Blog

Longer reads on where marriage came from, how people have prepared for it, and what the research says now.

Modern voices · 8 min read

The modern voices: Esther Perel and Orna Guralnik

Esther Perel put real couples therapy in your headphones; Orna Guralnik put it on television. What the two most influential modern relationship voices teach about desire, the recurring fight, and the couple as a system, and where their clinical insight meets the longitudinal research.

History · Illustrated timeline · 8 min read

The Church got there first: eight centuries of marriage preparation

A visual story in seven scenes: public banns in 1215, required witnesses at Trent, the one-partner-at-a-time interview, the deliberate waiting period, Pre-Cana, and the diocese that built a validated scientific instrument. What each invention quietly understood, and what it could not see.

History · Illustrated timeline · 10 min read

What is marriage? A short history of a shape-shifting institution

A painted timeline in nine eras, from Hammurabi to Obergefell: marriage as property contract, the Roman handclasp, the church door, the register book, the love revolution, the level scale, the fork in the path, the city hall steps, and the couple who now hold up the roof alone. Why the modern version is both the most fragile and the most rewarding.