Image Source - Atlas Obscura. A marriage contract from Turkey from c. 1900–1700 BCE
The earliest recorded evidence of marriage comes from ancient Mesopotamia. The cuneiform tablets from the time clearly record marriages as civil contracts.
But why did such an institution even come into picture? As hunter-gatherers, what would now be considered as infidelity was the norm among humans. So what did setting up of an agrarian civilization change? Well, three things:
- Agriculture created property. And the property needed an inheritor.
- Inheritance required certainty of lineage. Interestingly, adultery was not punished among the Sumerians because it was morally flawed, but because it was a threat to lineage clarity.
- States needed stable households. For their favorite reason ofcourse. Taxation.
Marriage worked as the panacea for all these ills. In no form or manner (sorry Yash Chopra and SRK fans), did marriage evolve to maximize happiness. It evolved to minimize uncertainty.
Additionally, it also served a key economic purpose: it functioned as a unit of production. Men typically handled external labour and protection. Women handled domestic labour, food preparation, and child-rearing. These roles were not moral ideals. They were logistical necessities in a world laced with high mortality, limited mobility, and no social safety nets.
Two incomplete individuals formed a complete economic unit.
Love, when it existed, was a fortunate addition. It was rarely the organizing principle., or even an after thought.
Over time, what began as practical coordination hardened into expectation. Provision became the bastion of masculinity. Running the house smoothly coupled with financial dependence became femininity. Deviation from these roles was not seen as inefficient, but as wrong. Marriage stopped being just an institution and became an identity script.
As these arrangements repeated over generations, division of labour slowly turned into moral character.
A man who could not provide was seen as failing in his duty. A woman who did not nurture was seen as defective. These judgments had little to do with intent or capability or intrinsic “mamta” of the female. They were about adherence to a template that had once been economically rational.
By the time religion and law codified marriage, these roles were already deeply embedded. What had started as coordination became destiny.
This matters because many people assume these roles are ancient and immutable. They are not. They were responses to specific material conditions.
And those conditions changed.
A lot of people think industrialization is what flipped the script. In reality, industrialization did not liberate marriage. It distorted it.
When work moved out of the home, something subtle but important happened. Men’s labour became visible and monetized. Women’s labour remained unpaid and largely invisible. The household stopped being a site of production and became a site of consumption.
This is when the idea of the male breadwinner truly crystallized. Not because it had always existed, but because wages and factories made it appear natural.
Ironically, this phase, which many assume to be “traditional marriage,” was a relatively brief historical anomaly, roughly a century long. It also sowed the seeds of future tension. One partner’s contribution was now measured in money. The other’s was measured in sacrifice, which is much harder to quantify.
However, the real rupture came much later, when women could earn enough to leave.
The most consequential shift in the history of marriage did not come from romance or feminism alone. It came when women began earning independently at scale.
Once women could earn their own income, delay marriage, and exit marriage without economic ruin, marriage stopped being compulsory infrastructure and became a voluntary arrangement.
That single shift destabilized everything.
Marriage was no longer about mutual dependence. It became about choice. And choice introduces comparison, negotiation, resentment, and exit.
The institution evolved. Our psychology did not keep up. We continued to carry emotional expectations built for symmetrical dependence into a world of asymmetrical success.
This is the core contradiction at the heart of modern marriage.
Today, we expect marriage to do several things at once. We want it to be emotionally egalitarian. We want it to absorb unequal success. We want it to protect individual identity. We want it to preserve dignity for both partners. We want it to survive under public and social scrutiny.
These demands often pull in opposite directions.
We speak easily of partnership, yet still react viscerally when one partner’s success dwarfs the other’s. We celebrate support in theory, but struggle to value it when it does not translate into visible achievement or income. Care remains poorly priced. Domestic labour remains hard to measure. Emotional support rarely appears in public narratives.
This tension remains unresolved.
It is exactly why every now and then, the biggest debates of the nation are waged in public about failing marriages - the recent public comments by Mary Kom yet another example.
In recent interviews, she has spoken candidly about her marriage and divorce. She has described her former husband as financially dependent, incompetent, and living off her earnings. She has framed herself as the primary earner and decision-maker, and expressed regret over trust and choices made.
Her former husband has denied several of these claims and has offered his own version of events, including the argument that he sacrificed his own career prospects to support her sporting life and manage the household during critical years.
There are no final legal determinations here for the public to adjudicate. What exists are competing narratives, delivered in public, after a long and private relationship has ended.
What unsettles people is not simply the content of these allegations. It is the fault line they expose.
What does contribution look like when one partner becomes extraordinary?
How do we evaluate support that was real at one stage of life but feels inadequate later?
What happens when roles that once made sense stop making sense, but the marriage continues under old assumptions?
These questions resist clean answers. That discomfort is precisely why public reactions oscillate between defense, condemnation, and confusion.
What this episode reveals is not just individual failure, but institutional lag.
Marriage was not designed for extreme asymmetry of success, public visibility of private breakdowns, identities that change faster than roles, or relationships where dependency can flip direction multiple times.
We still lack shared language for care as contribution, support as labour, dependency without shame, and exit without villainization.
So we default to blame, heroism, or betrayal. These are moral shortcuts, not explanations.
Which brings us to the questions this leaves us with.
If marriage was designed for survival, and later adapted for stability, what exactly is it designed for today?
When one partner radically outgrows the script the marriage was written for, who is really failing? The people inside it, or the institution itself?
And if economic independence, shifting identities, and asymmetrical success are only becoming more common, is marriage likely to survive another generation in its current form, or will it require a fundamental redesign?
These are not questions about one couple or ten. They are questions about an institution straining under expectations it was never built to carry.
Perhaps modern marriage does not feel brittle because people are worse than before, but because the world has changed faster than the structure meant to hold them together.
Write to us at plainsight@wyzr.in with your thoughts. We will share the most compelling responses in a future edition.
What we’re reading this week
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason.
A collection of short parables set in ancient Babylon that explain timeless principles of money, saving, and wealth-building in simple, memorable language. A solid book for beginners in personal finance.
Until next week.
Best,
