Over the last five decades, the percentage of couples who live together before marriage has increased by nearly 900 percent. If we think of a wedding as a coming-of-age ceremony, it merits the kind of pomp and circumstance that’s currently the norm. But a wedding isn’t a coming-of-age ceremony — at least for the vast majority of […]
Dear Dana is a bi-weekly advice column for humans who engage in romantic relationships. Please send your dilemmas, issues, conundrums, assumptions, conflicts, anxieties, worriments, obstacles, complications, predicaments, queries, questions, and any other synonyms for “problems” to deardana@rolereboot.org. Dear Dana, I’m 37 and moving in with my boyfriend. I’ve never lived with anyone and I’ve never dated […]
Ultimately, the number one thing that we need to tackle in the United States in order to help children succeed is not declining marriage rates, it’s poverty. I grew up in a home with married parents who stayed that way until my mom’s death. Despite this family model, when I found myself in a serious relationship […]
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 […]
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 […]
This originally appeared on Alternet. Republished here with permission. Our view of modern relationships is totally warped. What makes someone “single”? When it comes to official forms, news, and punditry, and even in fictional movies and TV shows, the world seems to be divided into two kinds of people: Married people and single people. But […]
They know it isn’t a piece of paper that binds a family together. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage. When that little rhyme—rigidly prescriptive or whimsical, depending on one’s perspective—made the rounds in the 1960s and ’70s, it felt like a clarion call to a life fulfilled. Its […]
