Happiness in Marriage - Essay Example

There are also nine variables, such as condition of health, the financial satisfaction of the couple, children in the family or a childfree family, a possible cheating of spouses, the level of education of the spouses, a level of self-satisfaction in the family, financial ability to have more children and the way it affects on the family, legal marital status of the couple are taken into account. Thus, whether it is possible to be happy in modern marriage is an interesting question… Literature review Laura Kipnis underlines that a modern marriage is based on societal bounds more than on feelings or emotions.

Moreover, a modern marriage should be interpreted in wider terms, because it is available for people of different sexual orientation (Kipnis, 2006). The government has a right to take control over a family and married couples, because “basic repression is necessary for any civilization to survive (Kipnis, 2006). Therefore, the issues of social status and political relation between a family and the government cannot be underestimated. Happiness in marriage, with respect to Kipnis, can be explained in the following way: “Marriage exerts influence on love in order to "maximize submission and minimize freedom" (Kipnis 2006, p. 53). Issues of property or financial satisfaction from marriage can be interpreted in a different manner, in comparison with how it was interpreted many years ago.

Nowadays in Australia there is a chance to meet couples, which do not have money for their common mansion and they live alone (Csencsitz, 2008). Thus, Susan Maushart is focused on the issues of property and marriage. A modern family, technology, politics and many other external factors play a very important role. The same fact is underlined by Marilyn Yalom in her book “The History of the Wife”, where she specifies a changing role of a woman in the society and in the family (Yalom and Carstensen, 2002).

There is a great challenge before modern women: they want to be happy and to be loved in their families, but at the same time, they do not want to give up their careers. Therefore, in order to be happy, a modern woman should try on different roles: "the wife can learn a great deal from the mistress" (Shumway, Sterling, Kimball, Korinek, and Arredondo, 2007).  Generally speaking, there is a great imbalance between relations of modern men and women in the society and this tendency is evident in marriages: “couples will be equal within the relationship-always a difficult goal in a sexist society-and also that they maintain a delicate balance between autonomy and fusion” (Hawkins, Wardle, and Coolidge, 2007).

Condition of health of spouses can be interpreted in the following way: in case an individual loves and works, he is a happy one. This hypothesis was suggested by the Great Fraud and it still work in the modern context (Spurlock 2005, p. 290). A level of self-satisfaction in the family is rather difficult issue, because a great deal of a positive emotional charge of both spouses depends on intimacy. Intimate relations in modern marriages are often controversial and a personal feeling of satisfaction is often gone from the hearts of the spouses.

Helen Fisher (2004) and Shumway et al underline that there is a direct relation between intimacy and marriage. A feeling of passion, physical attraction and many other components of intimate life are integrative elements of a happy life in marriage. Children in the family is another crucial issue, because