{"id":74989,"date":"2026-05-30T11:20:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T09:20:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/?post_type=magazin&p=74989"},"modified":"2026-09-25T22:33:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T20:33:15","slug":"better-off-unmarried","status":"publish","type":"magazin","link":"https:\/\/visualjournalism.de\/en\/magazine\/masculinity\/better-off-unmarried\/","title":{"rendered":"Better off unmarried?"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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\n\tMasculinity<\/a><\/div>\r\n

\r\n Better off unmarried? <\/h2>\r\n\r\n
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Why a break-up is not a failure, and happiness does not depend on the shape of a relationship. Three women talk about marriage. By Lotta von Dewitz<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\r\n \r\n

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\u2018Entromantisiert euch! Ein Weckruf\u2019<\/a><\/strong> (roughly: \u2018Get over romance! A wake-up call\u2019) is the title of a book by Beatrice Frasl<\/a>, published in spring 2025. For generations, books, films and songs have presented romantic love as the key to happiness. For women, however, reality often looks different. According to Frasl, romantic love is fed by patriarchal power relations and capitalist interests, and is one of the pillars of patriarchy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is especially clear in the traditional division of roles in heteronormative relationships, that is, relationships between a man and a woman. Here, unpaid care work and housework are almost always unevenly shared \u2013 to women’s disadvantage. Frasl calls for a radical rethink of romantic love, towards a more critical and more diverse understanding of love, relationships and community. After all, she argues, it is mostly friendships or relationships with siblings that stay with us for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what follows, three women tell their stories. What they share is the experience of living in a heteronormative marriage. Different life circumstances and different decades of birth give them different perspectives on their (past) marriages. Against prevailing social norms, their accounts are meant to normalise the idea that separating has nothing to do with failure, that marriage does not always mean complete fulfilment, and that neither happiness nor loneliness is reserved for any one kind of relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\n \"A\n \n Maria with her husband. Archive photo<\/span>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n

A typical Friday morning.<\/strong> Maria mops the floor, hangs out the washing and does the shopping: flowers for her mother-in-law’s grave, meat for lunch, her husband’s favourite bread for supper. At 1 pm she has to pick up her granddaughters from the station. When she gets home, she realises she has forgotten her key. Her husband opens the door and disappears, grumbling, back into his study. She unpacks the shopping, ties on her apron and peels kohlrabi. From the living room, she can now hear the television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maria was born in 1946, which makes her a woman of the \u2018Silent Generation\u2019. Shaped by the post-war years, this generation is associated with a respect for tradition and with reliability. And so Maria, too, lives the old \u2018romantic\u2019 model \u2013 marriage for life \u2013 <\/ins>with a great deal of care, duty and loyalty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It really is <\/strong>an art to stay together for a lifetime<\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n\n \"\"\n Maria<\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n


Maria met her husband J\u00fcrgen when she was 20. Two years later they married. Today they have been together for more than 59 years. For several decades they worked and lived together in his parents’ business, so they were not only husband and wife but also business partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having her in-laws around all the time was not always easy for Maria, as they were very strict and demanding: \u2018You always just did what they wanted. He had to fall in line with his parents too, but he found it less of a problem than I did.\u2019 Despite a very difficult relationship with her mother-in-law, Maria looked after her for a long time in her old age and still tends her grave today. J\u00fcrgen, on the other hand, never visits it. Nor his father’s. After all, J\u00fcrgen says, they were never there for him either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The roles in Maria and J\u00fcrgen’s relationship have always been clearly divided, and retirement hasn’t changed that, Maria says. She looks after the house, he looks after the office. That way each of them has their own domain, and neither interferes in the other’s. Bringing up the children was Maria’s job, because he never looked after their two daughters and son \u2013 \u2018but that was a mistake, of course\u2019. When their eldest daughter, Karin, was still little, Maria packed her bags once. But in the end she stayed with her husband. It wouldn’t have been that simple after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked what the advantages of such a long marriage are, Maria hesitates for a long time. Finally she says: \u2018Well, what can I say?\u2019 After another pause, she says: \u2018Being together.\u2019 She searches for words. It’s nice when someone is there, she says, and it works both ways. \u2018You get used to each other, don’t you?\u2019 She doesn’t want to talk about the disadvantages of such a long marriage right now. Instead, she says: \u2018It really is an art to stay together for a lifetime.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She recalls that he used to get angry when she disagreed with him in public. \u2018But,\u2019 she adds, \u2018I’m my own person, after all.\u2019 She doesn’t want to give the wrong impression of J\u00fcrgen: he is a good man, she says, and she has always been able to rely on him. \u2018Trust is important for a good marriage.\u2019 Maria and J\u00fcrgen trust each other. But when her husband is gone one day, she doesn’t want to look for another. Then she wants to be independent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most important people in her life, she says, are her children and grandchildren. \u2018Oh, and my husband too, of course.\u2019 But Maria also has two close friends, \u2018Paula and Ulla\u2019, who matter to her almost as much as her family. After a short pause, she adds: \u2018My sister \u2013 actually, my sister first and foremost. She was widowed, and since then we’ve grown closer.\u2019 Maria is content when she gets on well with her husband. But she is truly happy when she has her family all together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\n \"A\n \n Martina and her husband on their wedding day.\r\nArchive photo<\/span>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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\n \"A\n \n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The other two women <\/strong>were also in a relationship with a man for several decades. Esther (born 1958) has been divorced for four years, and Martina (born 1969) is in the middle of a separation. By actively deciding not to make a man the romantic centre of their lives, they shed a different light on the construct of heteronormative marriage. In doing so, both women reflect the thoughts and experiences behind the feminist perspective of the author Beatrice Frasl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Esther and Martina feel comfortable in their role as single women in society. For Esther, taking that step was at first a source of shame: \u2018There are some people \u2013 quite a lot, I think \u2013 who see you as incomplete,\u2019 she says. Martina knows the feeling. She is often addressed in the plural, for instance, as if it went without saying that she has a man at her side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Women are often<\/strong> women’s worst enemies<\/p>\n <\/blockquote>\n\n

