Ironically, before romantic love became the basis for marriage—a game-changer that historian Stephanie Coontz dates to the 1700s—marriage was based on talk because it was a contractual binding of individuals, property, and families. (And marriage is still a contract, as anyone who has ever gone through a divorce knows.) Marriage is complicated because we are complicated. Each of us brings into marriage a boatload of unarticulated thoughts about what it means to be married based on what we’ve seen, heard, experienced, or formulated in contrast to our parents’ example—those unconscious thoughts
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