Commitment With Conditions?

Can we be 100% committed to a relationship and yet still be 100% independent? MARCUS GOMEZ talks to the experts.

- Marcus Gomez

The lights are dim. The band is playing a ridiculously clichéd ballad. With dinner over, you clink glasses. The bouquet of roses he presented you sits on a chair at your table, a card poking through the thorns and buds with the message: ‘I will love you always.’

Tonight he made a long-term commitment to you. As he leans over to hold your hand, you catch your breath. This is what love is. This is what it is like to give yourself to one person for the rest of your life.

‘I love you, and I would like nothing more than to spend the rest of my life with you,’ he says, his eyes shining. ‘But before we pledge ourselves to each other, we have to agree to some conditions.’

What the …? 

One hundred years ago, making along-term commitment simply involved getting married. According to Dr Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, marriage was ‘a work relationship in which passion took second place to practicality’.

‘Today's marriages take more work than marriages of the past, when people had so few choices. Not everyone is willing to do the work.’

Throughout history, men and women had little choice other than to marry. Either their parents required it, or economic and social pressures were too great to say no. Many of these marriages had conditions set by the man. Women's economic dependence and legal subordination forced them to submit to these conditions.

Today we have far more control over whom, and indeed, over whether we marry at all. Women no longer need to rely on men to fulfil their life’s ambitions, or submit to everything their husband wants. As society has become more sophisticated, so have our expectations of long-term commitment.