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Guiding God’s Marriage

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Courtney Ann Irby offers an examination of Christian marriage preparation programs, exploring their efforts to stabilize the institution of marriage and highlighting the tension between individualism and community in people’s relational lives.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 8, 2024

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This video video discusses a research project focused on premarital counseling, emerging from an earlier study on Christian dating on evangelical college campuses. It highlights a young woman's hesitation to address certain relationship topics until premarital counseling. Intrigued by this, the researcher examined the historical and contemporary practices of premarital counseling among evangelicals and marriage preparation programs among Catholics.

The researcher conducted observations and interviews, noting that evangelicals refer to this as premarital counseling, while Catholics call it marriage preparation. The study revealed how both traditions approach similar themes—communication, conflict management, and gender roles—despite their different terminologies. The researcher found that while these counseling programs aimed to provide essential tools for successful marriages, they often overlooked the external societal pressures affecting relationships.

Furthermore, the text highlights the evolution of marriage concepts and counseling practices from the 1940s to the present, indicating a shift from conformity to more individualistic and therapeutic approaches. In particular, it emphasizes the importance of understanding how religious institutions interpret and communicate shifts in marriage norms.

The analysis points out a tension between promoting a covenantal view of marriage (selfless and God-centric) versus a contractual view (transactional). The researcher also critiques the pressure placed on young couples to maintain a good marriage, often attributing issues to personal failings rather than recognizing external factors.

Ultimately, the discussion underscores the necessity of re-evaluating what constitutes a "good marriage," suggesting that societal and emotional pressures often inform this narrative in ways that can be harmful. This video video concludes by stressing the importance of recognizing and addressing these broader societal influences rather than attributing marital challenges solely to individual deficiencies.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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This project actually came out of an earlier study

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that I did on the topic of Christian dating on,

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evangelical college campuses.

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And so I can remember when I was doing that project,

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I was interviewing a young woman

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and she, mentioned to me

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that there was various things in her relationship

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that she didn't wanna talk to her partner about

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until they started premarital counseling, just things

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that were too intimate or things that they wanted

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to sort of wait to discuss.

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And so I was really intrigued by this idea that

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one would wait to talk about things

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and sort of wondered

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what this premarital counseling concept was.

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And so I finished up that study

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and I had sort of kept this in my back, the background

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of my head as I sort of went on

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to do another research project.

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And then I stumbled across, in the archives a collection

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of documents from Catholic premarital counseling

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or what they would call marriage preparation programs in

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the 1940s and fifties.

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And so, as I had originally thought that this idea

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of premarital counseling sort of emerged as a result of kind

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of contemporary tensions in relationships

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and sort of questions around divorce

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and these things, I actually found

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that those similar ideas had motivated it much earlier.

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And so I proceeded to conduct a study

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that looked both at the history

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and sort of contemporary practices of premarital counseling

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among evangelicals

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and what, Catholics call marriage preparation programs.

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And so more broadly, my work has always focused on sort

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of this question of how religion shapes meaning making

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and how people form intimacy.

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So there's a lot of research on religion and politics

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and all these other spaces,

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but I was interested in how religion shapes people's sort

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of everyday life and their most important institutions like

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their intimate relationships.

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And it's also the space which is often hotly contested,

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but also sometimes the space

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where there's less clarity in terms

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of religious traditions always.

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There's not anything on dating right in the Bible

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where there, various things like that where people have

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to make decisions about how you live your life in a

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contemporary manner that is consistent with one's faith.

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I started initially with a pilot study project

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where I observed a, premarital counseling weekend.

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It was a retreat that drew from congregations

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sort of around the area.

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And I conducted observations in and participated

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and talked to the faculty

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or the leaders of it as well

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as the couples that went through it.

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And so this con or this peer minister organization,

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probably more accurately, it wasn't tied

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to any specific congregation,

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would pull from different churches around the area, both

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for couples who were engaged

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or even just contemplating engagement.

