“I probably wouldn’t be married if I knew I was going to have health insurance. That’s not because I don’t love my partner and [don’t] want to spend the rest of my life with him. It’s because I didn’t want to actually take part in this institution,” says Miranda Sklaroff, a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at Penn. Sklaroff knew she and her partner wanted to have kids. But she had concerns about healthcare, which she wasn’t sure Penn would provide. “It was just something we had to do.” 

In 2004, the United States Government Accountability Office recognized 1,049 rights, benefits, or privileges associated with marriage as part of the Defense of Marriage Act, which attempted to codify the definition of “marriage” as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” Though this codification of strictly heterosexual marriage as legally valid was determined unconstitutional in 2013, the benefits and rights outlined by the GAO—such as healthcare and inheritance—are still directly tied to marriage. For many individuals, marriage is an economic necessity and a legal institution that they must opt into, regardless of their personal feelings.

It seems regressive—a relic of a bygone era—to imagine marriage as an economic means of survival rather than a celebration of love and companionship. While people easily admit to choosing to work on the basis of economic stability, it feels uncomfortable to admit to choosing marriage for the same reason. Yet, at the same time, it’s difficult to justify a lifelong partnership as legitimate outside of marriage. From The Office’s jokes about Pam’s endless engagement to reality TV shows like The Ultimatum, Western culture sees a successful romantic relationship as ending in marriage.

It’s difficult to disentangle the idea of marriage as an economic unit created by the state from our ideas around love and companionship. But the conflation between the two is a relatively new concept. Throughout much of history, marriage was viewed as akin to a career—an economic necessity to ensure the continuation of one’s wealth and preservation of their property. 

“The idea of marrying for romantic love emerged as a significant cultural force in the 19th century. Yet marriage was then still an economic proposition, just a culturally disguised one. The way the state structures marriage today makes it inescapably an economic proposition,” says Caz Batten, an English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies professor at Penn.

But Batten contends that because of this romantic makeover of marriage, marrying with the intention of money is taboo. One must buy into marriage as an economic necessity, but they cannot be entirely honest in these motives without appearing heartless, cold, or even earning the label of “gold digger.”

The way individuals conceptualize companionship is directly connected to the state’s economic and legal incentives for marriage and the nuclear family. 

“These systems are designed precisely to prioritize marriage as the predominant mode of companionship, and to thereby promote the nuclear family—heterosexual, married parents with children—as the fundamental social unit and as a replacement for the social safety net that has been systematically eroded in the United States since the Reagan years and the rightward turn of the 1980s,” says Batten. In other words, the burden of survival has been placed on the nuclear family. It seems the best way for an adult to guarantee that they are included in a family unit and have a modicum of security is to get married.

A 2013 study by The Atlantic finds that unmarried individuals pay upwards of $1 million more in their lifetime for healthcare, taxes, and living expenses than their married counterparts. Choosing to operate outside of marriage—whether you live with a long–term companion or a group of friends—is a privilege of its own. “You have to be financially independent, employed with decent health insurance, and healthy and able–bodied to be able to build companionship outside monogamous, heterosexual marriage because so many forms of care and support are only made available through the nuclear family,” says Batten. 

The economic and legal incentivization of the nuclear family and marriage makes it difficult to conceptualize companionship outside of marriage. “The state has required it to be that way,” says Nancy Hirschmann, a Political Science professor at Penn and the author of The Subject of Liberty: Toward a Feminist Theory of Freedom. “The state has structured the parameters so that thinking about love in different ways becomes foreclosed.” 

Some individuals, frustrated or unsatisfied with the limitations of our contemporary ideas of marriage, have started to question what it means to rethink companionship beyond gathering in holy matrimony.

“Opting out of marriage also allows one to break away from the constraints and limits of the nuclear family—which is too small a unit to effectively shoulder the burden of care the state has abandoned,” says Batten. “Opting out of marriage might allow one to build other kinds of community that spread the burden of care out in more balanced, achievable ways.” For those who don’t have the ability to remove themselves from the institution of marriage entirely, there are attempts to pursue alternative forms of marriage that work for their individual needs.

Some are attempting to utilize marriage to legitimize relationships outside of romance—popularizing the term “platonic marriage.” On June 1, 2024, best friends Sherri Cole and Ellen Moore legally married after three decades of friendship. The two women met in 1992, moved to South Jersey together, and bought their first house in 2000. Though their relationship remains strictly platonic and both women identify as asexual, they are committed to each other as life partners: Marriage was a means of legal protection, particularly concerning healthcare and home ownership. “What matters to us is friendship, kindness and support,” Cole says in an interview with The New York Times. “That is what we are to one another, and that is—or should be—the core definition of a ‘marriage’ and ‘partnership.’” 

In April 2024, a Times article titled “Lessons From a 20–Person Polycule” went semi–viral as a salacious look into an unconventional, polyamorous relationship. Though much of the piece delves into the complexities of the polycule, the topic of marriage finds itself woven throughout, with many members being married to another partner. “A lot of people are married and have primary partnerships. They’re coming to it from the opening of a monogamous relationship,” says Katie, a member of the polycule.

Another member, Nico, explains that “[t]here are so many things we’re pushing against, but we still have to live within. My husband and I married for legal benefits, for taxes and things like that. Our society’s laws benefit married people.” But Nico follows up on the possibility of marrying her girlfriend as a means of demonstrating their commitment. Though not legal yet, Nico says, “In Somerville, which is the city right next to mine, the city legally recognizes multiple domestic partners. I think our society is moving toward that, but it’s a slow process.”

