created 2025-05-24, & modified, =this.modified
By the beginning of the 19th century marriage around economic or social purposes was lessened by the value of marriage for mutual affection, satisfaction and love.
With this newfound freedom where the parents had less facilitation on the pairings, couples had to devise new ways of connecting. Some still met through parents, others with friends or neighbors. Others through work and social events.
More often than gifts, however, couples wrote each other letters. As they were sometimes separated for long periods of time during their engagements because of work and familial obligations, letters were the main source of communication. Many relationships developed in a large part through the written word.
Lindsay Companionate Marriage
Companionate marriage was a term popularized by Judge Ben B. Lindsay in his 1927 book of the same name. This type of marriage embraced a modern egalitarian idea, where couples controlled their fertility and rejected patriarchal family models, envisioning marriage as an equal partnership committed to the fulfillment of each individual’s emotional and sexual needs.
He suggested that young men and women should be able to live a trial marriage, and have a year to understand if they were suitable for one another, with the caveat that they’d not have children during this period.
He was accused of,
promoting immorality, promiscuity and free love, charges that he denied. At one point, even the Pope spoke out against him. Bertrand Russell, in his 1929 book Marriage and Morals, wrote approvingly of Lindsey’s proposals but observed that they “were received with a howl of horror by all middle-aged persons and most of the newspapers throughout the length and breadth of America.” In Denver, he was ousted from the bench, after 28 years of service. Time expressed the view that his views on companionate marriage had destroyed his reputation.