Quilliam Susan - How to Choose a Partner

The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, a celebration of uber-traditional marriage with one main aim an heir.

Even in the glorious Age of Chivalry, when a knights love for his lady was a key life aim, no one ever suggested that romance should lead to commitment; in the Court of King Arthur, Lancelot and Guineveres real crime was not so much in adoring each other as in trying to make their adoration the basis for a 24/7 relationship. As historian Stephanie Coontz points out in Marriage, a History, while people have always enjoyed a love story, up until very recently our ancestors didnt live in one.

An emotional revolution

Fast forward to the twentieth century and romance became an imperative. Claire Langhamer, in her book The English in Love, explains that this emotional revolution had been simmering for a while, but was fully triggered into being by many and varied social changes though who knows which of these was cause and which effect. The introduction of the contraceptive Pill making partnerships less focussed on procreation and more on emotional connection? Women becoming more educated, more highly paid and therefore more able to exit loveless marriages? The slaughter of two World Wars encouraging us to seize the day and prioritize short-term intensity over long-term commitment? The rise of social liberalization, mass education, global communication? The fall in religious belief, the rise of individual entitlement, the passing of divorce laws?

Whatever the reasons, somewhere around the mid years of the last century, partnership became universally and inextricably linked with love. And that has tossed all the jigsaw-puzzle pieces into the air. For the first time, passion sexual and emotional has become the primary benchmark for relationship success. Think of the famous opening line of Jane Austens Pride and Prejudice: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Then compare that with the 1949 pronouncement by Rev. Herbert Gray, chair of the National Marriage Guidance Council, that the only sufficient reason for marrying is that you... love somebody... Where matrimonial ads in the mid-1900s when my own mother was making her partnership decisions marketed prospective mates on their cleanliness, honesty and weekly wage, our contemporary equivalent, online dating sites, now trumpet the glories of Chemistry, Encounters and being Soulmates.

Reality hits

All of which sounds enticing. But the realitys more problematic. For we now approach partner choice with bigger expectations, deeper confusion and heavier pressure than ever before. Blending love into the relationship mix may have promised fulfilment but its created huge challenges.

The first issue is that we need to make more choices more often. Centre-staging love means were likely to want to walk away from a relationship if the romance dies, while less insistence on marriage plus more liberal divorce laws means we can do so far more easily. The result is that we now have not just one window of partner choice at biological maturity with an additional window if a spouse dies but on average five windows through a lifetime. We may choose in our teens for first love, in our twenties for first commitment, in our thirties for parenting partnership, in our forties for post-divorce companionship, with a final choice for relationship support to take us through to death. All that plus any additional liaisons.

Now set this increased need against decreased opportunity. We meet fewer partners because we are more globally mobile; as never before we move house, change jobs, relocate to new countries. We have less chance to create partnerships because we work long hours then travel home, in different directions, to socially isolated conurbations. Plus, were less resourced to find and choose a partner because were less supported; we take the practical and emotional burden on our individual shoulders far more than when we only had to decide between marrying the boy/girl next door or the one further up the street. The final outcome of this blend of more demand and less supply? Meeting a mate has rarely been so challenging.

Happy endings?

And rarely so important. As never before, loving coupledom is now regarded as the key task of the human lifetime, and even more vital because we live in a fractured and isolated society. Cue that wise verse in Genesis where God says it is not good for man to be alone.

Which leads us to another problem. For now, religion has less and less place in loving relationships, just as it has in the human psyche, to the point where not only is God absent from partnership but partnership has become more significant than God. Philosopher Simon May, in his book Love: A History, explains that where once we sought meaning in the divine, now that we can no longer find such meaning, we seek it elsewhere. Partnership is the source which is now expected to deliver all the hope and happiness that we originally expected to get from the deity.