LAURA KIPNIS

WE LIVE IN ANXIOUS TIMES, conjugally speaking. Given recent census data, the condition of marriage has been declared a civic emergency, since as goes marriage, so goes the future of civilization--or thus conservatives fear. But what of all those thankless marrieds doing their best to uphold this flailing institution, especially those for whom the term "happily married" does not entirely apply? A 2003 Rutgers University study reported that 40 percent of married Americans do not describe themselves as very happy in this state. This is rather shocking: such a large percentage of the population pledged to lives of discontent and emotional stagnation, because that's what's expected, or "for the sake of the children," or various other rationales. Contemplate the everyday living conditions that follow such trade-offs: households submersed in low-level misery and soul-deadening tedium; the reek of unsatisfied desires and unmet needs; a populace downing anti-depressants like M&Ms, or other forms of creative self-medication from double martinis to serial adultery.

Though what if luring a populace into conditions of emotional stagnation and deadened desire were actually functional for society? Consider the norms of modern marriage. Take monogamy, its fundamental organizing premise. The presumption here is that desire can and will persist throughout a lifetime of coupled togetherness, but what if it doesn't? Apparently you just give up sex: Desire may wane, but those vows must remain intact. (Though let's not forget what a lot of investment opportunities sagging marital desire provides--Viagra, couples porn, the therapy industry--dead marriages are actually rather good for the economy.)

Consider next the panoply of regulations and interdictions that underscores domestic coupledom--rules about everything from how you load the dishwasher, to what you can't say at dinner parties, to how you drive. What is it about marriage that turns nice-enough people into small-time dictators, whose favorite marital recreational activity is mate behavior modification? What is it about modern coupledom that makes criticizing another person's habits and foibles a synonym for intimacy? (Or is it something about the conditions of modern life itself: Does domesticity become a venue for control issues because most of us have so little of it elsewhere in our lives?)

Then there's that American relationship mantra: "Good marriages take work." How exactly did the rhetoric of the factory become the default language of coupledom? Is there really anyone for whom this is an attractive proposition, who after spending all day at a job, wants to come home and work some more? (If ours is a society that promotes more work to an already overworked population as the solution to marital discontent, who really benefits from an ethos of overwork? Typically not those performing the labor.)

If modern marriage has transpired into a social institution devoted to maximizing obedience and the work ethic while minimizing freedom and mobility, to renouncing excess desires (and whatever quantities of imagination and independence they come partnered with) in exchange for love and companionship, clearly there are social advantages here: The psychology of marital stasis is remarkably convergent with that of a cowed work force and a docile electorate. Who needs a policeman on every corner with such emotional conditions in effect?

Given that "wanting more freedom" is the contemporary euphemism for leaving such marriages, the ascendancy of gay marriage as a political demand has a depressing side to it. Resource distribution issues aside (which could be the case, were this the political fight being fought instead), the mainstreaming of homosexuality aside (with the kissing up to mainstream values it necessarily entails), of all possible social claims to advance, why this one now? If "wanting more freedom" were treated as a serious political question rather than a euphemism, no doubt different social claims would be forefronted. (Working less instead of more?) And should such claims be advanced, what other social contracts and vows might be up for re-examination, what other unrewarding social institutions would have to start watching their step?

Laura Kipnis is the author of Against Love: A Polemic (Pantheon).

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