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So what they sometimes call preen engaged.

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And so from this initial study, I sort

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of developed the questions

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and sort of a strategy of how to approach the, project.

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And then I eventually added on

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historical archival components.

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So I flew across the United States to go visit archives

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of very, mostly Catholic archives,

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and then looked at different documents of meeting minutes

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and newsletters

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and sort of, internal memos of how this

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practice was being, organized

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and sort of transmitted within the Catholic church.

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I then also looked at documents in terms of like written

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for pastors or written for couples starting in sort

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of the 1940s onward.

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So eventually I ended up having, a wide selection

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of historical background,

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and then also I did contemporary observations.

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And so I contacted anyone sort

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of within a region I was lo located in at the time.

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I ended up speaking to 15 different,

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or representatives from 15 different religious communities.

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And then I interviewed 'em as well as couples that went

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through premal counseling in a total of 70 interviews,

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as well as then participated

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and observed four different,

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marriage preparation programs.

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So two Catholic and two evangelical in each case.

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One was located in an urban setting

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and one was located in a non-urban setting.

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One of the things I found early on is

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that while evangelicals prefer the terminology

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of premarital counseling, they sort of use it

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as a discernment tool.

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And so, Catholics often prefer the framework

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of marriage preparation.

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And so I often use the terms interchangeably to just sort

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of capture both ideas.

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But the sort of two different religious traditions kind

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of have a slightly different interpretation of it.

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On the one hand, they use ver they talk about very similar

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practices or sort of, address very similar tensions in,

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in marriage.

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And so these are always short-term ministries.

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So they're often a weekend

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or every week for a couple months.

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Um, they're either individualized with one person

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and a therapist or one person or the couple

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and a therapist, the couple in a clergy,

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couple in a married, another lady,

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married couple, something like that.

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Or they're done in more collective groups,

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which is what I observed.

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And so that they might have like parish programs

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or, sort

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of classes in the evenings and things like that.

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And so across these programs,

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the leaders have this very short period of time to try

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to figure out how do we intervene in young couples lives

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and provide them with the tools to have what they think of

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as an effective marriage and as a Christian marriage.

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And so because of that, it

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that limited time means they actually articulate things

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that sometimes are a little more ephemeral, right?

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So things that perhaps are in the background,

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that are sort of being modeled,

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but maybe not always explicitly stated.

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And so this is an opportunity

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where these leaders really have to select what they see

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as the most important dimensions of marriage

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and the most important tools to transmit.

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And so for that vantage point, it allows us to see what is,

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sometimes it crystallizes what is sometimes much more sort

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of opaque or sort of ephemeral in the background.

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So topics have included things like communication,

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active listening, conflict management, gender roles,

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finances, sex, parenting,

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all these different various strategies.

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And so oftentimes they'll pick a topic,

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share their personal experiences on it, as well

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as then provide insights into

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Some sort of social scientific background

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and what they see as most healthy

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or sort of, as evidence

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that is most consistent with God's vision.

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Interestingly enough, despite being Christian, this sort

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of subject matter of a religious instruction was not

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as prioritized as a broader sort of relationship education.

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There. There's a couple important themes here.

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One is that the institution of marriage

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and sort of the context of families has dramatically changed

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over the 20th century and the 21st century.

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And so there's been significant, transitions

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and when people get married, why they get married,

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what they want out of marriage

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and sort of what a successful marriage looks like.

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And so by looking at premarital counseling programs starting

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in the 1940s all the way to contemporary moments, I've sort

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of been able to trace these different changes.

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And so early eras had this vision of marriage,

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marital advice, really being about conformity, right?

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So the lessons and the advice were about how to act in a way

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that was consistent with authority structures.

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So, prescribing roles

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and things like that, especially related to gender.

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Uh, and then over time, the interesting thing

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that happened was a lot of the ways

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that they prescribed these kind of authoritative roles

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was instead to help people understand their sense of self,

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their what they wanted out of a relationship.

