Thanks for the smile - and for the very important essay. What's interesting is that unmarried cohabitating couples have a lot more equality. There's something about a woman becoming a wife that tends to really trigger the patriarchal elements. Most women who have been married aren't anxious to do it again - preferring instead to live separately, or if cohabitating, to not marry. Even my elderly pretty conventional mother did not marry or live with her second partner because she didn't want to have that "wife" role anymore.

You'd think more men would read the handwriting on the wall, but it seems like many of them just really don't want to and instead blame women. I'll be curious to see what things are like in another 10 or 20 years.