A chum telephoned me yesterday, and our discourse—unhurried yet exacting—wandered through the increasingly fragile manner of modern unions and the conspicuous ascent of matrimonial annulment rates across continents. He spoke with commendable equilibrium, attributing part of this phenomenon to the economic emancipation of women—a liberation historically unprecedented. In prior centuries, fiscal dependency functioned, for better or worse, as a kind of homey mortar; the edifice of the household was held intact less by romance than by necessity.
He narrated, without bombast, the modus in which he had structured his own marriage. His wife, born into a formidable political dynasty, possessed impressive talents of her own. He had assured her that her gifts were hers to nurture—but not at the expense of familial safekeeping. He would, as a man of inherited wealth, assume the financial burden; she would preside over the domiciliary sphere, not as a subordinate but as its sovereign custodian. Money, in their case, was an abstraction rather than an arena.
In time, a rhythm emerged. Three children were raised beneath her attentive eye; when they reached cerebral maturity, she entered the profession of teaching at an international school, drawing upon her London education to impart sophisticated sensibilities to her pupils. I admired the composure with which he had curated his life. Then, with almost sacerdotal gentleness, he uttered the inevitable: “Do you not think it is time you settled down?”
I received the counsel with courtesy, yet inwardly I recoiled at the curious compulsion that undergirds it. What, precisely, is this cultural obsession with “settling down”? The phrase itself suggests sediment rather than ascension—as though the human spirit, having floated too freely, must ultimately congeal.
There is, moreover, something faintly bureaucratic about the way society approaches matrimony—as though one were applying for a licence. At a certain age, acquaintances begin to look at you with the same expression reserved for overdue library books. “Still not returned?” their eyebrows seem to enquire. Dinner parties acquire the atmosphere of informal tribunals. One is asked, with the softness of a velvet glove but the persistence of a tax inspector, whether one has “met anyone nice.” It is as though happiness were a parish register entry, and bachelorhood a clerical oversight soon to be corrected. One half expects a letter from the council reminding one that one’s Single Status Permit is nearing expiry.
Yes, we are social beings. Aristotle’s zoon politikon remains neurologically corroborated; our limbic systems crave allegiance, our oxytocin pathways are activated by intimacy, and prolonged isolation correlates with increased cortisol levels, systemic inflammation, and even heightened cardiovascular mortality. The epidemiology of loneliness is sobering: chronic social isolation elevates mortality risk comparably to smoking. But does this biological truth translate into a universal prescription for marriage?
Sex, too, is a biological appetite—mediated by dopaminergic reward circuits and androgenic drives. Yet no serious philosopher has ever advocated that appetite constitutes telos. To reduce the arc of a human life to its endocrine fluctuations is to confuse mechanism with meaning.
We inhabit a peculiar historical juncture. Men complain—sometimes with justification—that they are perceived primarily as capitalist instruments. Women assert—often with equal justification—that pecuniary predilection has liberated them from tolerating arrangements that stifle their ambition. What ensues is not merely conflict but ontological confusion: roles once rigid have become negotiable, and negotiation, unlike tradition, demands psychological dexterity.
Hence separations today frequently arise not from overt cruelty but from divergence in priorities. “He expects domestic compliance,” she protests, “while I too labour in the marketplace.” “I generate wealth sufficient for generations,” he counters, “yet she resists accommodation.” Beneath such wrangles lies a deeper question: have we mistaken compatibility of lifestyle for compatibility of being?
I confessed to my friend that, for someone temperamentally and intellectually exacting, the search for a companion has proven less a romantic quest than a metaphysical puzzle. The difficulty is not aversion to commitment but disparity of wavelength. Minds must resonate; otherwise, marriage becomes a duet performed in competing keys. He proposed, half in jest and half in earnest, that I seek a woman from old wealth—someone unperturbed by money and reared amidst values akin to my own. “You will find such women in your wine circles or in the mixed clubs of London,” he implied, invoking the civilised enclaves of that city. I conceded the sociological plausibility of his advice.
Yet the larger enigma persisted: why is the male psyche so relentlessly conditioned to believe that fulfilment requires a woman awaiting him at day’s end? If loneliness is indeed a public-health crisis more insidious than recent pandemics, why presume that only romantic coupling provides immunity? Attachment theory itself recognises multiple secure bases: friends, kin, even companion animals can mitigate anxiety and regulate affective states.
Consider another acquaintance of mine. Married to his childhood sweetheart, he divorced her after a decade that he still describes as blissful. They share a son; twenty-five years have elapsed since their separation. He wandered briefly into serial affairs, only to discover—by his own admission—that erotic novelty anesthetises but does not heal. Eventually, he found existential ballast in a close-knit fraternity of friends. Today, that circle furnishes him with a sense of belonging more durable than passion ever did. It is they—not transient lovers—who steady his apprehensions about ageing and mortality.
Proportionately instructive are the women of my own past affections. Four of the five whom I once adored are now split. One, an accomplished author and artist, confided to me that her fifteen-year marriage—though resplendent from the outside—proved internally constrictive. Since her spousal severance, she experiences a pedantic and creative liberation she would not relinquish. Physical intimacy, she remarked without embarrassment, is no longer paramount. Listening to her, I felt an almost theological gratitude that youthful white heat had not entangled us prematurely. Would we too have become another statistic in the genealogy of disillusion?
Another mirage warrants scrutiny: the fantasy that a consort will function as curative agent—chef, therapist, gardener, nurse, tried-and-true adhesive. But two over-the-hill bodies do not magically compensate for each other’s frailties. Gerontology reminds us that cognitive decline, reduced mobility, and chronic illness afflict both spouses. To imagine that one decrepit vessel shall permanently buoy another is sentimental mathematics.
This is not cynicism. My father adores my mother with an ardour bordering on fealty; he would gladly serve as her footman. Yet he spends his days animated in the company of male companions. Social psychology consistently indicates that men often experience exacting ease and emotional candour among other men—an occurrence observable across cultures. Such amity does not dilute marital love; it diversifies the ecosystem of devotion.
Conversely, another mate’s parents quarrel with operatic regularity—periods of silence punctuated by trivial disputes—yet an ineffable bond persists. Love, it appears, is less about behavioural balance than about a subterranean allegiance impervious to theatrics.
And here we approach the philosophical crux: autonomy. Two individuals may cherish one another for seventy years; when one dies, the other does not perish in tandem but adapts. Human beings possess a formidable capacity for psychological recalibration. The widowed often reconstruct meaningful lives, ferrying upon resilience encoded in both neurobiology and narrative identity. If this is so, why terrorise the unmarried with prophecies of unpreventable desolation?
Is marriage a noble vocation? Undoubtedly—for those called to it. Is celibate singleness an impoverished existence? Hardly, if sparkling by friendship, purpose, and educated vitality. The error lies in universalising a particular disposition.
So I ask: must every life culminate in conjugal symmetry? Must the absence of a significant other be interpreted as deficiency rather than deliberate design? When did society acquire the right to prescribe the architecture of another’s happiness?
Let those who desire marriage enter it with lucidity. Let those who prefer solitude—or a life richly textured by friends, family, and pursuits—remain uncoerced. The human soul is not a template to be stamped but a landscape to be cultivated.
To “settle down” should never mean to surrender altitude. Let us permit one another the dignity of chosen forms, and above all, the oxygen of freedom.
