You Can Stay Together Without Putting a Ring on It. Really

I’m not sure how many men read articles or buy books about marriage, and I say this as the co-author of a book on marriage. Although men have historically gained the most from the institution, it’s generally women who are attuned to a relationship’s temperature and, thus, are most likely to read up on how to have a happy marriage. Of course, most of the articles and books are geared toward women anyway, as many of us consider it the wife’s job to keep a marriage going. And so arrives Marriageology: The Art and Science of Staying Together, a new book by Time writer Belinda Luscombe, who has written extensively about marriage.

Like so many marriage books (except, ahem, mine), it doesn’t question whether marriage is still necessary nowadays (it isn’t, except for government perks and protects; more on that below), and, as typical, sees making it last “until death” as marriage’s goal:

“Marriage, that fusty old institution, is worth fighting for. Permanence is temporarily out of favor … Things that have been around for a while are no longer accorded honor simply because they’ve endured.”

That’s not exactly true — we congratulate couples who celebrate wedding anniversaries, especially once they start getting into decades, even if the marriages have been meh at best and downright miserable at worst…