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And so even though these, programs sort

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of ostensibly were having this conformity

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to roles perspective, it quickly became apparent that a lot

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of what they were advising was helping couples to find time

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to communicate or helping to bridge what felt like this gulf

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between men and women's lives of the post-war era.

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And so it sort of set the stage that,

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scholars in other areas have followed a therapeutic culture.

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And so whereas lots of other people have highlighted

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how this therapeutic culture started to spread,

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this individualization relationships, this individualization

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of faith, the assumption has been

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that this has been at the cost of religion.

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And so that religions have fought this.

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And what I actually found was that religions really helped

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to transmit this therapeutic ethos

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to their parishioners and their congregants.

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And so rather than being against this,

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they actually become an important mechanism

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by which it spreads across the United States.

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So at the time, marriage counseling was pretty small,

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very few people would attend it.

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Um, and that was a major way that this sort

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of therapeutic ethos was transmitted.

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And yet congregations were offering these

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programs in the thousands.

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And so even in 1950, there was 20 thou,

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27,500 participants across the United States

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that participated in one

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of these marriage preparation programs for Catholics alone.

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Evangelicals were a little slower

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to adopt this practice in part

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because of sort of, attention

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with psychology as a science.

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Um, but eventually they also adopted this practice in sort

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of widely spread it.

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And so this, one of the key insights is just

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how religion has per not resisted change,

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but actually actively participated in some of the changes

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that we associate with the 20th century.

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And so those changes are in the backdrop of sort

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of contemporary eras.

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So young couples today, have faced this sort of tension

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and, ambiguity of what they want in relationships.

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And so a lot of research highlights.

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On the one hand, we have this big social structural

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changes to marriage.

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And then on the other hand, we have this ways

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that young couples are sort of trying to figure out how

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to form their own relationships with uncertainty about

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what the role should be

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or the script should be

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as those things are less stable than they used to be.

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And so a lot

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of times we talk about these things at the macro level

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and sort of at the micro level.

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And so one of the things that I contribute is this ability

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to look at the organizational level in the local context

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that shape people's understandings.

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So a lot of what I examine is

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how religious leaders ultimately package

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and interpret these larger cultural changes for people

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and create ways for them to obtain meaning in them

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and how to interpret what they do in the backdrop

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of these sort of larger structural changes.

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And so one of the things I found pervasive is

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what they teach about marriage is this sort of bifurcation

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of a Christian marriage versus a secular marriage.

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So they argue that a Christian marriage is a covenant

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marriage is the language that they use,

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whereas they conceptualize a secular marriage

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as a contract marriage.

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And so a Christian marriage from their point

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of view is a covenant between the spouses and with God,

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and it's supposed to be other centric

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and sort of oriented towards filling the needs

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of someone else first.

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And they see this as, critical to successful marriages.

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And they instead contrast that with the, what they see

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as a secular marriage as being contractual.

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So you do something only as long as you get something out

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of it and that you limit

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what you give based on what you get, right?

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Sort of a quid pro quo part.

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So on the one hand, this is an overly simplistic view of

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what Carla Hacks staff has called the divorce culture,

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but this idea that marriage is increasingly contingent

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and less predictable.

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Um, on the other hand, it does provide a framework

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by which these couples understand how to act in marriage

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as well as to motivate their turning to the community

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for advice and is to motivate the type of marital work ethic

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that has increasingly dominated in marriage

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discourse in the United States.

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So it synchronizes this marital work ethic

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that other people have highlighted

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and instead highlights the

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how it becomes part of sanctification.

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So it becomes part of the way

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that people live their spiritual lives is

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by doing it through this way.

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It is a sort of false distinction, interest, right, in terms

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of the secular versus Christian.

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And yet it creates a meaning discursive,

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meaningful discursive boundary in terms of

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who we are and how we do things.

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And in the other hand, what's interesting is the

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tension of the self in this.

