I don't imagine sociologists agree on much but I think they can agree that the environment for romantic relationships has changed drastically since the origin of effective contraception, and that the emphases in romantic relationships have changed as a result.
The most telling point he made wasn't that marriage wasn't seen as inevitable and necessary anymore. That's obvious and rather uninteresting. It was that we don't see our long term romantic relationships as opportunities to improve ourselves through the suffering such a relationship will invariably cause.
Today we see most forms of discomfort in a relationship as unnatural and unhealthy. If things aren't going smoothly it's quite possibly time to move on. Most people don't have such an extreme outlook, particularly towards the person we plan on settling down with, but I doubt any of us really have the traditional outlook towards long term commitment.
That is to say that most of us are failing deep down to acknowledge the other person is a dysfunctional and broken human being just like we are.
Up until recently marriage was something necessary for both parties to function. A man needed children and a woman needed a stable home. This is a bit of an over generalization, but there was a consistent theme in all past marriages: you either ignored or looked past or suffered through or, when possible, confronted eachother's shortcomings, simply because you had to.
Today we don't have to. Whether that's progress or regress is your decision to make, but whatever the case is, it never helps in the long run to forget how human you and the person you love are.
It's also worth noting that the foundations for all of these thought processes come from a 50-something decades married sociology professor, not from the not-quite-even-adult who's writing the post. I have justification for sounding far more qualified than I am in reality.
So my key takeaway: marriage has always been about suffering and making it through. That hasn't changed today, it's just a hell of a lot easier to get out when things start looking like hell.
And I never did discover why the talk was called "Economics of Dating."
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