Summary of Eli J Finkel's The All-or-Nothing Marriage

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The Western literary tradition is full of examples of women who suffer from failed marriages and love affairs, and they rarely find salvation in a voyage of self-discovery.

#2 The focus on self-discovery and authenticity in American culture today is leading some people to better marriages, while it is also making it harder for the average person to find a good marriage.

#3 The definition of marriage is very different between cultures and historical periods. In some societies, husbands and wives live apart. In others, they don’t share economic resources. The idealization and passion of medieval European courtly love was believed to be incompatible with the marital relationship, which was determined by pragmatic considerations such as forging alliances between family units.

#4 America has experienced three major eras of marriage: pragmatic, love-based, and self-expressive. The first, which extended from the colonial period until around 1850, was oriented toward meeting basic economic and survival needs. The industrialized economy began to emerge during this era, but civic institutions like police forces were weak or nonexistent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669380924

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Insights on Eli J Finkel's The All-or-Nothing Marriage

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Western literary tradition is full of examples of women who suffer from failed marriages and love affairs, and they rarely find salvation in a voyage of self-discovery.

#2

The focus on self-discovery and authenticity in American culture today is leading some people to better marriages, while it is also making it harder for the average person to find a good marriage.

#3

The definition of marriage is very different between cultures and historical periods. In some societies, husbands and wives live apart. In others, they don’t share economic resources. The idealization and passion of medieval European courtly love was believed to be incompatible with the marital relationship, which was determined by pragmatic considerations such as forging alliances between family units.

#4

America has experienced three major eras of marriage: pragmatic, love-based, and self-expressive. The first, which extended from the colonial period until around 1850, was oriented toward meeting basic economic and survival needs. The industrialized economy began to emerge during this era, but civic institutions like police forces were weak or nonexistent.

#5

During the second Industrial Revolution, from around 1850 until around 1965, marriages had a love-based emphasis that placed a premium on helping spouses meet their love and intimacy needs.

#6

The breadwinner-homemaker ideal from the love-based era had been teetering for decades, but it had a major last gasp in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the 1960s, a series of cultural events set the stage for the countercultural revolution.

#7

The American marriage has gone through three eras, from the pragmatic to the love-based to the self-expressive. The primary functions of marriage have been to fulfill lower needs, middle needs, and higher needs.

#8

The oxygen required for a marriage to thrive is higher altitudes on Maslow’s hierarchy. As marriage in America has become more oriented toward higher altitudes, it has required more oxygenation - greater nurturance regarding each other’s emotional and psychological needs.

#9

The major change over time is not an overall increase in how much Americans expect from their marriage, but rather a dramatic shift in the substance of their expectations. We look to our marriage to meet our needs for passion and intimacy, and to facilitate our voyages of self-discovery and personal growth.

#10

The authentic self, sometimes called the ideal self, is the