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And so while they are ostensibly opposed to sort

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of this self-centered contract marriage, the way they say

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that you have to accomplish a covenant marriage is

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by focusing on the self and learning to

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Articulate the self's needs,

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the self's wants to one's partner.

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And so in this way, it again highlights the sort

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of therapeutic ethos being used towards Christian sort of,

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conceptions and the ways that the self is sort

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of malleable in this capacity

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that the self work becomes part

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of interaction work becomes part of community building.

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One of the things I think I would love for readers

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to take up from this work is to really critically examine

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what we consider a good marriage.

12:20.605 --> 12:23.525
I think we tend to use that term a lot about a good marriage

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and, and obviously everyone wants a good marriage if

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they want to be married.

12:27.945 --> 12:31.765
Um, and yet on the other hand, the way we use it often sort

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of becomes, in a ian sense sort of disciplinary.

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And so it gets used in the variety of field work

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and sort of documents that I looked at.

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It can be used to sort of structure who is within,

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to sort of draw these boundaries

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that I think might be problematic.

12:48.385 --> 12:50.965
And it also individualizes a lot of these problems.

12:51.025 --> 12:53.725
And so a lot of the ways that good marriage was constructed

12:53.865 --> 12:57.125
was this very sort of neoliberal meritocratic sort

12:57.125 --> 12:58.765
of con connotations.

12:59.225 --> 13:01.445
So a good marriage is a marriage one works not,

13:01.745 --> 13:03.445
and as a result, it sort of doesn't allow

13:03.445 --> 13:04.805
for the possibility that a good,

13:04.805 --> 13:07.805
that not all marriages should stay together

13:08.025 --> 13:11.005
or that there's perhaps good reasons to leave a marriage

13:11.305 --> 13:13.485
or that a good a good marriage might not be

13:13.485 --> 13:14.685
good all the time, right?

13:14.785 --> 13:15.925
So it placed a lot

13:15.925 --> 13:18.085
of anxiety on the young people that I studied.

13:18.585 --> 13:20.885
And so I think looking, thinking about

13:21.155 --> 13:23.845
what do we mean when we say a good marriage is a really

13:23.845 --> 13:25.005
important question here.

13:25.905 --> 13:28.485
Um, and so in terms of thinking about people

13:28.505 --> 13:30.645
who participate in these programs

13:30.645 --> 13:32.365
or lead these programs, one of the things

13:32.365 --> 13:34.525
that I think would be important to take away

13:35.305 --> 13:39.285
is an understanding that the, a lot of problems

13:39.285 --> 13:42.085
that couples will face will not be from internal,

13:42.625 --> 13:43.885
but instead external.

13:43.985 --> 13:46.725
So a lot of the advice was about a good marriage was the

13:46.725 --> 13:49.845
ways that one turns inward to work on oneself,

13:50.185 --> 13:51.445
to articulate oneself

13:51.785 --> 13:54.685
and sort of to, bracket out the world

13:54.685 --> 13:55.725
that the people live in.

13:56.145 --> 13:59.045
And yet it is often the finances outside of it.

13:59.105 --> 14:02.005
It is often the gender pressures outside of a marriage

14:02.275 --> 14:04.605
that produce those conflicts inside of it.

14:04.945 --> 14:06.765
And so I think that that bracketing off

14:06.865 --> 14:09.485
and that treating marriage as an individualistic thing

14:09.485 --> 14:12.765
that people can work on independently of their sort

14:12.765 --> 14:16.325
of social surroundings doesn't actually help them prepare

14:16.385 --> 14:18.085
for many of the tensions and contradictions

14:18.085 --> 14:19.805
that they might face in future.

14:20.545 --> 14:23.845
And so it, it again puts this sort of, pressure

14:24.065 --> 14:26.645
to have a good marriage is to work really hard.

14:26.705 --> 14:28.365
And then if you, if you don't,

14:28.435 --> 14:30.005
then you're not working hard enough.

