Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research on marriage counselling in Virginia to discuss why rules are frequently centred on numbering and mnemonics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research on marriage counselling in Virginia to discuss why rules are frequently centred on numbering and mnemonics. Contemporary kinship studies argue convincingly that shared homes, property, and sometimes children 'make' kinship and relatedness. But marriage counselors often find that it is the 'shock' of shared domesticity, apportioning household labour and getting to know 'who their spouse really is', that tears couples apart. Numbered rules are close to people's hearts in a context where the US Constitution and the Ten Commandments are daily discursive touchstones; following Schneider, marriage is sometimes taken as the example par excellence of rule-based kinship, of 'the order of law'. I explore the popularity of advice given to couples that focuses on numbering and mnemonics as ways to 'avoid divorce': discuss 30 questions from a Christian workbook before marriage; say 'I love you' four times each day; go on one 'date night' per week. For some, numbered rules embody marriage counseling's straddling of 'art' and 'science'. Numbered rules are obviously ethically consequential because they bring rationale associated with the workplace into the home but they also appeal because linear chronologies are central to therapeutic accounts of lives and relationships. 'Order' becomes synonymous with 'understanding'. The bigger picture sees rules as a surprisingly optimistic mode of (self)-governance: they initiate action that can feel 'unnatural' before it either brings about, or brings back, ways of relating to others that are less easy to order, such as love, or engender new understandings of them.