20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
What's a marriage sabbatical, and why are there so many books about it?
Love? Hah!
For much of recorded history, marriage was rooted in wealth, social standing and livestock. 'Marriage was too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love,' Stephanie Coontz wrote in her 2005 book, 'Marriage, a History.'
Love is one thing and marriage, the long and happy kind, certainly another. 'When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part,' George Bernard Shaw wrote in the preface of his 1908 play, 'Getting Married,' which advocates for democratizing divorce laws.