14:30.585 --> 14:32.565
And so I think this is not a particularly

14:32.565 --> 14:33.885
healthy framework, actually.

14:34.665 --> 14:37.805
And so ultimately, one of the things that really stood out

14:37.805 --> 14:40.685
to me in this work is sort of the power of emotions

14:40.785 --> 14:44.005
and how emotions are tied, to these bigger questions

14:44.005 --> 14:45.645
of status and authority in our culture.

14:46.025 --> 14:49.605
So this question of who can feel, what you can feel,

14:49.605 --> 14:50.725
where you can feel things,

14:51.155 --> 14:52.765
what you should be feeling about things.

14:53.225 --> 14:55.965
And so a lot of my work ended up really examining the ways

14:56.035 --> 14:59.605
that, lessons on something good become moralized

14:59.705 --> 15:01.285
and emotional, and

15:01.285 --> 15:03.725
that this creates various pressures on people.

Exploring Premarital Counseling Across Religions

00:00:00 - This project actually came out of an earlier study that I did on the topic of Christian dating on, evangelical college campuses. And so I can remember when I was doing that project, I was interviewing a young woman and she, mentioned to me that there was various things in her relationship that she didn't wanna talk to her partner about until they started premarital counseling, just things that were too intimate or things that they wanted to sort of wait to discuss. And so I was really intrigued by this idea that one would wait to talk about things
00:00:31 - what this premarital counseling concept was. And so I finished up that study and I had sort of kept this in my back, the background of my head as I sort of went on to do another research project. And then I stumbled across, in the archives a collection of documents from Catholic premarital counseling or what they would call marriage preparation programs in the 1940s and fifties. And so, as I had originally thought that this idea of premarital counseling sort of emerged as a result of kind of contemporary tensions in relationships
00:01:02 - and these things, I actually found that those similar ideas had motivated it much earlier. And so I proceeded to conduct a study that looked both at the history and sort of contemporary practices of premarital counseling among evangelicals and what, Catholics call marriage preparation programs. And so more broadly, my work has always focused on sort of this question of how religion shapes meaning making and how people form intimacy. So there's a lot of research on religion and politics and all these other spaces,
00:01:35 - of everyday life and their most important institutions like their intimate relationships. And it's also the space which is often hotly contested, but also sometimes the space where there's less clarity in terms of religious traditions always. There's not anything on dating right in the Bible where there, various things like that where people have to make decisions about how you live your life in a contemporary manner that is consistent with one's faith. I started initially with a pilot study project where I observed a, premarital counseling weekend.
00:02:06 - sort of around the area. And I conducted observations in and participated and talked to the faculty or the leaders of it as well as the couples that went through it. And so this con or this peer minister organization, probably more accurately, it wasn't tied to any specific congregation, would pull from different churches around the area, both for couples who were engaged or even just contemplating engagement. So what they sometimes call preen engaged. And so from this initial study, I sort
00:02:37 - and sort of a strategy of how to approach the, project. And then I eventually added on historical archival components. So I flew across the United States to go visit archives of very, mostly Catholic archives, and then looked at different documents of meeting minutes and newsletters and sort of, internal memos of how this practice was being, organized and sort of transmitted within the Catholic church. I then also looked at documents in terms of like written

