. Ethical Non-Monogamy (ENM) and polyamory are challenging the idea that one person must be the sole source of all romantic and sexual fulfillment. These relationship structures acknowledge the complexity of human desire and the unfairness of the "all-or-nothing" model.

Conclusion: A New Definition of Commitment

To say that marriage is an outdated institution is not to say that love, commitment, or family are outdated. Humans are social creatures who crave connection and partnership. However, the specific container we have used for that connection the legal, patriarchal, lifelong, exclusive contract of marriage is cracking under the pressure of modern life.

It is a rigid structure in a fluid world. It is an economic arrangement in an emotional era.

The future of relationships likely lies not in a one-size-fits-all institution, but in "bespoke" commitments relationships defined by the people in them, not by the state or the church. Whether that looks like cohabitation, co-parenting partnerships, serial monogamy, or communal living, the decline of marriage allows us the freedom to design lives that prioritize authentic happiness over performative tradition.

We are learning that we don't need a certificate to justify our love, and we certainly don't need an outdated institution to define our worth.

Do you know why corporates are hiring married men these days