Soul-Mate Mania

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A surprising number of these marriages (not including mine) endured and produced fairly functional families. They are what author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead calls "good-enough" marriages -- relationships built more on expedience and adolescent lust than on the thoughtful and energetic pursuit of a soul mate that increasingly characterizes American mating rituals today. But, says Whitehead, "good enough" doesn't seem to be enough for bachelors and bachelorettes these days. What they're pining for is a "superrelationship."

AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT, the quest for superrelationships has significantly raised the bar for those seeking marital bliss. A generation ago, physical attraction, economic prospects, and a vague sense of social compatibility were acceptable criteria for an optimistic coupling; unattached men and women today are a bit more demanding. "The emphasis is now on more of an inner life, an inner sense of well-being, of comfort and satisfaction and closeness," says Whitehead, co-director of the Rutgers University-based National Marriage Project and author of The Divorce Culture: Rethinking Our Commitments to Marriage and Family (Knopf). "Marriage today is seen as an intimate union of like-minded souls that combines in interesting new ways sex, love, and friendship."

People are looking for a mate who "gets" them, Whitehead explains, someone who understands what matters to them on an almost intuitive level and shares those values. That's why what passes for a courtship ritual these days often includes an almost obsessive need to share one's innermost emotions.

"There's a lot of psychologizing," says Whitehead. "And one of the effects is to think you're more intimate than you really are."

But false intimacy is nothing new, especially at a time when sex on the third date is the norm. What's really demanding about the building of a superrelationship is the level of maintenance it requires to run smoothly.

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