Historical Insights on Marriage Preparation Programs

00:03:08 - of the 1940s onward. So eventually I ended up having, a wide selection of historical background, and then also I did contemporary observations. And so I contacted anyone sort of within a region I was lo located in at the time. I ended up speaking to 15 different, or representatives from 15 different religious communities. And then I interviewed 'em as well as couples that went through premal counseling in a total of 70 interviews,
00:03:38 - and observed four different, marriage preparation programs. So two Catholic and two evangelical in each case. One was located in an urban setting and one was located in a non-urban setting. One of the things I found early on is that while evangelicals prefer the terminology of premarital counseling, they sort of use it as a discernment tool. And so, Catholics often prefer the framework of marriage preparation. And so I often use the terms interchangeably to just sort of capture both ideas.
00:04:10 - of have a slightly different interpretation of it. On the one hand, they use ver they talk about very similar practices or sort of, address very similar tensions in, in marriage. And so these are always short-term ministries. So they're often a weekend or every week for a couple months. they're either individualized with one person and a therapist or one person or the couple and a therapist, the couple in a clergy, couple in a married, another lady,
00:04:40 - Or they're done in more collective groups, which is what I observed. And so that they might have like parish programs or, sort of classes in the evenings and things like that. And so across these programs, the leaders have this very short period of time to try to figure out how do we intervene in young couples lives and provide them with the tools to have what they think of as an effective marriage and as a Christian marriage. And so because of that, it that limited time means they actually articulate things
00:05:12 - So things that perhaps are in the background, that are sort of being modeled, but maybe not always explicitly stated. And so this is an opportunity where these leaders really have to select what they see as the most important dimensions of marriage and the most important tools to transmit. And so for that vantage point, it allows us to see what is, sometimes it crystallizes what is sometimes much more sort of opaque or sort of ephemeral in the background. So topics have included things like communication,
00:05:43 - finances, sex, parenting, all these different various strategies. And so oftentimes they'll pick a topic, share their personal experiences on it, as well as then provide insights into Some sort of social scientific background and what they see as most healthy or sort of, as evidence that is most consistent with God's vision. Interestingly enough, despite being Christian, this sort of subject matter of a religious instruction was not

Evolving Dynamics of Marriage and Counseling

00:06:15 - There. There's a couple important themes here. One is that the institution of marriage and sort of the context of families has dramatically changed over the 20th century and the 21st century. And so there's been significant, transitions and when people get married, why they get married, what they want out of marriage and sort of what a successful marriage looks like. And so by looking at premarital counseling programs starting in the 1940s all the way to contemporary moments, I've sort
00:06:45 - And so early eras had this vision of marriage, marital advice, really being about conformity, right? So the lessons and the advice were about how to act in a way that was consistent with authority structures. So, prescribing roles and things like that, especially related to gender. and then over time, the interesting thing that happened was a lot of the ways that they prescribed these kind of authoritative roles was instead to help people understand their sense of self,
00:07:15 - And so even though these, programs sort of ostensibly were having this conformity to roles perspective, it quickly became apparent that a lot of what they were advising was helping couples to find time to communicate or helping to bridge what felt like this gulf between men and women's lives of the post-war era. And so it sort of set the stage that, scholars in other areas have followed a therapeutic culture. And so whereas lots of other people have highlighted how this therapeutic culture started to spread,
00:07:47 - of faith, the assumption has been that this has been at the cost of religion. And so that religions have fought this. And what I actually found was that religions really helped to transmit this therapeutic ethos to their parishioners and their congregants. And so rather than being against this, they actually become an important mechanism by which it spreads across the United States. So at the time, marriage counseling was pretty small, very few people would attend it. and that was a major way that this sort
00:08:17 - And yet congregations were offering these programs in the thousands. And so even in 1950, there was 20 thou, 27,500 participants across the United States that participated in one of these marriage preparation programs for Catholics alone. Evangelicals were a little slower to adopt this practice in part because of sort of, attention with psychology as a science. but eventually they also adopted this practice in sort of widely spread it.
00:08:49 - how religion has per not resisted change, but actually actively participated in some of the changes that we associate with the 20th century. And so those changes are in the backdrop of sort of contemporary eras. So young couples today, have faced this sort of tension and, ambiguity of what they want in relationships. And so a lot of research highlights. On the one hand, we have this big social structural changes to marriage.

