This afternoon I was in a bad mood. Do not be fooled into thinking such an event is atypical. I worked a long day, had to stand on the train ride home, was ambushed by a monotonous stout preteen at the station panhandling for new cheerleading outfits (I hate cheerleaders), and sat in traffic the rest of the way home. My only consolation was listening to one of my favorite radio shows, and of all topics, out of the extensive database in our shared human consciousness of discussion starters, they were talking about marriage.

Apparently the census bureau discovered that, for the first time in the history of the United States of America, the number of couples – that is, two people in a sexual relationship – living together without the bonds of marriage tying them to one another exceeded the number of married couples living together.

Now I know why the Old-Testament God hated the census: it gave man fodder for their rotten ideas.

Few would stand mouths agape when told that men, in general, have commitment issues, and the fact is that more and more women are falling into this category as well. My boyfriend is one of these people. He is an exception to the general commitment fear, however, because he is a scientist, and bombards me with scientific information to back up his claim that “marriage is for women.” That isn’t to say he believes only women should get married, thus creating an entire society of Lesbians, but he believes marriage only benefits the woman, since only women have something to gain from marriage. Men, he states, want to spread their seed anywhere they can. Marriage keeps them from doing this, accounting, I infer, for the tendency toward adultery. Women on the other hand, want to keep the man around so he can provide for his children. This all concludes, really, that men have no interest in taking care of their offspring, but leave it to the women while they go out and have a jolly-old rumble through the penthouse.

I’m sure this isn’t what he intended to say, but in my female head, he said it.

He goes on to explain that this tendency is evolutionarily correct, that men would want to spread their seed far and wide and create as many offspring as possible. As though just by putting the word “evolution” in there I must believe it’s true, and I fall for it every time.

Marriage, in the mind of the commitment-phobic man, is a snare they inevitably find themselves caught in, the sweet, sexy girlfriend becomes a vicious, sterile wife and stifles their freedom, their individuality, their existence. The same, I can infer, is similar for women, if only that they become that stereotypically negative married woman. They see marriage as another step toward the reality we must all face, including a career, children, and eventually death. Nothing makes me angrier than the stereotype propagated by television that married men are moronic oafs and married women are irrational bitches to be loosely tolerated. The more we believe that to be the case, the more we are going to become it.

Recently I spent some time camping near a wolf preserve and learned that wolves mate for life. I had previously seen documentaries on the female wolf, how brutal she is, how much attitude she rules the pack with, how unforgiving and harsh she can be. Yet the male wolf will mate with the female wolf, and if she dies, he does not mate again. His mate is dead, his life-partner gone, and he doesn’t feel any need to find another. Rather, he mourns her death and spends the rest of his life running the pack, caring for his children, perhaps adopting others if he doesn’t have his own. I blanched when I learned this, and recalled it again when I heard the census report. If wolves can mate for life, why is it that man can’t mate for more than a few months? Why would people, who I could assume are evolutionarily superior to wolves, feel the need to give in to what my boyfriend claims is a base instinct that even wolves don’t have, when they could easily see the harm it does to themselves and others?

I finished out my traffic-laden ride home with these thoughts in my mind and wondered what caused the steady shift in marriage versus non-marriage. The divorce rate? A change in societal values? Some of the couples interviewed about their choice to live together pre-marriage stated they would only marry if the woman became pregnant. Others said they were just putting it off, testing the waters to see if it would work in such living arrangements. Still more said they had no interest in getting married, now, later, or ever. It reflected my thoughts about my boyfriend, how afraid of a foreseeable future he is and backs away at the thought of anything less than solid, as though skating on a lake in mid-March, the cracks in the ice ringing in his ears. Fuel for his fear, I thought, the census is only fueling the commitment-phobic fire.

Then again, it seems there’s something stronger in this society than mere suggestion.