Do you remember the first time you heard about cryptocurrencies, or even the first time you heard about Bitcoin? It appears none of us average Joes and Janes could’ve imagined the value that some of those virtual currencies could gain with time. Fast-forwarding to today, few are the individuals who knew to invest in some of those currencies during prime time. Some were probably luckier than they were savvy, thinking “What is there to lose?”, apart from those vapid ten dollars invested in the mid-2010s. Well, today, those then-banal ten dollars are worth millions. Bitcoins are, however, not the only thing of which the value went up with time. The price of housing, of gas, of food, of transportation, and of many more things, has been steadily increasing. For a lot of them, the reason behind the increase was none but inflation itself. For other things, like long-lasting relationships, the reasons are else, and way more complex than advanced economics. While many Westerners claim to value their independence more than their ability to rely and depend on loved ones, people in several part of the Western world are reporting lower levels of happiness than those reported a few decades ago—with a particular decrease in female happiness despite the gradual securing of more and more rights. So how does this reflect on relationships then? What has changed between the late 1970s and now, for long-lasting relationships to become rarer? What does the future have in store for us? Are people in stable relationships sitting on a pile of gold without even knowing it? Let’s find out.
Looking back at the life our ancestors lived a few centuries ago feels almost surreal. It also depends on whose ancestors we’re talking about. The 18th-century Euro-American family dynamics were very different from that of their African-American neighbors, often teared up and down through the horrors of slavery. However, regardless of each and everyone’s particularities, families around the Western world shared the common point of relative unity and stability. While it remains arguable that this very stability was often at the expense of women—then devoid of a fair share of rights which modern women now enjoy—one cannot ignore the benefits of values such as unity and stability in the family life as well as in relationships as a whole: certainty, secureness, and dependability. However, because this very stability was built on imbalance through a sometimes caricatural distribution of gender roles, society was up for change. Western women were, understandably or not, fed up, and with that, came a wave of divorces. Some legitimate, others probably more motivated by self-centeredness rather than objective suffering. Eventually, divorces rates calmed down, but it seems as we hadn’t quite solved our problem in terms of relationships.
While the dramatic drop in divorces rates since the 1980s could make us think we’ve sat down, had a chat, and solved the marriage enigma, it seems as if the it’s quite the opposite. While divorce rates have steadily dropped in the past forty years, so have marriage rates, with a 50% decrease in opposite-sex marriages between 1972 and 2022 in the United Kingdom. When looking at the future, the predictions are even gloomier. Researchers at Civitas’ think tank expect that by 2062, 1 in 400 British couples per year will get married, compared to the current 1 in 100. Although this drop in marriage can be attributed to different factors, such as a shift in societal views around marriage, the general landscape around romantic relationships reflect a greater tendency; more precisely, a steady decrease in long-term romantic relationships.
Whilst divorced Boomers are increasingly remarrying, Millennials and Gen Zs seem to be sitting on the sidelines. In a 2017 article by the Evening Standard, “The reason young people aren’t dating, according to a psychology expert”, young generations are said to be “going on fewer dates than their parents’ generation because they spend too much time on their phones”. Dr. Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology at the University of San Diego States University, states in a BBC Radio Four program that “teens are spending an enormous amount of time, primarily on their smart phones and communicating with their friends electronically”. Going down the rabbit hole, we can also understand how this increase in online interactions contributes to the erosion of social-emotional skills. Research led by Sara Konrath from the University of Michigan found that “college students’ self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years”. In parallel, coupling this with some of Dr. Twenge’s own findings, students’ self-reported narcissism during this same period reached unprecedented heights. Going back to dating, Twenge found through surveys and in-depth interviews of young people, that 56% of 14 to 18-year-olds went out on dates in 2015, compared with 85% of Generation X and Baby Boomers. A positive consequence of this phenomenon is the decrease in sexual activity among children aged 14 and 15 by almost 40% since 1991: “the average teenager now has had sex for the first time by the time they are 17-years-old, a full year later than the average in generation X”. Now don’t mistake me for a nun, but I think we can all appreciate the positiveness of less teenage pregnancies.
