22.3 Intimacy: Romantic Partners

Social scientists often make a distinction between “family of origin” (the family each person is born into) and “family of choice” (the family one creates for oneself as an adult). Family of choice typically begins with a commitment to a romantic partner.

As detailed in the chapters on emerging adulthood, adults today take longer than previous generations did to publicly commit to one long-term sexual partner. Nonetheless, although specifics differ (marriage at age 20 is late in some cultures and far too early in others), adults everywhere seek long-term partners to help meet their needs for intimacy as well as to raise children, share resources, and provide care when needed.

Almost all U.S. residents born before 1940 married (96 percent). Fewer of those born between 1940 and 1960 married (89 percent), and a significant number of them are now divorced and not remarried (16 percent) (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2011a). Similar trends are found worldwide. Consider the data from Japan. Almost every Japanese adult was married in 1950, with many marrying before age 20. Now those Japanese who marry do so later (average age 30) and an estimated 20 percent will never marry (Raymo, 2013).

Marriage and Happiness

From a developmental perspective, marriage is a useful institution. Adults thrive if another person is committed to their well-being; children benefit when they have two parents who are legally as well as emotionally dedicated to them; societies are stronger if individuals sort themselves into families.

Share My Life Marriage often requires one partner to support the other’s aspirations. That is evident in the French couple (left), as Nicole embraces her husband, Alain Maignan, who just completed a six-month solo sail around the world. For twenty years, he spent most of his money and time building his 10-meter boat. Less is known about the Nebraska couple (right), but many farm wives forgo the pleasures of city life in order to support the men they love.

FRED TANNEAU/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
JOEL SATORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC IMAGES

From an individual perspective, the consequences of marriage are more mixed. There is no doubt that a satisfying marriage improves health, wealth, and happiness, but some marriages are not satisfying (Fincham & Beach, 2010; Miller et al., 2013). Overall, married people are a little happier, healthier, and richer than never-married ones—but not by much.

For this reason, it is misleading to lump all marriages together to find the average. Some marriages are very happy over the years, most marriages are moderately happy, and some marriages are not (see Figure 22.2). The least happy marriages do not always end with divorce—some unhappy adults stay married and some quite happy adults divorce. Husbands and wives in the happiest marriages tend to agree that their marriage is a good one, but in unhappy marriages it is not unusual for one spouse to be content and the other not (Brown et al., 2012).

After All Those Years Newly married teenagers and emerging adults continue to be the groups most likely to divorce, but older married people are twice as likely to divorce as people their age were a few decades ago. In 1990 only one in ten newly divorced men or women was over age 50; now it is 1 in 4.

One Love, Two Homes Their friends and family know that Jonathan and Diana are a couple, happy together day and night, year after year. But one detail distinguishes them from most couples: Each owns a house. They commute 10 miles and are living apart together—LAT

FRANK BARON/CAMERA PRESS/GUARDIAN/REDUX

Many factors correlate with happiness, especially adequate income and college education. Factors that correlate with unhappiness are premarital births, prior cohabitation, and a high neuroticism on the Big Five personality inventory. Historically, women have had higher expectations for marriage and thus greater disillusionment, but that is changing by cohort and varies by culture (Stavrova et al., 2012). Women with more education and higher income are not only more likely to have happy marriages, they are “more likely to æ stay in good marriages and leave bad marriages” (Kreager et al., 2013, p. 580).

Partnership does not always mean marriage. Cohabiters who expect to marry are quite different from those who slide into living together because of convenience. If the latter couple eventually marries, their chances of a happy marriage are less than average. The same is true for couples who have sex within the first month of being together (Sassler et al., 2012). [Lifespan Link: Cohabitation is discussed on Chapter 19.]

Some couples cohabit as a step in commitment and mutual trust, fully intending to marry. Then each year of the marriage increases their public and personal commitment to each other and makes divorce less likely. Many signs indicate that such couples differ from those who drift into marriage. For instance, compared to less committed couples, they have more children, the man earns more than comparable unmarried men, and the wife spends more time on household tasks (Kuperberg, 2012).

A sizable number of adults have found a third way to have a steady romantic partner: living apart together (LAT). They have separate residences, but especially when the partners are older than 30, they may function as a couple for decades (Duncan & Phillips, 2010).

A couple’s decision to marry, to cohabit, or to LAT is influenced by many people in addition to the individuals who are romantically connected. Children born to an earlier partnership, even if those children are themselves adults, are particularly influential. Many parents choose to live apart from their partners because they do not want to upset their children (de Jong Gierveld & Merz, 2013).

