Why You Should Get Married Now

One of the things about our world that would most surprise a magically returned preodern ancestor of ours is how long we take to assess and settle on a spouse. In almost all societies that have ever existed, the period between first laying eyes on a prospective partner and the moment of committing to them was extremely short. In Sumeriia, there was a single audience. In classical Athens, young men and women might meet three times before arrangements were settled. In the Inca Empire, one might never even have been in the spouse's presence until the wedding. Contrast this with our own setup. We move extremely slowly. It's typical to date someone non-exclusively for 6 months, then to commit to seeing them singly for a year and a half, then perhaps to move in and further test the waters for four or 5 years. before either finally getting engaged or else discovering that after all one wasn't quite suited. Perhaps because of slightly different attitudes around politics or some clashes over interior design or entertainment preferences. At the heart of the dispute between the preodern attitude and ours is a contrasting notion of what is required to make a relationship succeed. We implicitly believe it's about compatibility. They firmly believed it was about commitment. Underpinning our modern romantic approach to love is a tightly held notion that the most important ingredient in any functioning relationship is innate congruence, a pre-existing sympathy of souls that will lend us a feeling that we've met someone before, perhaps in a past life. We believe we will need to encounter a lot of people and try them out over extended periods because this and only this will help us to see whether we've correctly ellighted on a soulmate. It can take 180 breakfasts with someone to assess if we really have a sympathetic communication style. We might need 23 mini breaks to properly judge a person's approach to packing and timekeeping. only after sleeping with 76 different individuals might one determine whether we're fully satisfied with sex with a particular example. Our ancestors begged to differ. They believed that alignments were to be formed, not found. What was for them principally important for the success of any relationship was the desire to make it succeed. Commitment came first, any inbuilt compatibility a distant second. It almost didn't matter who one married.