Nevertheless, less dating—or phrased differently, more singleness—isn’t good news; and it also isn’t entirely to blame on technology. Keeping the bigger picture in mind, we cannot ignore one fact: we live (and have been living for a while now) in an essentially individualistic society. This means Western societies have increasingly promoted and fostered individual wellbeing over that of the collective. From the rise of self-care, self-help, self-love, self-sex, to self-praise and self-admiration, our Western culture has, for the past few decades, been increasingly supporting what could be summarized as modern hedonism: our own pleasure at the center of our lives. In other terms, others can wait, the world can burn down, until me, myself and I, will have what we want, and feel like caring for something else than ourselves. In her 2009 book “The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement”, Twenge attributes different factors to this rise of self-centeredness in our society: parents raising their children like royalty, the spread and promotion of narcissism by celebrities and the media, the rise of social media platform like MySpace and the endless pursuit of attention, and last but not least, the increase of easy credit and the “repeal of reality principle”. We’ve seen this in many ways: children’s shirts with “Princess” or “King” printed on the front in capital letters, the plethora of pop songs titled “Love Yourself” and the growing promotion of self-care, with content along this theme reaching a total 22.3 billion views on TikTok in 2022, the rise of the selfie in the late 2000s and the development of a ‘Likeocracy’, and the promotion of self-indulgence by the credit industry.
While one could think that this all would’ve gotten us to a place of greater happiness, it turns out that more and more people are not only feeling more miserable, but actually clinically depressed, comparing to previous decades; a contrasted reality Dr. Twenge details in her 2014 book “Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—And More Miserable Than Ever Before” and her latest book “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us” published in 2017. Using the survey “Monitoring the Future”, a nationally representative surveys of U.S. teens conducted yearly since the 1970s, Twenge identified a sudden increase in the symptoms of depression among adolescents from 2012 onwards; hopelessness, apathy, and low self-esteem. An important piece of the puzzle is the parallel increase in perceived loneliness among that same category of the population, which, to some people, may come across as an irony in the age of hyperconnection, but remains an irrefutable consequence of the decrease in in-person interactions. And if this wasn’t enough, 2020 made face-to-face exchanges even harder, essentially limiting our in-person interactions to our trips to the supermarket.
Broadening the picture to couples in general, several findings reveal a decline in sexual frequency in several high-income countries. A 2019 study published in the British Medical Journal, titled “Surveys indicate a decline in sex among young adults in Britain” and using data from the British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, shows a general decline in sexual frequency in Britain between 2001 and 2012, with the biggest falls seen among over 25s and married or cohabiting couples. Kaye Wellings, lead author in this study and Professor of Sexual and Reproductive health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, attributes several factors to this decline in sexual frequency, the first one mentioned being “the sheer pace of modern life”. She further explains how “it is interesting that those most affected are in mid-life, the group often referred to as the ‘u-bend’ or ‘sandwich’ generation. These are the cohorts of men and women who, having started their families at older ages than previous generations, are often juggling childcare, work and responsibilities to parents who are getting older.” A similar study titled “Declines in Sexual Frequency among American Adults, 1989–2014” and published in 2017 in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, combined data on over 25,000 American adults and found that the average adult now has sex 9 fewer times than the average adult claimed in the late 1990s. Some theories to explain this phenomenon include the infamous nemesis of modern times, smartphones and abilities to absorb our attention at the expense of our partners or whoever has the misfortune to be in the room with us at that moment, but also the entertainment industry bombarding us with more and more entertaining content, from Netflix series to whatever gets us glued to a TV screen these days. Amongst other factors, dating apps show to be doing us more a disfavor than anything else. Obtaining sex has become as easy as placing an order on Just Eat. Choose flavor, location, time, use each other for a few hours… and on to the next one. Another factor which may explain young couples’ decrease in sexual frequency includes the generational differences around satisfaction and standards in relationships. Unlike their parents’ generation, the younger generations were promised the best of the best, and for those who didn’t get it, they were at least told that they deserved it and shouldn’t settle for less. As we all know, reality is often else. We can’t all get the best of the best. One reason being that it isn’t realistic, and the other being that there probably isn’t such a thing as the best of the best in the dating world. Young generations unrealistic dating standards also stand behind their increasing choice of being single. Mom said “Don’t settle for less”, remember? As a result, 72% of Millennials are “willingly” single, and 81% say that being single benefits them beyond their romantic lives, giving them more time to “make new friends, have more time for personal wellness, and be more dedicated to their work” (as shared by Tinder’s Newsroom). As to their younger siblings, 75% of Gen Z are single (as per the BBC) with 71% considering differences in political views as a deal-breaker (as per Refinery29).