In the past year, media surrounding restructured marriages, or alternative companionship, has become increasingly popular. The 20–person polycule may be the most popular example, but there are a slew of pieces highlighting how others are choosing to rethink what marriage is, perhaps hinting at a larger cultural shift. 

“As [non–monogamy] gains, I don’t even want to say popularity, I almost think it’s visibility more than anything, but also, as it gains more acceptance and more people are willing to talk about it … [i]t’s just naturally occurring that we are finding ourselves in more non–monogamous communities,” says Jay Shifman, a local Philadelphia resident. He mentions his volunteering at the Wooden Shoe, an anarchist bookstore in South Philly, and its inability to keep The Ethical Slut, a self–help guide to polyamory, stocked at the store. He and his wife Lauren Shifman are in an open marriage and are part of a polycule. 

“We started out with a very traditional or conventional marriage,” says Lauren. “You date, and then you love each other, and then you get married. You’re monogamous, and that’s what you do.” But Lauren and Jay do not describe themselves as conventional people. Though they loved each other and similarly felt a desire to be lifelong partners, there were gaps in the relationship not being filled. Both Lauren, who identifies as queer, and Jay, who identifies as polyamorous, felt there was a “struggle to fit into a one–dimensional relationship” with these identities in mind.

A couples therapist offered them the potential solution of exploring an open marriage, one that they ultimately chose to pursue. “We were starting with what felt like somewhat of a blank slate where we could go kind of point by point and craft the marriage we wanted,” says Lauren. “Our starting place was like, we want to be life partners, we want to share a home, we want to have these sort of core things that we do together in our partnership.” From there, it was up to the couple to decide what exactly this new avenue of romance would entail.

“The beauty of non or open relationships, the foundation,” Jay says, “is that one person literally cannot be your everything. That’s why we have friends and family and everything else. But we tend to zone in on a partner and be like, ‘This person has to be my everything’ in a relationship sense.” 

The ability to rely on multiple, rather than one, has lessened the practical issues that arise in any potential relationship while heightening the shared experiences of partners. For example, Jay’s girlfriend owns cats, to which he is allergic, but they never fret over an incompatibility that in a monogamous relationship may lead to breakup. Similarly, Jay and his girlfriend bond over their love of writing, a hobby Lauren does not engage in. On the other hand, both Jay and Lauren love to travel together, while his girlfriend does not. Though seemingly arbitrary, it is these small things that allow Jay and Lauren to feel fulfilled in various facets of their life without relying on one partner to check every box.

Jay and Lauren have been married since 2018. They are open about the struggles that come with opening one’s marriage and the importance of establishing boundaries and creating a precedent of constant communication. They are also adamant that there is no one–size–fits–all solution to any marriage, and what works for them will not work for others. But they are happy. “We’re still married and the openness is going well,” says Jay. 

But rethinking marriage isn’t necessarily radical or political action in and of itself. 

“I don’t know that marriage itself—a contract between two people that codifies them as a legal unit in the eyes of the state—can be redefined or made radical,” says Batten. “That’s not to say people shouldn’t get married; there are many compelling reasons two people might get married, especially given the protections marriage offers, and given that the fastest way to have a relationship recognized as culturally legitimate, to have it respected, to ensure the participants can protect and care for one another, is to get married. But the institution itself as constructed by the state is inherently non–radical, inherently conservative.”

In many cases, the marriages and arrangements we define as “unorthodox” or “alternative” aren’t necessarily new but derive from historic practices that precede our modern age. In medieval England, there were records of chaste marriages between members of royalty who were married for merely geopolitical reasons. The ancient Indian myth of The Mahabharata centers on a woman married to five brothers—of which some have additional wives as well. Prior to Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, there are accounts of gay men and women marrying each other as friends in what are considered “lavender marriages.”

“We can create these alternative forms, but a lot of times, they don’t actually disrupt the hegemonic ways that relationships work. Just opening up your marriage in itself, or being poly in itself is not actually supportive of politics. It might be counter–cultural, but it’s not necessarily counter–hegemonic. There are new ways of doing the old things,” says Sklaroff. 

Yet, these so–called “alternative” arrangements force us to denaturalize the modern conception of the nuclear family and reconsider the ways in which we form and prioritize relationships. 

“Rethinking marriage is the only way to get at the destabilization of neoliberalism and the move that we’re making towards oligarchy. I’m convinced that it has to start with rethinking the family and changing it from this possessive, insular, take–care–of–your–own model,” says Hirschmann. “If we focus on love, a whole realm of different options open up to the family. Collections of mothers and children who aren’t necessarily sexual partners. Families can be defined as groups of friends who cohabitate. Families can be defined as polyamorous or different sexualities, and different identities. It’s about thinking differently about the place of love in the family, and trying to resist, or being conscious of and resisting, the ways in which families are divided as economic units,” continues Hirschmann.

Over the last 50 years, the marriage rate in the United States has dropped by nearly 60%. In many cases, this trend is attributed to an increase in financial opportunities and independence for women, who are no longer forced to depend on marriage as an economic necessity. Yet, this decline has been highly politicized—depicted in many cases as a decay of our social fabric that can only be solved by attaching even more economic incentives to the institution. As the state places an increasing emphasis on preserving “family values,” it’s important to consider where that value comes from and how it can be considered on its own terms. 

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