Understanding Marriage

Based on numerous interviews with people from both good and failed marriages, his own experience, and years of thinking about the subject, philosopher/marriage counselor Richard Taylor has developed a set of compelling proposals for reforming marriage. Taylor argues that marriage should not be thought of as a status created by the one-time event of a wedding, but rather as a long-term process. The idea that a legal ceremony can create a marriage is a legal fiction, he says. In reality, couples become married through years of mutual regard and caring, based upon the mutual fulfillment of needs.By the same token, relationships that don't work should be dissolved by mediation rather than by adversarial legal proceedings, which make today's divorces so bitter and costly.In a culture that produces marital unhappiness by fostering unrealistic romantic fantasies about love and marriage, Taylor's radical prescription for reforming our attitudes toward matrimony makes eminently good sense.