A basic argument for marriage is that it offers a logical division of labor. Imagine how much more complicated and inconvenient life would be if men had to do their own cooking and sewing, and women—all women—had to compete with men for a livelihood!
Finally marriage offers a legalized way to achieve sexual satisfaction. Men and women can receive relief from their bodily tensions without the terrible feelings of guilt, anxiety and remorse that often accompany unmarried love. That’s something. Modern psychology recognizes that sexual satisfaction is more than a physiological process of reproducing one’s kind. It is a psychologically satisfying activity and releases many nervous tensions as well as tensions brought about by hormonal or glandular needs.
Those then are the obvious, practical reasons why marriage is so universally popular. But beyond those are some important but less understood cravings which marriage satisfies.
—Beyond the desire for sex satisfaction, for example, is the yearning of both men and women to share the love and affection of somebody of the opposite sex, someone who takes a genuine interest in them. This sometimes is called a need for sexually colored companionship. This is why married people don’t feel the need to run around to shows and parties the way single people do. They have their own companionship within the family. Mark Twain, in his amusing “Extracts from Adam’s Diary” showed the bond created by such companionship when he quoted Adam as reminiscing:
“At first I thought Eve talked too much but ... after all these years I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning. It is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.... Wheresoever she is, there is Eden.”
—A desire for mastery on the part of most men and a desire to be led on the part of most women is another psychological motive that is satisfied by marriage. It is the thrill of mastery that causes a youth to careen dangerously down the highway at eighty miles an hour or to ride a horse at a break-neck gallop.
—There is a desire for pride that is satisfied by saying “my husband,” or “my wife,” or “my oldest kid.”
—There is a desire for security, a need both real and psychological, that afflicts all of us. We all like to know that there is someone who will look after us when we are sick, someone to comfort us when we are grieved, someone to help us when we are weary. Women particularly feel this need for security. In fact some observers who work a great deal in testing the reactions of women to the problems of life say that in women this yearning for security overshadows everything else. Women feel the need for security so much more keenly because, if nothing else, they are the “weaker” sex. They are more dependent on men for their livelihood.
Our returning veterans feel an intense need for another kind of security which marriage can give. After years of uncertainty, shifting, and tearing down of life and property they desperately want to get a hold on something permanent, and to many of them marriage looks like the very best way to do it.