Janning believes that today’s framing of long-term partnership – as “a lifetime of monogamous companionship between two people with emotional connectedness as the superglue that holds them together” – is the product of recent shifts. Historically, she points out, a spouse wasn’t expected to meet their partner’s emotional needs. Marriage was often based around economic security, geography, family ties and reproductive goals; in marriages that were not founded in love, it was understood that people might find emotional fulfilment elsewhere.
