Why Are All My Friends Getting Married? Relationship Contingency And Marriage

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Does it seem like everyone you know is either in a relationship, married, or engaged? In an age where we use social media daily to present the idealized versions of our own lives to the entire world, we're constantly inundated with relationship statuses, proposals, wedding pictures, and other romantic gestures that have those not in a relationship longing for that sort of human connection. But are we posting those pictures and updates to share these happy memories with our friends and family or are we doing so to show our status?

Relationships, specifically marriage, have always been cultural phenomena that I've found extremely interesting. There are so many factors that go into marriage like the ceremony itself, the people involved in it, and what happens afterwards to name a few. People enter into marriages for a lot of different reasons, but ideally as we are told, it should be for love. We should be so enamored with our partner that we should want to spend the rest of our life with them, and live "happily ever after" right? This sort of thinking about the expectations in marriage have always been a part of western culture, but why then is the divorce rate in the US 50% and rising?

Fun fact! The divorce rate in the US is actually lower than it was in the 1970s when it was estimated that 50% of marriages end in divorce and it’s actually decreasing! Why does everyone say it if it’s wrong though? Well it’s really easy to present the narrative that half of marriages end in divorce because it's an easily digestible piece of information and falls in line with our sometimes jaded feelings of personal relationship dissatisfaction. It also can contribute to the romantic idea that, despite the odds, “we can make our relationship last,” causing people to want to put more work into the relationship resolving more conflicts. "Wow thanks, I get to constantly see everyone I know getting married and now you're telling me they're statistically likely to be happy and stay together??" Well hold your horses for a second hypothetical reader. They're statistically likely to stay together, but this does not mean they will inherently be happy. And this is precisely what I wanted to talk about today!

A study by Segrin and Nabi published in 2002 by the International Communication Association entitled Does Television Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations of Marriage? finds that people who watch romance themed genres of television are significantly more likely to possess idealistic expectations of marriage. This study cites that unrealistic expectations are extremely good predictors of marital dissatisfaction. If a person watches television shows that all portray marriage and/or relationships as these incredible, necessary things for happiness, and that a relationship is a completely blissful thing that only creates happiness, then that person is going to project those expectations onto their own real-life relationships. This can cause those people to expect their relationships to be a certain way and when problems inevitably arise, they will become so dissatisfied with constantly not having their expectations met of this “happily ever after” they were promised on television, it could result in separation and even divorce.

I talk in another post on technology and love about how in most television shows, a relationship is either central to the plot, a character's development, or motivation. When a character isn't in a relationship, especially in a heavily romance themed show, they are almost always unhappy and looking to be in a relationship. When characters are in a relationship, they are portrayed as blissfully happy and like nothing could go wrong, upholding this idealized notion of relationships as something that is required for true happiness. This foregoes the idea that a person can be happy not in a relationship which is something we often forget when inundated with romance at all times.

Another study conducted by Sanchez, Good, Kwang, and Saltzman published in 2008 by the Social Psychology journal entitled, When Finding a Mate Feels Urgent: Why Relationship Contingency Predicts Men’s and Women’s Body Shame discusses what's called relationship contingency. This is the idea that people will derive their sense of self-esteem from whether or not they are in a relationship. The study found that people who perceive themselves as failing at being in a relationship resulted in significantly lower levels of self-esteem. The idea that "if I'm not in a relationship then I am failing at life and am unhappy," can understandably cause lower self-esteem, especially in a society where we place so much value on being in a relationship. The study also finds that relationship contingency strongly predicts issues with body image for both men and women. This is the idea that "if I don't have a girlfriend/boyfriend then I must be unattractive," which is noticeably more present in women than in men, as we place the entirety of a woman's value on how she looks in our patriarchal society. The study did find that men and women are equally likely to derive their self-worth from whether or not they are in a relationship. 

The notion of being in a relationship determining levels of self-esteem can often cause people to feel a sense of what Sanchez and colleagues call mate urgency. This is exactly what it sounds like, feeling an urgency to be in a permanent relationship with someone. Sanchez and colleagues found that having lower levels of self esteem, and/or higher levels of body shame will cause those people to feel like they have to be in a relationship as soon as possible or they won't be in one ever. This can cause unhealthy relationships to not only foster but cultivate, causing people to seek out any relationship including ones with people who are absolutely and in every way not right for them.  

Feeling like you have to be in a relationship, because if you aren’t you're not going to be happy, or have a good sense of self-esteem can be a huge driver in wanting to get married or be in a relationship when you may not have found the right person, or be ready for it. Because of this, marriage can be seen as a symbol of status. The idea that "well that person is married, therefore they have found what they are looking for in life, are happy, and have a good sense of self-esteem because another person decided to be with them forever," very much contributes to not only unrealistic expectations of marriage, but also to how we come to perceive ourselves. When we place all value of a person on whether or not they are in a relationship, it minimizes our own feelings of self-worth, glossing over all of the other things that make us valuable as a person. The people who are married are seen as better than a single person, as they are ahead and advanced in life.

So the reason all your friends are getting married could be because they, like so many people in our world, derive their sense of self-esteem on whether or not they are in a relationship, and feel an urgency to get married now, else they never will be. These feelings of relationship contingency and mate urgency are made stronger by television creating these idealized expectations of being in a relationship inherently yielding happiness with little to no qualms. The ubiquity of romanticized relationships on TV can also create unrealistic expectations of marriage, resulting in marital dissatisfaction and even divorce.

Getting married to fulfill a need of self-worth is probably not a good foundation for a relationship of any kind. Marriage can be a beautiful thing if both parties agree to put in work and understand the expectations of the other. However you do not need to be married, engaged, or in a relationship because everyone around you is. If you decide you do, you’re ultimately relinquishing your control over your self-worth to others. I’m not really one to say what you should and shouldn’t do and what does and doesn’t make people happy. All of your friends getting engaged and married absolutely could live happily ever after.