A collection of Einstein's letters auctioned off in 1996 contains a list of marital expectations for his wife, Maliva Maric. The list includes daily laundry "kept in good order," "three meals regularly in my room," a desk maintained neatly "for my use only," and the demand that she quit talking or leave the room "if I request it." The marriage ended in divorce, but the list lives on as an illustration … of assumptions commonly held about marriage in 1914.

Compared with Einstein's requirements, modern marital expectations have surely evolved for the better. Or have they? A recent insightful study theorizes that as people abandon religious institutions, they start expecting romantic relationships to satisfy a host of needs that formerly were satisfied through religion. If you think clean laundry and regular meals require effort, try meeting the demands of relationship-worship today by providing transcendence, unconditional love, wholeness, meaning, worth, and communion.

An article in First Things concludes:

The Western fixation on romantic love creates a crushing burden for mere mortals. It engenders a powerful myth regarding love, courtship, and marriage: that a fallible human partner can not only share our passions but sate our existential yearnings. Contemporary couples expect much more from marriage than it can realistically deliver … As Eli Finkel of Northwestern University observes, "most of us will be kind of shocked by how many expectations and needs we've piled on top of this one relationship."