Jason Carroll

Originally published in the Institute for Family Studies Blog Key Findings.

This fellow note is an excerpt from a recent article in The Family in America: A Journal of Public Policy and modified from a plenary address delivered at the World Congress on Families (WCF9), Salt Lake City, Utah, October 29, 2015.

In this fellow note, I would like to share a few thoughts about how we can promote better marriage readiness among young people. For me, the key to doing this lies in getting to the whys behind the whats in the patterns we see in our society. We must be able to explain, not simply describe, what is happening if we are going to make meaningful changes. Part of the explanation for the marriage struggles we see in our society today is that many young people today are preparing for marriage in ways that are actually producing the opposite of what they intend. In short, their preparation for marriage is paradoxical in nature. A paradox is a proposition that, in spite of apparently sound reasoning, leads to a conclusion that is senseless, logically unacceptable, and self-contradictory. Let’s explore some of these widespread paradoxes and then I’ll suggest some steps we can collectively take to counter these marriage preparation paradoxes and foster a culture of true marriage readiness.

How important is love in marriage? Most people would almost instinctively answer this question by saying that love is very important to successful marriages. However, such an answer assumes that each of us knows what is meant by the word “love.” Although we use the word love all the time when we talk about couple and marriage relationships, we rarely are clear about what exactly we mean when we say that someone is “in love” or “loves someone”. In fact, many young adults today struggle in their dating efforts because love is seen as some sort of state of existence or intense feeling that they can’t quite explain, but they are sure they will know it when they see it. Part of our current cultural confusion about love comes from the fact that there are different types and expressions of love. We use the term “love” to describe our relationship to our spouse, but we also use the term “love” in referring to our grandma and our newborn baby daughter. We also say that we “love” double fudge chocolate ice-cream and getting a foot massage. Clearly our relationship with our spouse should involve a different type of love than our love for ice-cream or the “love” we felt for that pretty girl in our math class in 9th grade. In order to better understand love, we need to appreciate that there are different types of love. Furthermore, we must understand that some types of love are better than others in forming and maintaining a strong marriage relationship. In fact, the type of love a marriage is based on will be one of the most important determinants of whether the relationship will last or not. Marriages based on mature love will last. Marriages built upon immature love will not. It is as simple as that.

The current debate over the definition of marriage is typically portrayed as a decision about whether to “expand” or “extend” marriage to include same-sex couples. This argument, however, assumes that the basic nature of marriage will remain largely unchanged by granting marriage status to same-sex partnerships. It implies that all this policy change would do is absorb same-sex partnerships within the existing boundaries of marriage, thus extending the benefits of marriage to a wider segment of society. Indeed, the very term “same-sex marriage” implies that same-sex couples in committed relationships are already a type of marriage that should be appropriately recognized and labeled as such. This understanding is deeply flawed. It fails to recognize how defining same-sex partnerships as marriages would fundamentally change both how marriage is collectively understood and the primary social purposes for which it exists.

For years, the phrase “sowing wild oats” has been used to describe the sexual activity of single adults—particularly young men. However, what exactly does the phrase mean? And more importantly, does having multiple sexual partners help or hurt single adults when they eventually get married? These are important questions to ask since most single adults in the United States today desire to one day have a successful, lifelong marriage. However, they also report desiring to have multiple sexual partners before they get married. In fact, recent studies show that most college students would like to have multiple sexual partners each year and that college men, on average, desire to have ten sexual partners before getting married; while women, on average, desire to have four sexual partners before they marry. Are these desires for “sowing wild oats” in the single years compatible with the desire to have a loving and lasting marriage later? Let’s take a look at these questions.

The conclusion that redefining marriage will materially alter the mix of social benefits marriage provides is supported not only by sound socio-institutional theory, logic, and common sense but by experience with other changes to marriage and marriage-related expectations. Of course, no one can know the precise, long-term consequences of redefining marriage to include same-sex couples. It is simply too soon, and the ways it may affect marriage are too complex to be understood without ample time and extensive conceptual and empirical inquiry. Justice Alito recently made this point: Past changes in the understanding of marriage… have had far-reaching consequences. But the process by which such consequences come about is complex, involving the interaction of numerous factors, and tends to occur over an extended period of time. We can expect something similar to take place if same-sex marriage becomes widely accepted. The long-term consequences of this change are not now known and are unlikely to be ascertainable for some time to come.

Is it better to test sexual compatibility early in dating or to wait to have sex? Does “true love wait” or should you “test drive” a relationship before saying I do? These are important questions to ask since most single adults report that they desire to one day have a successful, lifelong marriage. However, in their dating many couples move rapidly into sexual relationships. In fact, recent studies have found that between 30 to 40% of couples report having sex within one month of the start of their relationship (Busby, Carroll, & Willoughby, 2010; Peplau et al., 1977; Sassler et al., 2012). Are these dating patterns compatible with the desire to have a loving and lasting marriage later? Let’s take a look at these questions.