What's stopping women from getting married?

I co-run a society for abundance-minded women in New York City (alongside Hailey). Last week, we discussed dating and marriage; It was our rawest conversation yet. In fact, someone started crying during the introductions, after sharing that her long-term relationship had just ended. 

I suspect many more competent, high-agency women want to get married than actually are getting married. Based on our conversation, the things that seem to prevent women from getting married are: 

1. Many women watched their parents go through painful divorces. At least one woman said she has never witnessed a stable, happy long-term relationship. Everyone was aware of the high rate of divorce, and self-aware of their own fallibility. Who were they to assume that they wouldn't end up in that 50%? 

2. Women who grew up in more conservative cultures feel a lot of pressure to marry from their family and family friends. These women often rebel against controlling families by waiting to get married or not getting married at all. Sometimes they think they might want to get married, but the concept of marriage is so fraught that they have trouble determining if marriage is something they ultimately want for themselves, or if they are just succumbing to family or religious pressure.

3. Some had succumbed to social and familial pressure and gotten married before they were ready to. They still had a number of unresolved feelings about marriage, worried they had gotten married for the wrong reasons, and still felt some concern about the longevity of their relationships.

4. Several women wanted to get married soon but were not in a long-term relationship and didn't feel it was "realistic" for them to find the right partner on the timeline they desired. In general there was a wariness of men in New York City, and a general perception that many men don't want to settle down or have kids, creating a fundamental misalignment in values.¹ A few women from conservative families had allowed their families to set them up on arranged dates, but found that though those men wanted marriage and kids, they were incompatible on most other axes.

5. Some women were in long term relationships and wanted to marry their partners, but their partners didn’t want to marry yet, or didn't believe in marriage at all. They had trouble articulating to themselves and their partners why they valued getting legally married vs. staying in a long-term partnership without involving the state. 

When I see dating and marriage discussed online, I find the discussion reductive. Red-pilled men lament that women seem to have changed, ignoring a long history of restrictive laws that compelled women to get married for economic reasons.²

Our discussion last week, as well as other discussions with friends, makes me believe that women still want to get married. However, now that we’ve lifted most economic restrictions and they have freedom of choice, they weigh the benefits of marriage against the real risks. Risks like:

• The possibility of an emotionally painful and financially devastating divorce.

• Having to live up to expectations from family and society about what a good wife does, even if they disagree with the expectations or find them restrictive.

• Marrying the wrong person.  Being in a partnership that holds them back rather than empowers them.³ 

I’m still thinking through the solutions, on both an individual and society-wide basis. But I don’t think we can arrive at solutions without a nuanced understanding of the problem.

With that in mind:

• If you’re a man or woman and want to share your feelings on love and marriage, my DMs are open.

• I also think that there’s value in having these conversations in public, and helping both genders find common ground. I would love to see a response piece from a man about you and your friends’ views and concerns about marriage.

1. Sam pointed out that these feelings seemed especially unusual within a group of abundance-minded, optimistic women. Women who usually have strong internal locuses of control often do not feel in control of their dating lives. 

2. Here are some fun facts:

• My maternal grandmother was not allowed to purchase a house in Puerto Rico due to her gender. Instead, she co-signed the house with her younger brother, even though he was still in school and had no money to his name. She provided all the capital via savings from her secretary job.

• My paternal grandmother was the first female alumna of the Bengali Engineering College. Unfortunately, no one would hire her as an engineer due to her gender, so she worked as an educator instead.

3. Sam’s parents have the cutest love story of all time. When her parents met, Sam’s mom was working as a secretary in the military, and dating someone else. So they were just friends for a long time. One day, Sam’s mom got her acceptance letter for black hawk flight school. That day, her boyfriend told her that she had to choose between marrying him and attending flight school. On the same day, she received flowers from Sam’s dad with a note: “Go get ‘em Ace.”

I love this story, but I also think it illustrative of some underlying fears women have. What if Sam’s mom was already married to her partner when he told her he wasn’t okay with her going to flight school? What if you end up in a marriage that you thought was supportive, only to find out your partner has underlying gendered assumptions about your role?