Partnerships over the Years

The three boxes that questionnaires provide—married, single, divorced—do not reflect personal happiness or love, especially cross-culturally or over the decades of adulthood. Love is complex, a matter of relationship function, not structure. This has been described by many psychologists in recent years. One of them wrote:

Since 1986, Sternberg has studied three aspects of love: passion, intimacy, and commitment, and many other scientists have explored that topic (Sternberg and Weiss, 2006). As explained in Chapter 17, currently passion is usually first, then shared confidences create intimacy, and finally commitment leads to an enduring relationship. When all three are evident, that is consummate love—an ideal that is only sometimes attained in marriage.

A wealth of research finds that for most people commitment is crucial. A long-term committed partnership correlates with health and happiness throughout life (Miller et al., 2013). The reasons for this correlation range from the deep human need for someone who listens, understands, and shares one’s goals to the mundane details of a mate who monitors daily diet and exercise, and insists that pain and symptoms need medical attention.

The passage of time also makes a difference. In general, the honeymoon period tends to be happy, but frustration increases as conflicts arise (see At About This Time) (H. K. Kim et al., 2008). Partnerships (including heterosexual married couples, committed cohabiters, same-sex couples, LAT couples) tend to be less happy when the first child is born, and again when children reach puberty (Umberson et al., 2010). Divorce risk rises in these years and then falls.

Remember, however, that averages obscure individual differences. Sometimes data is segmented by ethnicity. In the United States Asian Americans are much less likely to divorce than European Americans, and African Americans are more likely to do so. The ethnic differences are partly cultural and partly economic, making any broad effort to encourage marriage for everyone doomed to disappoint the politicians, social workers, and individuals involved (Johnson, 2012).

For cultural reasons, some unhappy couples stay married, and may have a long-lasting, conflict-filled relationship. As already noted, the divorce risk falls with age, but that does not mean that older couples never divorce. In 1990, 8 percent of the divorces were of people age 50 and older; in 2010, 25 percent were that old, often in marriages that had lasted 20 years or more (Brown & Lin, 2013).

On the other hand, although cohabiting couples separate more often than married couples, some cohabitants are deeply committed to each other, happily raising children together. As always with development, trends and tendencies are useful to know, but not every individual follows them.

Contrary to outdated impressions, the empty nest—when parents are alone again after the children have left—is usually a time for improved relationships. Simply spending time together, without crying babies, demanding children, or rebellious teenagers, improves intimacy. Partners can focus on their mates and on what they both enjoy.

Of course, time does not fix every relationship. Economic stress causes marital friction no matter how many years a couple has been together (Conger et al., 2010). Under the weight of major crises—particularly financial (such as a foreclosed home, a stretch of unemployment) or relational (such as demanding in-laws or an extramarital affair)—a long-standing relationship might well crumble.

Gay and Lesbian Partners

Why Marry? Because many young people question the need for a wedding, marriage rates are down overall, but states that allow same-sex couples to wed find a sudden increase in rates. Miriam Brown and Carol Anastasio were among the 16,046 people to marry in New York City on July 24, 2011, the first day such marriages were legal. Extra judges and courtrooms were pressed into service.

ARISTIDE ECONOMOPOULOS/STAR LEDGER/CORBIS

Almost everything just described applies to gay and lesbian partners as well as to heterosexual ones (Biblarz & Savci, 2010; Cherlin, 2013; Herek, 2006). Some same-sex couples are faithful and supportive of each other; their emotional well-being thrives on their intimacy. Others are conflicted, with problems of finances, communication, and domestic abuse resembling those in heterosexual marriages.

Political and cultural contexts for same-sex couples are changing markedly. As of this writing many nations, including Canada and Spain, recognize same-sex marriage. In the U.S., Washington, D.C., and 17 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) do so. Many other nations and U.S. states are ambivalent, and most countries, as well as many states, explicitly outlaw same-sex marriage. Attitudes are fluid and seem to be changing very rapidly, so that research that is even a few years old may be inaccurate.

One finding seems particularly relevant for all partnerships. In every relationship, connections to family of origin remain important. The importance of family ties, quite apart from the legal benefits of marriage, is illustrated by same-sex couples who have cohabited for years and who decide to marry now that laws are changing.

Although legal, moral, and financial arguments (health insurance, child rearing, and the like) are usually cited in public debate about same-sex marriage, often such couples marry not for the sake of legality but for the intimate needs of the couple. Partners want recognition in society, from their close relatives as well as from consequential strangers.

