The decline of universally shared values and the premium placed on individual responsibilities create a number of paradoxes which lie at the heart of marriage today. Couples struggle to identify themselves as a partnership, and themselves within the partnership, in a social context that no longer imposes the straitjacket of convention upon them. This is profoundly liberating. It can also be profoundly difficult. "Women, Men and Marriage" explores these paradoxes to offer a coherent narrative that presents marriage as a threshold institution, linking private and public worlds constantly on the threshold of change. The legal and spiritual legacy of marriage, continuing currents of change in our sexual, social and economic behaviour, the psychological ties that bind us together through psychotherapy and historical fiction, the dynamics of gender, are brought together to throw light on our understanding of marriage and, through it, our understanding of ourselves.

The decline of universally shared values and the premium placed on individual responsibilities create a number of paradoxes which lie at the heart of marriage today. Couples struggle to identify themselves as a partnership, and themselves within the partnership, in a social context that no longer imposes the straitjacket of convention upon them. This is profoundly liberating. It can also be profoundly difficult. "Women, Men and Marriage" explores these paradoxes to offer a coherent narrative that presents marriage as a threshold institution, linking private and public worlds constantly on the threshold of change. The legal and spiritual legacy of marriage, continuing currents of change in our sexual, social and economic behaviour, the psychological ties that bind us together through psychotherapy and historical fiction, the dynamics of gender, are brought together to throw light on our understanding of marriage and, through it, our understanding of ourselves.