‘All I can do is be me, whoever that is.’ –Bob Dylan
Men and women have been pairing off since the dawn of humanity. For most of its history, marriage was an economic institution that created advantageous alliances between clans and was arranged, often, without much input from the bride or groom. But by the 19th century, many in the Western world had begun to marry for love, making the relationship infinitely more complicated and divorce a lot more common.
Romantic love assumed a position of high value but even higher vulnerability.
Still, until the second half of the 20th century, these ubiquitous couplings went largely unstudied. What happened behind closed doors generally remained private, unless one had a particularly nosy set of in-laws or a manner of fighting that necessitated police intervention.
Marriages, with the power to affect everything from personal income levels to mental and physical health, remained a hazy mystery. But with the advent of the affordable video camera in the late 1960s, psychologists began recording couples’ interactions. The scientists hooked up their subjects to monitors that detected changes in blood pressure or stress hormones, and then coded even their slightest movements — an eye roll or a knuckle crack. The couples were interviewed about their marital satisfaction and were, in some cases, tracked for years.
{ Washington Post | Continue reading }
Unhappy couples in New York have long gone to extremes to throw off the shackles of matrimony—in the worst cases, framing their spouses, producing graphic testimony about affairs, or even confessing to crimes they did not commit. All this will fade into the past if, as expected, Gov. David Paterson signs a bill making New York the last state in the country to adopt unilateral no-fault divorce.
Their counterparts in other states have had it much easier. California adopted the first no-fault divorce bill in 1970; by 1985, every other state in the nation—but one—had passed similar laws. In New York, the miserably married must still charge each other with cruel and inhuman treatment, adultery or abandonment—or wait one year after a mutually agreed legal separation—in order to divorce.
