Who Should Put a Ring on It?

A Modest Proposal for Rethinking ‘Will You Marry Me?’—And What True Egalitarianism Might Look Like

Over 20 years ago, I covered my face with my hands and shyly told my (now) husband, “I’m moving away for graduate school and I’d love you to go with me, but I want us to be married first.” After he agreed that it seemed like a great idea, we shopped together for an engagement ring before he chose one of the two I had liked best. He offered it to me from one knee a couple of months later in a “surprise” engagement. As a wife, I tell others …

The Sects That Rejected 19th-Century Sex

Why Three Religious Groups Traded Monogamy for Celibacy, Polygamy, and Complex Marriage

Disconsolate after his beloved’s marriage to another man in 1837, a young seminarian named John Humphrey Noyes declared in a bitter, anti-love poem to his ex:

I will not give you …

How Mail-Order Spouses Helped Settle America

Ever Since the ‘Tobacco Brides’ of Jamestown, Government-Led ‘Partner Redistribution’ Has Eased Male Loneliness and Expanded Women’s Freedom

The history of government-sponsored matchmaking in the United States is a long one, with roots in the very founding of the colonies. In his account of life in the early …

How Love Departs

What you want is for love to lean against the table like a craps dealer at the end of his shift and clap his hands and nod and walk away, …

When Human Hair Could Braid Two Hearts Together

Before Chocolates Reigned on Valentine’s Day, a Tuft of Your Beloved’s Tresses Was the Most Fashionable Sign of Affection

In 2016, Americans will spend more than $18 billion on Valentine’s Day, according to the National Retail Federation. We’ll show our love and affection by buying heart-shaped chocolate boxes, sparkling …

Stuffed Lines

When dead (when you’re dead), jealousy feels six times worse, otherwise everything is the
Same deal. Back in life, they put my intimate, personal letters in the second-best collection …