338 articles
List of Joseph Smith's wives
Joseph Smith's wives: 30 to 40 women sealed to him in plural marriage besides Emma Hale Smith, from Fanny Alger (mid-1830s) to wives aged 14 to 56, including Louisa Beaman and Helen Mar Kimball.
List of most expensive divorces
List of most expensive divorces, also ranked as biggest divorce settlements: Gates ($76B est., 2021), Bezos–Scott ($36B Amazon stock, 2019), Wildenstein, Murdoch, Rybolovlev, Chey Tae-won; figures disputed because terms are often private.
Living apart together
Living apart together (LAT) is a committed intimate relationship in which partners keep separate households. Coined by Cees J. Straver in 1980; common among older adults; about one third of unmarried US adults.
Long-distance relationship
Long-distance relationship (LDR): a romantic partnership between geographically separated partners, also called non-proximal relationship; distinguished from geographically close relationships by mediated communication, visits, similar satisfaction but equal breakup rates.
Love at first sight
Love at first sight (LAFS) is the reported experience of instant romantic love on first seeing someone. Research, chiefly Zsok et al. 2017, finds it reflects strong physical attraction and infatuation, not passion, intimacy, or commitment.
Love lock
Love lock (love padlock): padlock inscribed with a couple's names, locked to a bridge or public structure with the key thrown into water, popularized by Moccia's 2006 novel; Pont des Arts collapse and mass removals made it a contested global custom.
Love marriage
Love marriage, or choice marriage, is a marriage in which partners choose each other based on romantic attraction, contrasting with arranged marriage; it rose in the 18th-century West, and satisfaction studies versus arranged marriage show mixed results.
Love triangle
Love triangle: a three-person romantic structure, either two rivals for one person or one person involved with two others. Covers jealousy research, Sternberg's triangular theory of love, and its use from Arthurian romance to telenovelas and Wattpad fiction.
Lovesickness
Lovesickness: intense negative emotions and physical symptoms when unable to be with a loved person; also called xiangsi bing in Chinese tradition. Not a medical diagnosis today, but treated as a real disorder, amor hereos, from antiquity through the 19th century.
Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd
Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd (1891-1948), Eleanor Roosevelt's social secretary, was Franklin D. Roosevelt's longtime love; their 1918-discovered affair reshaped the Roosevelt marriage, and she was with FDR at Warm Springs when he died in 1945.
Maharani Wisma Susana Siregar
Maharani Wisma Susana Siregar (born 5 June 1925, Liverpool) is an Indonesian independence veteran and one of Sukarno's wives, married 1958-1962; mother of Siti Aisyah Margaret Rose, later remarried Firdaus Harahap.
Mail-order bride
Mail-order bride: outdated term for international matchmaking and correspondence courtship, from 19th-century American personal ads and picture brides to today's IMBRA-regulated dating platforms.
Making out
Making out is informal North American English for sustained passionate kissing and sexual touching; the 20th-century phrasal verb sits within romantic kissing, which cross-cultural research finds in only 46% of 168 sampled cultures.
Margaret Trudeau
Margaret Trudeau is a Canadian author and mental health speaker, known for her public disclosure of bipolar disorder and her marriage to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Marie-France van Heel
Marie-France van Heel (Frankie), born 1970, Dutch-born marketing executive, wife of UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham since 2000; met at Cambridge 1989, 1992 Blind Date contestant, Be.EV/Iduna executive, Plan International UK trustee.
Marilyn Quayle
Marilyn Tucker Quayle (born 1949), American lawyer and Second Lady of the United States 1989-1993 as Dan Quayle's wife; Purdue and Indiana University law graduate, FEMA board member, breast cancer advocate, novelist with sister Nancy Northcott.
Marina Oswald Porter (Марина Николаевна Прусакова)
Marina Oswald Porter (Марина Николаевна Прусакова), Russian-born widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, married him in Minsk in 1961, testified first before the Warren Commission, and was cleared by the HSCA.
Marital debt
Marital debt covers debts spouses owe before or during marriage. Liability depends on common law versus community property regimes; divorce decrees divide debt internally but do not bind creditors, who can pursue either contracting spouse.
Marital separation
Marital separation, also called a trial separation, occurs when a married couple stops living together and keeps separate residences and finances; a legal separation is a court process, and the marriage continues.
Marriage
Marriage: socially and legally recognized union establishing rights between partners, their children, and kin. Also called matrimony; forms include civil, religious, customary, monogamous and polygamous. Recorded from about 2350 B.C. in Mesopotamia; same-sex marriage legal in nearly 40 jurisdictions since 2001.
Marriage à la façon du pays
Marriage à la façon du pays, or country marriage, was the customary common-law marriage between European fur traders and Indigenous or Métis women in North America, combining Indigenous bride-price customs with European elements, sustaining trade alliances, and producing the Métis people.
Marriage age in the United States
Marriage age in the United States: state-set minimum marriage ages and exceptions. As of 2025, 16 states, 2 territories, and D.C. ban marriage under 18 with no exceptions; 4 states and 2 territories set no statutory floor; over 300,000 minors married 2000–2018.
Marriage and wedding customs in the Philippines
Marriage and wedding customs in the Philippines: Family Code legal rules, Catholic veil, cord, coins and candle rituals, sponsors, Muslim and indigenous traditions, and declining marriage statistics.
Marriage in Anglicanism
Marriage in Anglicanism is the teaching and liturgical practice of Anglican churches, treating marriage as a permanent, lifelong covenant of one man and one woman, governed by canon law.
Marriage in Hinduism
Marriage in Hinduism, or Vivaha (विवाह), is a Hindu sacrament regarded as a sacred, indissoluble bond spanning multiple lifetimes and counted among the samskaras, or rites of passage.
Marriage in Iran
Marriage in Iran is governed by the Civil Code as interpreted through Jaʿfari Shiʿite jurisprudence, with a minimum marriage age of 13 for girls and 15 for boys.
Marriage in Islam
Marriage in Islam (nikah) is a civil-law contract with offer, acceptance, mahr dower, wali, and witnesses. Covers classical fiqh rules, divorce, polygyny, codification, and 2025 state-law changes.
Marriage in Japan
Marriage in Japan is a legal union registered through the koseki family register, requiring a single shared surname and defined by civil law as between a man and a woman.
Marriage in Pakistan
Marriage in Pakistan (nikah) is a family-centered legal contract under Muslim family law: high cousin-marriage rates, 80.5% of women reporting a say in spouse choice (PDHS 2017-18), and evolving child-marriage laws by province.
Marriage in the Catholic Church
Marriage in the Catholic Church (matrimony) is a sacrament: a lifelong covenant between a baptized man and woman, defined in canon 1055 of the 1983 Code, marked by unity and indissolubility, formed by consent, and governed by canon law on impediments, nullity, and remarriage.