The new ideal of marriage emerging in the mid-1700s
proposed that married people should henceforth not only tolerate one another for the sake of children, extraordinarily they should also take pains to deeply love and desire one another at the same time.
via www.bbc.co.uk
The commentator, Alain de Botton, continues about the 1700's new bourgeois vision of marriage, that it arose in connection with changing notions of work, is largely still with us today, and
is clearly not an illusion. There are of course marriages that perfectly fuse together the three golden strands of fulfilment - romantic, erotic and familial. We cannot say, as cynics are sometimes tempted, that happy marriage is a myth. It is infinitely more tantalising than this. It is a possibility - just a very rare one. There is no metaphysical reason why marriage should not honour our hopes - the odds are just powerfully stacked against us.
Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born UK resident, a writer and documentarian. His works include his documentary, Status Anxiety (2004) and his non-fiction best-seller, How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997).
For a limited time, you can hear Botton's above linked-to written essay here on BBC Radio 4.
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