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"  Considering how much getting married is fetishized these days, we&amp;#039;re surprisingly ignorant about the origins of the institution. On the other hand, Susan Squire&amp;#039;s enlightening account of how matrimony was historically a means of controlling women might disincline the as-yet-unhitched from ever walking down the aisle. In I Don&amp;#039;t: A Contrarian History of Marriage, Squire limns the many millennia in the West, from Biblical through ancient Greek and Roman times, the Dark Ages, and the Renaissance, when marriages were largely business transactions. Along the way, she quotes popular and religious texts that illustrate the dominant male perspective. (Plutarch: &amp;quot;A wife should have no feelings of her own, but share her husband&amp;#039;s.&amp;quot;) She analyzes history&amp;#039;s stock female characters\u2014Eve, Jezebel, Helen of Troy\u2014and pinpoints the origins of the &amp;quot;Madonna-whore complex.&amp;quot; The book ends when the concept of marrying for love is introduced in the sixteenth century, strangely enough, during the Protestant reformation. Though histories can be a slog, this one&amp;#039;s both witty and concise. We sat down with Squire, who has been married for 19 years to book editor David Hirshey, to discuss why marriage&amp;#039;s past is prologue. ELLE : Why analyze the history of marriage? SUSAN SQUIRE : Because it reveals why the institution&amp;#039;s so messy today. There have basically been only two forms of marriage\u2014the old one, with men in command and women largely confined to the home, and the new one, which is supposed to be a horizontal partnership. We think the old model has nothing to do with us, but we&amp;#039;re still in transition to this new model, and we&amp;#039;re struggling. ELLE : You mean like fighting over who does more housework? SS : It&amp;#039;s hard to run an organization like a family when there&amp;#039;s no clear division of responsibility. That&amp;#039;s why the minute a couple has kids, it tends to revert to traditional roles\u2014even among the most enlightened of us. It&amp;#039;s like archetypal memory.  ELLE : So your husband didn&amp;#039;t share equally in parenting? SS : Of course not. Before we got married, we agreed I&amp;#039;d do 60 percent of the work and he&amp;#039;d do 40, but it turned out to be more like 90/10. It wasn&amp;#039;t his fault entirely. I wouldn&amp;#039;t let him do things his way\u2014like when he tried to diaper the baby, I&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;No, put it on like this!&amp;quot; Women are in total conflict about that\u2014they want the control, but then they&amp;#039;re completely beleaguered all the time.  ELLE : At least you actually discussed it with him beforehand.  SS : This was the second marriage for both of us. My first husband had always done everything. We didn&amp;#039;t have any kids, but he had to teach me how to wash the dishes.  ELLE : So why did you divorce him?!  SS : We ran the business of marriage really well. We would never snap at each other\u2014while all David and I do is bicker\u2014but there was no emotional center to it. My marriage to David is much more emotionally connected in this completely subconscious way. But in every other way, he&amp;#039;s such a pain in the ass. Wait, are you taping this?!  ELLE : So we think we&amp;#039;re more modern and progressive than we actually are?  SS : The party line always changes faster than actual behavior. Women bought into the idea that men were king of the house just as much as men did. We&amp;#039;re also hugely impatient. The old model of marriage existed for 3,000 years. To change it in the space of a couple of decades is insane.  ELLE : Are any vestiges of the old system still remaining? SS : Sure, like walking down the aisle with your father. That&amp;#039;s literally an ancient form of marriage called a manum, which means that the father delivers the wife into the husband&amp;#039;s hand because a woman must never be outside of male authority.  ELLE : Did women get anything out of marriage other than a roof over their heads?  SS : We don&amp;#039;t really know how women felt about it because they weren&amp;#039;t educated and couldn&amp;#039;t write. But we know they got maternity, for one. That was their role.  ELLE : At the end point of your book, Martin Luther introduces the idea of love and companionship into marriage in an attempt to wrest our sexual lives away from papal control. How did that change things?  SS : If husband and wife were going to be companions, then women had to rise to the level of male learning, so there was a push for women&amp;#039;s education. Eventually, the idea of patriarchy had to go, because how are you going to be companions with someone who&amp;#039;s not your equal? Then there was democracy, don&amp;#039;t forget\u2014and once there was democracy outside the home, there had to be democracy inside the home.  ELLE : You say Luther thought the biggest challenge of conjugal life was to transition out of the early passionate stage without feeling bereft. Is that still the biggest challenge?  ELLE : What about those couples you occasionally hear about who are 70 years old and still have passionate sex?  SS : I know one couple who had a passionate 50-year marriage, but she traveled to Europe all the time and had affairs. She doesn&amp;#039;t know what her husband did but assumed he strayed as well. We live so much longer now. An 18-year marriage used to be considered a pretty long one. If you&amp;#039;re facing a 50-year marriage, maybe we have to allow some discreet infidelity. Is it worth breaking up a marriage if you still like each other?  ELLE : Ask Silda Wall Spitzer.   SS : That&amp;#039;s just it\u2014people have different needs for sensation. Should I really care if my husband has a fling if I&amp;#039;m not humiliated and my emotional connection with him isn&amp;#039;t threatened? Should he tell me about it? American culture says you have to tell about an affair, but if it leads to divorce and the breakup of a family, that&amp;#039;s not as ethical as it seems. Americans really romanticize marriage in the first place.   ELLE : More so than other cultures?  SS : Oh, yes. Hollywood movies are always about getting to the altar and not what&amp;#039;s beyond it. Historically, marriage in America was much more based on choice: We never had an aristocracy here, so we don&amp;#039;t have the tradition of marrying for bloodlines or to consolidate lands. That&amp;#039;s also why we don&amp;#039;t have a tradition of adultery. Instead, we have a tradition of honesty...and of divorce.  ELLE : Apparently, women initiate divorce about twice as often as men do. Why do you think that is? SS : Maybe women buy into the romantic ideal more than men. One thing modern marriage has given us is the expectation that our spouse can be our passionate lover, financial support, best friend, intellectual equal, and parenting partner\u2014and we&amp;#039;re disappointed when all that doesn&amp;#039;t pan out. You just can&amp;#039;t get all that from one person.  ELLE : What about women who reject marriage or are single mothers by choice?  SS : You obviously don&amp;#039;t have to be married to have children, but people still do it, and gays want to be married. I think it&amp;#039;s for the social validation. And we still haven&amp;#039;t come up with a better way to raise a family.  ELLE : But don&amp;#039;t people marry to cure loneliness or for financial security? SS : Sure, but it&amp;#039;s not kosher to say that. We say we&amp;#039;re marrying for love. If he also happens to be rich or she also happens to be a babe, so much the better.  ELLE : In prehistoric times, there were so-called &amp;quot;group marriages,&amp;quot; where men had as many partners as possible, and the ancient Israelites had multiple wives. Were there ever any societies in which women had several husbands?  SS : I think researchers have found little pockets of polyandry in Asia, but it&amp;#039;s unheard of in the West. I suppose it might happen if there were a shortage of men. Carla Sarkozy apparently believes in it, but it will never take hold. Why would women even want multiple husbands, given how much they complain about having just one? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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