An Hypothesis On Why Western Marriages Are Failing

I would highly recommend that you to watch this presentation on how humans manufacture happiness:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97

If you don’t watch it, the gist of the presentation is that when we are forced to make a choice between two well liked objects, for the purposes of deciding which we will own, we engage in one of two behaviors, depending on the conditions of the experiment.

If, in one instance, we were told to choose one object, a painting in this case, over another object with the possibility of changing one’s mind at a later date, a human will experience what is referred to in common parlance as ‘buyer’s remorse.’ They become dissatisfied with their selection.

If, in the other instance, we are told that our choice is final, and that no exchange is possible, we find reasons to be happy with our choice. We also find reasons to dislike our old choice. In essence, our happiness is fabricated.

This is not something that we should find surprising, but it has very big implications, and the first one that came to mind was the relatively recent collapse of marriage. The model I propose is that just a few decades ago, a divorce had very negative social connotations. While this may have kept a few miserable people together, I feel that this negative association by itself did little to keep marriages whole. It was mostly the fact that these marriages were never considered optional in the first place which caused people to automagically find reasons to be happy with their given situation. 

Arranged marriages would have further reinforced this by taking control out of the hands of the betrothed. 

A hypothetical experiment would look at different, preferably isolated, cultures with different dispositions towards divorce. It would be interesting to rate their satisfaction with their partner and see if any correlations arise. Subjecting the subjects to a personality test could reveal more data. For example, in western cultures neuroticism is generally correlated with divorce and marital dissatisfaction. Could these different cultural systems bring greater satisfaction to people who are more likely to be miserable? Cataloguing rates of domestic violence could prove interesting as well.

My interest in this subject is mostly scientific, I am curious about what drives major social changes. I am not proposing that we switch to an ancient system, and in any event seriously doubt that such a change is possible. Given current knowledge and our ability to communicate ideas rapidly to remote areas, keeping ourselves in a protective bubble would be difficult, and not desirable anyways. People who are in abusive relationships, or who are in a genuine bad situation should be able to get out of them without stigma. But by allowing them to get out, we have opened our eyes to choices we never had before. From this choice comes both good and bad.