It begins with a vow. Quiet words, softly spoken, wrapped in love and intention. But underneath those words—beneath the lace, the rings, the music—lies something even more profound: a contract.
Not a cold agreement typed and signed in ink, but a living one—unwritten, evolving, sacred. And yet, like any contract, it holds expectations, risks, and returns. It demands trust. It requires investment. And when it breaks, it leaves behind not just heartbreak—but breached terms.
Lloyd Cohen, in his chapter “Marriage: The Long-Term Contract,” dares to name the unspoken: that beneath its spiritual, emotional, and social meanings, marriage is an economic transaction. Two people, voluntarily entering into a relationship of mutual reliance, trading time, love, labor, and life itself—with the unspoken hope that the exchange will endure.
And why would anyone bind themselves so tightly?
Because marriage allows for something no other relationship can safely promise: the ability to invest in specific, long-term assets without fear of loss.
Cohen speaks of “specific assets”—those parts of our lives we only dare to build in the safety of commitment. Careers that pause for parenting. Moves across continents for a spouse’s dream. Children, above all, born into a home whose future feels secure. These are not casual decisions. They are investments with deep emotional and economic cost.
But what happens when the contract breaks?
When a marriage ends—not just in courtrooms, but in quiet kitchen silences—those assets lose their value. The years spent supporting a partner’s ambitions, the financial sacrifices made for home and children, the fading of youthful career dreams—all these become stranded investments, no longer protected by the original promise.
Cohen’s insight is stark: those who invest the most in a marriage often lose the most in its unraveling. And women, historically, bear that brunt. From biological timelines to caregiving roles, they often make the deeper sacrifices—and suffer the harsher economic fallout.
That’s why, Cohen argues, marriage matters as a contract. Not just symbolically. Legally. Economically. Structurally.
Because without enforceable expectations, people begin to hedge their bets. They withhold full commitment. They protect themselves. They give less. And when that happens—when the very people marriage is meant to unite begin to act like wary traders—the fabric begins to fray.
It’s not just about love. It’s about incentives.
A long-term contract, when enforceable, allows both partners to build boldly—to trust that the hours given to raising children or the years spent supporting a spouse will not vanish in the fog of future regret. It transforms hope into structure.
Yet modern divorce law, especially under no-fault systems, too often forgets this. It allows easy exit without accounting for uneven sacrifice. It treats marriage like a romantic mistake, not a breached agreement. It punishes belief.
So what can we do?
Cohen doesn’t offer easy answers. But he invites us to reframe marriage—not as a fairy tale, but as a serious undertaking, worthy of legal rigor and thoughtful design.
Perhaps we need legal models that recognize these imbalances. Contracts that allow couples to define their terms more clearly. Structures that acknowledge the economic risks of love—and build in safeguards.
Because love, for all its beauty, needs more than hope. It needs guardrails. It needs trust, not just of the heart, but of the law.
And maybe that’s what we’ve forgotten.
That behind every wedding is a wager.
And behind every divorce, a reckoning—not just of emotion, but of broken contracts and unpaid debts.