In a study of gay married couples in Iowa, one man decided to marry because, as he wrote about his mother: “I had a partner that I lived with æ and I think that, as much as she accepted him, it wasn’t anything permanent in her eyes” (Ocobock, 2013, p. 196). Another man wrote about his father: “He told us how proud of us he was that we were taking this step, and now he didn’t have three sons, he had four sons, and it was enough to make you cry” (p. 197).

In this study, most of the family members were supportive, but some were not—again eliciting deep emotional reactions in the newly married men. One said, “Sometimes æ a chasm forms that can’t be crossed any more” (p. 200). In heterosexual marriages as well, in-laws usually welcome the new spouse, but when they do not, the partnership is more likely to be troubled. Family influences are hard to ignore.

Current and longitudinal research with a large, randomly selected sample of people in gay or lesbian marriages in the United States is not yet available. Many studies are designed to prove that same-sex marriage is either beneficial or harmful. Thus the studies make it difficult to draw objective conclusions.

For example, some research says divorce is less common for same-sex marriages, other research says more common, and still other research claims divorce is more common for male than female couples. A review of 15 years of same-sex marriages in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway finds that neither the greatest fears nor the greatest hopes for such unions are realized (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010).

Divorce and Remarriage

Throughout this text, developmental events that seem isolated, personal, and transitory are shown to be interconnected, socially mediated, with enduring consequences. Relationships never improve or end in a vacuum; they are influenced by the social and political context. For example, a study of many nations found that the happiness as well as the likelihood of separation of married and cohabiting couples was powerfully influenced by national norms (most benign in Norway, most hostile in Romania) (Wiik et al., 2012).

Divorce occurs because at least one partner believes that he or she would be happier not married. That conclusion is reached fairly often in the United States: Since 1980, almost half as many divorces or permanent separations have occurred as marriages. (More than one-third of first marriages end in divorce, and with each subsequent marriage, the odds of divorce increase.)

Typically, people divorce because some aspects of the marriage have become difficult to endure. Often, however, they are unaware of the impact divorce will have. Among the future problems are reduced income, lost friendships, and weaker relationships with the children, immediately and when they grow up (Kalmijn, 2010; Mustonen et al., 2011).

Family problems arise not only with children (usually custodial parents become stricter, and noncustodial parents feel excluded) but also with other relatives. The divorced adult’s parents may be financially supportive, but often they are emotionally critical. Some married adults have good relationships with in-laws; this closeness almost always disappears when the couple splits, causing the loss of part of the social convoy.

For all these reasons, intimacy needs are less often met when couples separate. Sometimes divorced adults confide in their children, which may help the adults but not the children. Even if adults avoid that attractive trap, children need more emotional support just when the parents are often consumed by their own emotions (H. S. Kim, 2011).

Some research finds that women suffer from divorce more than men do (their income, in particular, is lower), but men’s intimacy needs are especially at risk. Some husbands rely on their wives for companionship and social interaction; they are unaccustomed to inviting friends over or chatting on the phone. Divorced fathers are often lonely, alienated from their adult children and grandchildren (Lin, 2008a).

Usually, both former partners in a severed relationship attempt to reestablish friendships and resume dating. About half of all U.S. marriages are remarriages for at least one partner. Remarriage is more common as SES rises, and less common among those who are already parents. Ethnicity is also a factor; in the United States, divorced African American mothers, especially those with less than a high school education, rarely remarry (McNamee & Raley, 2011).

Initially, remarriage restores intimacy, health, and financial security. For fathers, bonds with their new stepchildren or with a new baby may replace strained relationships with their children from the earlier marriage, a benefit for the men but not for the children (Noel-Miller, 2013a).

Surprised? Many brides and grooms hope to rescue and reform their partners, but they should know better. Changing another person’s habits, values, or addictions is very difficult.

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Divorce usually increases depression and loneliness; repartnering brings relief. Most remarried adults are quite happy immediately after the wedding (Blekesaune, 2008). However, their happiness may not last. Because personality does not change much, people who were chronically unhappy in their first marriage often become unhappy in their second as well.

This research on divorce is sobering. As with all aspects of adult development, the shifting social context may have improved life for the formerly married, and even without that some people escape the usual patterns. If divorce ends an abusive, destructive relationship (as it does about one-third of the time), it usually benefits at least one spouse and the children (Amato, 2010).

Furthermore, some divorces lead to stronger and warmer mother–child and/or father–child relationships. That helps children cope, not only immediately but also for years to come (Vélez et al., 2011). This is not the usual outcome, however.