What interests me the most here (and elsewhere) is not the wish to “define down” marriage, but the wish to “define up” failure. That is, the very modern (and very American) desire to eliminate failure from among the potential consequences of a given action: in this case, by defining it out of existence. It is hard to imagine, under a marriage regime described in the article, what set of circumstances would constitute a failed marriage.

America is a very forgiving culture, and risk abatement, in one form or another, is an important and attractive feature in many areas of endeavor, from America’s theoretical underpinnings (a la Locke) to the fields of finance, law and medicine. Marriage has been something of a hold-out in this regard, a remnant of an older understanding which admitted the possibility of failure and its painful consequence: personal and public disgrace. It stands to reason that a culture like ours, a culture of second and third chances, would eventually try to mitigate the onus of failure in marriage. It’s less clear whether marriage as an institution can persist in a robust way in the absence of strong social appreciations for the role of failure and disgrace.

I suppose we’re supposed to be forgiving of human frailty and all that. But if we’re truly interested in a revival of marriage, then we should be honest in accepting that it will entail a revival of this notion of failure, and the disgrace that follows. That means acknowedging the failure in self-knowledge and fortitude that leads two adults to end a marriage they have freely entered into; the failure on the part of parents when their grown children prove unable to sustain a marriage, or even to enter into one.

How do we protect the others, those who marry without covenant. I don’t know that short contract marriage, presumably renewable, is the best answer. But cohabitation does essentially the same thing and without legal protection for the children produced by the couple.

Maybe this is about the perfidy of man. Let’s just outlaw that.

The whole idea makes little sense. If someone doesn’t like it after five years, let him divorce. Institutionalizing dysfunction is a bad idea, it will only encourage someone not to “give and hazard all he has”.