Why All Women Need Renewable Marriage Contracts
Women initiate divorce more than men because marriage is an unequal institution — a time-limited marriage contract fixes that
You’re nearly 20 years together, have a few kids with your spouse of 15 years, and the pandemic and the slow easing up of the lockdown is having you question your marriage.
That’s British journalist Molly Gunn’s dilemma. Maybe that’s yours, too.
And so she finds herself wondering about alternatives to marriage as we generally know it — a one-size-fits-all-forever plan — including the renewable and starter marriages detailed in the book I co-wrote, The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels.
In an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, she writes:
“Marriage brings lots of wonderful things, but the expectation of ‘forever’ can feel like a pressure cooker. … what if two people have an amazing time together and simply decide, after a while, that they’d like to try something else? Why can we not celebrate marriages for what they were, instead of deeming them failures when they end? I’ve started to wonder if marriages shouldn’t be more like mortgages: sign up for a fixed-term contract that you review after a set period of time. You…
