MARRIAGE FOR BETTER AND WORSE

A person meets the other having been from different places with different walks of life, it’s not easy to learn each other very fast especially when love is much at first sight.

Couples met, and they, unlike their ancestors, married for love.

 Men and women were transformed into husbands and wives. Husbands assumed they were legally and culturally assigned the role of provider and protector. In exchange for providing shelter and putting food on the table, they exacted obedience and sexual submission and expected their wives to give birth and nurture children cheerfully. Wives willingly assumed their place in the domestic sphere, submitted to their husbands' rule in exchange for their protection, and ceased having an independent legal identity. But despite these rigid roles, they placed high expectations on the relationship: Wives hoped for a romantic, communicative, and fair-minded protector; husbands for a supportive, gentle, and loving companion. Marriages were fundamentally stable, but as the century progressed, expectations rose, and marital instability increased as those expectations went unfulfilled.