Love and (No) Marriage: TFT Reviews Hannah Seligson’s “A Little Bit Married”

A couple shares a studio apartment in Brooklyn. They have a joint bank account, perhaps a cat, too. His parents keep a Christmas stocking with her name on it. “Boyfriend and girlfriend” seems a bit glib when couches have been communally purchased; “partner” is too easily mistaken for a business associate.

Hannah Seligson’s term for this amorphous period of courtship is “a little bit married.” Her new book, “A Little Bit Married: How to Know When It’s Time to Walk Down the Aisle or Out the Door,” is about couples who have postponed marriage for a year or ten and decided to just play house instead. Play is, according to Seligson, a big reason for the trend. Generation Y (born 1977 – 1989) might as well stand for Generation Youth; we still pine for our days in the sandbox. “In previous generations there was no transition into adulthood, you just became one,” says professor Jeffrey Arnett, one of dozens of relationship experts interviewed in the book. These mini-marriages provide a “stay against loneliness” during those not-a-girl-not-yet-a-woman years. Seligson spoke with over a hundred unmarried monogamists and the book mostly consists of snippets from her interviews.  They offer quips that will hush your most prying relatives and suggest topics – like determining a monthly budget -you ought to cover before you move in.

According the U.S. Census, there are 6.7 million unmarried couple living together; they outnumber the population of Arizona. However, a little bit married, Seligson writes, is not vying to replace the real thing. Studies show 75% of cohabiters plan to marry eventually. It’s a trend with a limited following, occurring among “upwardly mobile college educated twenty- and thirty- somethings living in urban areas.” This is hardly the seed of revolution, Seligson states upfront.

In fact, reading Seligson’s book makes you realize that dating hasn’t changed very much since the advent of Facebook, except for its ever-yawning duration. Changes in our courtship rituals hardly inspire ethnography. In one chapter, “Dating Peter Pan,” Selgison describes the maturity gap between men and women; in another “Are We There Yet?” she comforts readers fretting because their man hasn’t proposed yet. Seligson’s book is much like other self-books for women anxious about marriage, a genre that, given the recent release of Lori Gottleib’s Marry Him, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, and Kate Figes’ Couples: The Truth, appears to be the only recession-proof strain of the publishing industry. Seligson is less interested in analyzing the little-bit-married phenomenon than she is in patting the anxiety-ridden shoulders of the women navigating it.

What distinguishes ALBM from other books in this genre is Seligson’s gently prodding tone. Her advice is never too specific; instead she asks her readers valuable, self-reflective questions. “To be clear, though, this is not a chapter about how to get your guy to propose through trickery, manipulation, or harassment” she writes at the beginning of “Are We There Yet?” Instead, she inquires about the origin of the anxiety – perhaps social pressures have gotten under your skin? – and offers suggestions on how to discuss marriage with your partner. The book begins with a brief synopsis about her experience being a little bit married. But following those three pages, the book takes a decidedly impersonal turn; there’s scarcely another sentence in the first person. This might explain why her tone is measured, her prose low-drama; her run-in with partial matrimony was years ago, and now she’s empathetic to your woes but doesn’t quite share your obsession. Also, while the book does reinforce a number of stereotypes (“you’re ready to register at Pottery Barn and he’s playing Grand Theft Auto”), there are certain traditions she identifies as outdated. Engagement rings, for instance, get to her: “What if the engagement ring went where it should historically be catalogued: an anachronism of a time when women were considered something to which an economic value could be assigned.” She questions whether marriage really is the epitome of love. “Cohabitation is more committed than marriage. When you cohabit with someone you are making a conscious choice, outside of a forced institution, to be with that person.” She quotes hordes of people who advise against marrying before thirty. It makes the stereotypes in the book far easier to digest – you don’t sense that she’s projecting her own neuroses as the national standard, nor recycling old wives tales. She’s just reporting what she heard during her interviews.

If marriage isn’t your thing and never will be, a better guide might be “Unmarried to Each Other” by Dorian Solot and Marshal Miller. Solot and Miller, the founders of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, have been unmarried for eighteen years. Their book, which was published in 2002, has a chapter about legal precautions unmarried couples ought to take – like signing a health care proxy form. Another chapter is about “commitment ceremonies” for those who want to throw a party without the institutional baggage of a wedding. For Solot and Miller, postponing marriage isn’t just an issue of cold feet or dawdling before you turn thirty. The unmarried couples they interview haven’t tied the knot because they can’t (Seligson book only applies to heterosexual couples), or because it’s just not appealing. Some feel uncomfortable getting married when their gay friends can’t, others just think there’s something awry about mixing their emotional and legal relationships. Most of the people they spoke to never want to get married, not even the littlest bit.