Navigating Marriage: Christian vs. Secular Perspectives

00:09:17 - that young couples are sort of trying to figure out how to form their own relationships with uncertainty about what the role should be or the script should be as those things are less stable than they used to be. And so a lot of times we talk about these things at the macro level and sort of at the micro level. And so one of the things that I contribute is this ability to look at the organizational level in the local context that shape people's understandings. So a lot of what I examine is how religious leaders ultimately package and interpret these larger cultural changes for people
00:09:52 - and how to interpret what they do in the backdrop of these sort of larger structural changes. And so one of the things I found pervasive is what they teach about marriage is this sort of bifurcation of a Christian marriage versus a secular marriage. So they argue that a Christian marriage is a covenant marriage is the language that they use, whereas they conceptualize a secular marriage as a contract marriage. And so a Christian marriage from their point
00:10:21 - and it's supposed to be other centric and sort of oriented towards filling the needs of someone else first. And they see this as, critical to successful marriages. And they instead contrast that with the, what they see as a secular marriage as being contractual. So you do something only as long as you get something out of it and that you limit what you give based on what you get, right? Sort of a quid pro quo part. So on the one hand, this is an overly simplistic view of what Carla Hacks staff has called the divorce culture,
00:10:53 - and less predictable. on the other hand, it does provide a framework by which these couples understand how to act in marriage as well as to motivate their turning to the community for advice and is to motivate the type of marital work ethic that has increasingly dominated in marriage discourse in the United States. So it synchronizes this marital work ethic that other people have highlighted and instead highlights the how it becomes part of sanctification. So it becomes part of the way
00:11:23 - by doing it through this way. It is a sort of false distinction, interest, right, in terms of the secular versus Christian. And yet it creates a meaning discursive, meaningful discursive boundary in terms of who we are and how we do things. And in the other hand, what's interesting is the tension of the self in this. And so while they are ostensibly opposed to sort of this self-centered contract marriage, the way they say that you have to accomplish a covenant marriage is by focusing on the self and learning to
00:11:54 - the self's wants to one's partner. And so in this way, it again highlights the sort of therapeutic ethos being used towards Christian sort of, conceptions and the ways that the self is sort of malleable in this capacity that the self work becomes part of interaction work becomes part of community building. One of the things I think I would love for readers to take up from this work is to really critically examine what we consider a good marriage. I think we tend to use that term a lot about a good marriage

Challenges in Defining a Good Marriage

00:12:26 - they want to be married. and yet on the other hand, the way we use it often sort of becomes, in a ian sense sort of disciplinary. And so it gets used in the variety of field work and sort of documents that I looked at. It can be used to sort of structure who is within, to sort of draw these boundaries that I think might be problematic. And it also individualizes a lot of these problems. And so a lot of the ways that good marriage was constructed
00:12:57 - of con connotations. So a good marriage is a marriage one works not, and as a result, it sort of doesn't allow for the possibility that a good, that not all marriages should stay together or that there's perhaps good reasons to leave a marriage or that a good a good marriage might not be good all the time, right? So it placed a lot of anxiety on the young people that I studied. And so I think looking, thinking about what do we mean when we say a good marriage is a really important question here.
00:13:28 - who participate in these programs or lead these programs, one of the things that I think would be important to take away is an understanding that the, a lot of problems that couples will face will not be from internal, but instead external. So a lot of the advice was about a good marriage was the ways that one turns inward to work on oneself, to articulate oneself and sort of to, bracket out the world that the people live in.
00:13:59 - It is often the gender pressures outside of a marriage that produce those conflicts inside of it. And so I think that that bracketing off and that treating marriage as an individualistic thing that people can work on independently of their sort of social surroundings doesn't actually help them prepare for many of the tensions and contradictions that they might face in future. And so it, it again puts this sort of, pressure to have a good marriage is to work really hard.
00:14:28 - then you're not working hard enough. And so I think this is not a particularly healthy framework, actually. And so ultimately, one of the things that really stood out to me in this work is sort of the power of emotions and how emotions are tied, to these bigger questions of status and authority in our culture. So this question of who can feel, what you can feel, where you can feel things, what you should be feeling about things. And so a lot of my work ended up really examining the ways that, lessons on something good become moralized
00:15:01 - that this creates various pressures on people.

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