For cohabiting or married couples who somehow managed to dodge the aforementioned hurdles, an added set of challenges awaits. For the declining percentage of those wanting children (another growing trend we haven’t discussed here is that of voluntary childlessness), the rise of infertility can put the relationship’s stability on another test (as if there weren’t enough of them already). Premier Health, the largest comprehensive health care system in Southwest Ohio, shared in 2016 that “as many as one in seven couples trying to have a baby will experience infertility”. These figures are expected to worsen in the future: “By 2025, almost 10 million couples will encounter problems in having a baby.” Again, the explanations behind that are complex. One explanation lies in the delaying of childbearing in comparison to couples in previous decades. As we all know (but probably don’t reiterate it enough): the clock is ticking, ladies! Premier Health explains: “A few decades ago, most women had their first child at about 21. Today, that age is closer to 26 or 27. Many couples are waiting longer to start their families – they may want to finish their educations first, or get established in their careers. We see a lot more divorce now, too, and remarriages.” Another non-ignorable factor which I approached in my November 2021 article “Our bodies under attack: Analyzing the decade-long consequences of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the human body”, is the increasing presence of endocrine disruptors in our environment, causing reproductive problems in both males and females.
All in all, the world of relationships (and probably love as a whole) has become what some would describe as ‘natural selection’. I would sum it up as the Hunger Games. Our pace of life is accelerating, our thoughts are getting foggier, often dictated by celebrities, the media, and overall people who have nothing to do with us average people. We’re putting our jobs first, in the hope they’ll become careers, whilst living under the sword of Damocles, pertinently knowing our jobs are as unstable as our love life. However, the difference between love and work is that you can replace a worker, but you can’t replace true love. True love, in this day and age, is worth more than anything. I’m not making it up. In our world, the value of things is set by their circumstantial scarcity. And as much as it breaks my heart to say it, true love has become scarce. That means its value went up. So if that’s something you have, hold on tight to that investment. It’s worth more than millions.
Sources
“The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media“, by Jean M. Twenge
https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happiness-in-the-united-states-and-the-role-of-digital-media/
“The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness“, by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf
“Latest figures show continued decline in marriage rates“, by Robert Gallon
https://www.princefamilylaw.co.uk/news/latest-figures-show-continued-decline-in-marriage-rates
Statista | Marriage rate in the United States from 1990 to 2021
https://www.statista.com/statistics/195951/marriage-rate-in-the-united-states-since-1990
“Marriage rates set to fall by 70 per cent by 2062”, by Laura Hampson
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/marriage-rates-forecast-divorce-b2223691.html
Office for National Statistics | Marriage and divorce on the rise at 65 and over
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/marriagecohabitationandcivilpartnerships/articles/marriageanddivorceontheriseat65andover/2017-07-18
“The reason young people aren’t dating, according to a psychology expert”, by Harriet Pavey
https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/teenagers-would-rather-chat-online-than-go-on-dates-study-finds-a3632711.html
“What, Me Care? Young Are Less Empathetic”, by Jamil Zaki
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-me-care/
Dr. Jean Twenge | The Narcissism Epidemic
http://www.jeantwenge.com/the-narcissism-epidemic-book-by-dr-jean-twenge/
“Surveys indicate a decline in sex among young adults in Britain”, by Peter Leusink
https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l1961
Beauty Daily by Clarins | “Mastering Mindfulness: Morning Habits For Re-Setting Your Mind”
https://beautydaily.clarins.co.uk/wellness/mindfulness/morning-meditation-routine
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine | “Declines in sexual frequency seen among over 25s and married couples”
https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/news/2019/declines-sexual-frequency-seen-among-over-25s-and-married-couples
“Why Couples Are Having So Much Less Sex”, by Dr. Jean Twenge
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/our-changing-culture/201703/why-couples-are-having-so-much-less-sex
“Declines in Sexual Frequency among American Adults, 1989–2014”, by Jean M. Twenge, Ryne A. Sherman & Brooke E. Wells
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-017-0953-1
Tinder Newsroom | “Single Has Spoken”
https://www.tinderpressroom.com/single-has-spoken
“Are Gen Z more pragmatic about love and sex?”, by Jessica Klein
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220104-are-gen-z-more-pragmatic-about-love-and-sex
“The Dos & Don’ts Of Dating Apps, According To Gen Z”, by Nick Levine
https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/gen-z-dating-app-turnoffs
“66 Key Millennial and Gen Z Dating Statistics in 2022”, by Briana Macwilliam
https://brianamacwilliam.com/millennial-gen-z-dating-statistics/
Premier Health | “What’s Up with Rising Infertility Rates?”
https://www.premierhealth.com/your-health/articles/women-wisdom-wellness-/what-s-up-with-rising-infertility-rates-
“Our bodies under attack: Analyzing the decade-long consequences of endocrine-disrupting chemicals on the human body”, by Aude Calloch
https://audecalloch.com/2021/11/18/our-bodies-under-attack/
Aude Calloch 