Given the financial circumstances many Americans are living in, I can't imagine nobody's thought of it.
The other alternative is to have someone live rent free in exchange for doing the household chores, also known as a live in maid. That is like living with a room mate as a couple, not the most fun.
You used to be able to live on one income in america with just a high school education and buying a house in your early 20s. Not so much anymore.
Have wondered if there is an economically and romantically viable successor to modern marriage.
I can tell you as a participant in a two person marriage that I'm not sure it would work for me, but can imagine the benefits.
That could just as well be evidence for formal marriage not being easily sustainable.
A formal marriage comes with its own pros and cons compared to other relationship types, as such I don't think you can use divorce numbers as evidence for intimate relationships being difficult in general.
The rise in divorce rates and the decrease in marriages could just as well be interpreted as formal marriage being perceived as too difficult of a relationship type to sustain, so people are increasingly opting for alternative types instead.
They're not the Alpha and Omega on the matter, but it clearly shows that A- The people were attempting to create and sustain a long term romantic relationship and B- They were unable to do so for some reasons.
It could be a correlation and not causation thing as well though. I think it's difficult to provide anything truly concrete showing that intimate relationships are difficult to maintain using statistics. Much like the original article, there's just far too many moving parts (cultural expectations, communication skills differences, personal traumas, trust building, etc) that play into the equation.
With that comes a ton of expectations and pressure, internally inside the relationship, and externally from society.
These are not present to the same degree with less formal relationships because the stakes are generally considered not as high because there's no formal divorce to go through if it shouldn't work out.
Thus married couples might be more likely to suffer from "performance anxiety" in their relationship compared to less formal relationships.
Different values/desires will always be an issue, but if two people can agree on those, why shouldn't three people be able to? The only reason some are so opposed to this idea is due to old religious stigma enforcing the idea that we have to be monogamous no matter what.
As for the last question: because the more people you add the more mutually incompatible desires are in the picture.
If there's nothing but religious stigma at work, why aren't the Mormons still polygamists? (there are exceptions but I think we can round them off for the purposes of this discussion)
You can still treat it less formally than if it'd be an actual formalized relationship.
A lot of this boils down to societal expectations and norms which are not set in stone, but rather constantly evolving. The nuclear family, with their own house and dog, used to be ideal but at this point, it's a pretty outdated ideal that doesn't work with current economics, thus alternatives might be more viable.
I'm also not convinced that adding more people to a relationship inevitably will make it more difficult no matter what. People are way too individual for that to universally hold true and there's plenty of historical and modern examples of non-monogamous relationships as counter-examples.
> If there's nothing but religious stigma at work, why aren't the Mormons still polygamists? (there are exceptions but I think we can round them off for the purposes of this discussion
Because afaik there are still US states with laws banning polygamy? These are societal norms in large parts formed based on religious dogma, they ain't some "natural law" that can't be broken or changed, just like the nuclear family ain't necessarily the ultimate smallest societal unit.
You can, but it is not wise.
The Federal government gave them hell about it, going so far as to seize any assets of the LDS church. Utah wouldn't have been granted statehood if they hadn't condemned it.
For every crazy thought that has ever passed through my head, there's a headline about someone from Florida doing that exact thing, except taking it to another level.
And now we're in a state where you have to have two parents working, and outsource upbringing the kids.
I think a number of our problems in America could be resolved if we had less social atomization.
The protagonist's arrangement was a "line marriage", wherein the family partnership would marry in younger people at regular intervals to maintain approximate male-female parity and to keep property continuity as the older partners died off. At one point in the book, it was considered a big deal when an adult child of an older couple in the line marriage married back into it as a spouse.
There was also a "group marriage" which sounded a bit like everyone in your high school graduating class marrying each other, or like a cross between a marriage and a tontine.
In case of divorce, the remaining spouses would keep all the real property and the separating spouse would be paid off with cash. But divorce required unanimous approval, either of all the other spouses or all the spouses of the opposite sex, depending on how the thing was originally set up.
Right back in the same place you were.
Ill ask my GF if I can look for a 2nd (working) lady to cover some financial issues
Some use of the civil marriage system might also be required to realize a subset of the benefits enjoyed by traditional marriage partners.
many cultures have this built into their housing, e.g., chinese siheyuan or roman domus. these courtyard houses can accommodate such arrangements without literally living with each other. you can even stack them and share the courtyard among multiple families (one on each side of the courtyard), for denser neighborhoods.