\n\n \"\"\n Martina<\/span>\n <\/figcaption>\n \n <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n


This social judgement<\/strong> is linked to a narrow definition of what counts as a relationship: anyone not tied to a romantic partner is considered \u2018single\u2019, no matter how dense and close their network of loving relationships may be. A definition that focuses purely on romance ignores the reality of many women, whose lives are rich in close bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esther says that since the separation her life has been full of love: \u2018That’s real love \u2013 that’s what I call love.\u2019 By this she means the close bond with her two children and her many friendships. Today, she says, she no longer has to stay in a loveless partnership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These observations support Beatrice Frasl’s argument that social norms require us to commit to a romantic partner and to make that partner the centre of our lives until death do us part. While single men tend to be seen as independent, the same status quickly takes on negative connotations for women. Martina speaks from experience: \u2018Women are often women’s worst enemies.\u2019 They are the ones, she says, who put the most pressure on other women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n

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Note<\/h5>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n\n
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The quote \u2018Women are women’s worst enemies\u2019 refers to toxic behaviours that women adopt in order to survive under patriarchy. Sophia Fritz, for example, offers a wide-ranging and nuanced look at the subject in her book \u2018Toxische Weiblichkei<\/a>t\u2019 (\u2018Toxic Femininity\u2019).<\/p>\n

In fact, men are women’s worst enemies. The annual report<\/a> on domestic violence in Germany makes this clear: around 80 per cent of victims are female, while men account for almost 80 per cent of suspects.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\n


One key conflict<\/strong> that often breaks up the idealised nuclear family, Frasl writes, is the unequal distribution of unpaid work. For Martina, conflicts over gender roles contributed to the separation. Although she describes her husband as a very loving and caring father, most of the care work was left to her. In the end, she says, that was the last straw. \u2018Money was a constant problem, and I nearly collapsed under the care work,\u2019 says Martina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of her own job, she felt overwhelmed by how little the house was kept clean. So she arranged for a cleaner and paid for her out of her own money. But that regularly led to arguments with her husband: \u2018Whenever my husband saw that the cleaner had been again, he’d start a row with me. He wanted me to stop. He said we’d manage on our own. But we had a house with three floors and eight rooms. I couldn’t manage on my own.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the relationship between Esther and her ex-husband there was also a clear division of tasks, which developed over the course of the marriage: \u2018We just slipped into it \u2013 I was responsible for the house, the cooking and the relationship, and he was more for DIY. What else was he actually responsible for? I don’t even know,\u2019 she muses, laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She doesn’t think those were reasons for the divorce, though. The emotional labour \u2013 \u2018raising things, asking how the other person is, thinking about friends and relatives \u2013 that was my job. I made it my job because talking about things mattered to me.\u2019 Esther is convinced that otherwise none of it would ever have been discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might think the institution of marriage was also designed to multiply happiness. For Martina and Esther, however, it is other things that make them happy. Martina says her work gives her a great sense of fulfilment. But dancing and singing, learning Italian, doing sport and travelling make her happy, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Esther says she finds it especially fulfilling to experience intimacy. When she can open up to someone, or the other person opens up to her, without fear of being hurt, she is happy. Being in cheerful company fulfils her just as much. \u2018When there’s lots of laughter and I can let go, I’m happy. I think it’s becoming rarer and rarer these days that people just have a good time.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three women experience loneliness, whether in a romantic relationship or not. It may take the form of sometimes feeling left alone within the relationship, as Maria does. Or of Martina having to bear the silence of her flat on a Sunday morning after a Saturday evening in good company. Esther feels lonely when she has no one to share intimacy with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is the search for a romantic relationship still the status quo, when friendships and relationships with siblings are often far more lasting, and romantic love does not bring us the greatest happiness in the long run? Probably because it is still the social norm. What we need, Beatrice Frasl writes, is a broader understanding of love \u2013 one that decentres marriage and romance and makes room for a variety of bonds and relationships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All names in this article have been changed.<\/sub><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Recommended by the editors:<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n\n\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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More and more men are looking for role models who show their feelings. Valerio, Frank, Noah and Tom do just that. Four perspectives that show masculinity is something you can shape.<\/p>\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n <\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n \r\n

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\n TO THE MAGAZINE HOMEPAGE<\/a>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":68107,"template":"","tags":[371,372,379],"magazinkategorie":[377],"class_list":["post-74989","magazin","type-magazin","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-familie-beziehungen-en","tag-gender-feminismus-en","tag-maennlichkeit-en","magazinkategorie-masculinity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBetter off unmarried?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why a break-up is not a failure, and happiness does not depend on the shape of a relationship. 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