What if we’re simply doing monogamy wrong? My friends used to laugh when I’d talk about my idea of the “perfect relationship.” It involved living next door to my husband—each of us with our own space, and our independence, yet near enough to be together often. So much has been written about polygamy, polyamory, and […]
According to the self-proclaimed relationship experts of the Internet, my marriage is doomed. Why? For one of the following reasons. 1) Dan and I met online. Apparently if you marry someone you met on a dating website, then you have not found true love and will have a higher chance of getting divorced. 2) We […]
You love each other. You move in together—which is a prelude to a wedding, right? This writer thought so, until the myth of holy matrimony was exploded by her grandparents’ relationship. When I was 8, my grandparents came home one evening after spending the entire day out—a rarity for them. I asked them what they […]
Since most people know when the proposal is coming these days, what’s the point of getting engaged? Just set a date to get married and forget all the fuss. Last week I was in the emergency room for a rabies shot (don’t ask) and found myself listening to an awkward conversation between a nurse, who […]
You said I was crazy to sign up for an extreme long-distance relationship. You were wrong. I live in Orlando. He lives in Australia. At any given moment, there are 9,349 miles (plus, one hell of an expensive airplane ticket) separating me from my boyfriend. In fact, our time zones are so far apart that […]
The only person entitled to an opinion on my life is me, and the decision of when or if to get married is my own to make. It finally happened. I’ve always heard people talk about that period in your mid-20s, a couple years out of college, when all of your friends start to get […]
One of the most commonly accepted bits of marital wisdom in the United States says that half of all marriages will end in divorce. As it turns out, this unnerving little statistic hasn’t been true for decades. The last few years have witnessed a great deal of handwringing over the supposed “death of marriage.” There […]
I value my freedom as much as I value love and commitment. For eight years, I was in a relationship that upset a lot of people. “So, are you and James ever going to get married or live together or something like that?” It’s a question I heard a lot during the time James and […]
True intimacy requires time, it requires our mask to slip, our shadow to show. A few days ago on The Toast, Randa Jarrar stated that she was, “never living with a partner again.” I’m a person who has lived alone for maybe a grand total of four months in my 46 years, so I eagerly […]
We explore the dubious claims of familiar relationship maxims. Many lifestyle websites, talk shows, podcasts, and parenting puff pieces aim to give readers and viewers the best relationship advice. But many of the common adages debated and discussed in popular threads these days actually provide questionable advice. Below we explore the dubious claims of frequent […]
Marriage is something I’ve been taught to believe in, and want to believe in, but maybe believing in it is kind of useless. In his special, comedian Aziz Ansari wonders what it would be like to propose to a woman if there was no such thing as the institution of marriage. He asks his pretend ladylove if […]
