The idea that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the brand infusion marriage needs is a misinterpretation of the moment.Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Five months after that honking engagement ring was placed on Taylor Swift’s finger, betting on the wedding has become a cottage economy. When is it happening? Who will she wear? Will Blake Lively make the guest list? Will the big event spur a marriage boom?
The first three questions are fodder for tabloids and online gambling platforms, but the last one was posed by the Institute for Family Studies, an American think tank devoted to promoting marriage at a time when the institution is in free fall. Twenty-five per cent of Americans under 40 have never been married, up from just 6 per cent in 1980. The stats for Canada – where a notable decline in divorce rates is really a sign of fewer marriages – are similar.
Young people have dropped old-school courtship rituals for “situationships” – casual arrangements that fit around more pressing priorities such as friendships and careers. “Boy sober” and the “decentring” of romantic relationships are social-media born movements that reflect a new emphasis on life beyond coupledom.
It wasn’t so long ago that cultural critics were blaming Swift – a successful woman who had the audacity to be an unmarried cat-owner in her 30s – for declining birth rates the world over. Now she’s getting hitched and the hope (at least from the pronatalist corners of the internet) is that the millions of fans who made friendship bracelets and took out loans for Eras Tour tickets will opt to follow their leader down the aisle and into the delivery room.
But the idea that Swift and Travis Kelce are the brand infusion marriage needs is a misinterpretation of the moment. If anything, their power wedding is likely to push trends further in the opposite direction.
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“Taylor and Travis are the ultimate capstone marriage” reads a recent Washington Post headline. It’s a reference to a theory advanced by the American sociologist Andrew Perlin to describe the changed role of matrimony in society. Once a cornerstone in the journey to adulthood (i.e. a foundational block on which a life would then be built), wedlock has become a celebration of milestones in the rear view – icing on two already impressive cakes.
“The readiness paradox,” is how online dating company Match describes the phenomenon in a recent study that found 80 per cent of Gen Zers still have everlasting love in their sights. They’ll get there, but only after working through a daunting to-do list that includes personal growth (37 per cent), strong established friendships (36 per cent) and happiness and fulfilment (41 per cent) as essential relationship precursors.
Of course, personal growth is not an unworthy goal. It’s just that “readiness” can be like the horizon of a pink Instagram-worthy sunset: always a little out of reach. And if the bar for preparedness is 14 Grammys, global adulation and three Super Bowl rings, well, good luck.
A quick scan of contemporary “it” couples reveals Swift and Kelce aren’t the only ones upping the ante. In Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner we have the most accomplished actor of his generation paired with a celebrity cosmetics mogul. Rihanna and A$AP Rocky were both bona fide big deals before they started pumping out mini mes. Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau are a two-person supergroup (currently on a global tour).
Flash back to the celebrated couples of my formative years. Johnny Depp is problematic now, but in the 1990s he and Winona Ryder were the gothic love story that formed my impression of romance: unscripted and unapologetically chaotic. Remember when Depp got “Winona Forever” tattooed on his forearm (and then had it changed to “Wino Forever” after they split)?
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Jude Law and Sienna Miller, Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams – we weren’t wondering when these iconic duos were going to settle down, but rather where they might show up hungover for brunch.
By choosing to stay single while seeking that A+ in “adulting,” young people fail to recognize the role of romantic relationships as incubators, argues evolutionary biologist Justin Garcia in his new book, The Intimate Animal.
“We’ve screwed up a whole generation of people with this idea that you need to overly self-actualize before you can be in a relationship. But a relationship can be the container within which you find yourself and you make mistakes,” he recently told Wired.
I’ll vouch for this. At 47 I am proudly and politically unmarried – but also 25 years into a relationship that started with incredibly low stakes. In those early days the only thing I was “ready” for was huevos rancheros and a matinee.
To be clear, the deferral of marriage reflects important social progress, especially for women. Young people today are rightly interrogating the idea of coupledom as a foregone conclusion. A life of friendship, book clubs, volunteering, therapy and sober daytime dance parties is a full one, with or without a partner.
The issue is self-actualizing may actually be self-defeating for those who do see long-term love down the road.
Celebrity supercouples are dialling up the pressure, but let’s not turn relationships into some sacred space where few are fit to tread.