338 articles
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church
Marriage in the Eastern Orthodox Church, or the Mystery of Crowning, is a sacrament joined by God, marked by betrothal rings and crowns, with no vows, a three-marriage limit, and economy-based remarriage after divorce.
Marriage in the United States
Marriage in the United States: a state-regulated legal status governed federally by 1 U.S.C. §7 (as amended by the 2022 Respect for Marriage Act), shaped by Loving v. Virginia (1967), Windsor (2013), and Obergefell (2015), with state variation in minimum age, recognition, and common law marriage.
Marriage license
A marriage license, also known as a wedding license, is a government-issued permission to marry, typically issued by a county clerk, distinct from the marriage certificate that proves the marriage occurred.
Marriage of convenience
Marriage of convenience (sham marriage): a union contracted for advantage such as immigration status, tax, or political alliance rather than a genuine relationship. Valid in law, but ground for visa refusal; burden of proof on the state.
Marriage of Daddy and Peaches
The 1926 marriage of Edward W. "Daddy" Browning, 51, and 15-year-old Frances "Peaches" Heenan in Cold Spring, New York; a tabloid sensation that fueled 1920s child-marriage reform and ended in a contested 1927 separation.
Marriage officiant
A marriage officiant (solemniser, celebrant, registrar, or ordained minister) is a person legally authorized to solemnize marriage. Coverage spans US online ordination and notaries, UK celebrant-versus-registrar rules, Ireland's Register of Solemnisers, Australia's celebrant categories, and England and Wales officiant reform.
Marriageable age
Marriageable age: the minimum legal age to marry, set by national law and shaped by the 1962 UN Marriage Convention, CEDAW, and CRC standards favoring 18, with widespread parental or judicial exceptions allowing minors to wed in many countries.
Martha Jefferson
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson (1748-1782), wife of Thomas Jefferson and Monticello household manager; twice widowed-adjacent heiress, mother of six Jefferson children, half-sister of Sally Hemings, died at 33 after childbirth.
Match.com
Match.com, launched April 1995 by Gary Kremen's Electric Classifieds, is a search-based online dating service for serious relationships, now a Match Group brand alongside Tinder and Hinge; sued by the FTC in 2019 over fake love-interest ads and cancellation practices.
Matching algorithms in online dating
Matching algorithms in online dating are the recommendation systems that decide which profiles a user sees and in what order, using collaborative filtering, questionnaire scoring, and two-sided matching.
Matchmaking
Matchmaking, the arranged introduction of people for marriage or long-term partnership, spans French commercial marriage agencies from 1812, Jewish shidduchim, Saudi family-led spouse selection, diaspora matrimonial platforms, and algorithmic online dating systems.
Matooskie
Matooskie, or Nancy McKenzie (c. 1790–1851), was a fur-trade country wife of John George McTavish, abandoned in 1830, remarried to Pierre Le Blanc, and later commemorated in art and by descendant Kevin Clifton.
Matthew 5:32
Matthew 5:32, the Matthean divorce exception verse from the Sermon on the Mount, permits divorce only for porneia (sexual immorality); its Greek phrase parektos logou porneias and its meaning are debated across Christian traditions.
Matthew Hussey
Matthew Hussey is a British dating coach and New York Times bestselling author of Get the Guy and Love Life, host of the Love Life podcast, TV love coach on The Single Wives, and founder of the Love Life coaching brand and Matthew AI.
Mattie Blaylock
Mattie Blaylock, also called Celie, was Wyatt Earp's common-law wife who accompanied him from Dodge City to Tombstone in 1879, struggled with laudanum addiction, was abandoned for Josephine Marcus, and died of an overdose in 1888.
Megan Marshack
Megan Ruth Marshack (1953-2024) was an American journalist and press aide to Nelson Rockefeller, with him when he died of a heart attack on January 26, 1979; her delayed 911 call and silence fueled decades of speculation.
Ménage à trois
Ménage à trois (French, "household of three"): a domestic arrangement in which three people, usually a couple plus a lover, share a household and a romantic or sexual relationship; used in English since 1853, distinct from a one-time threesome.
Mésalliance
Mésalliance (mesalliance, misalliance): a marriage with a person of lower social position, borrowed into English in 1782 from French; historically the violation of European nobility marriage rules, exemplified by morganatic marriages such as Franz Ferdinand's.
Mildred and Richard Loving
Mildred and Richard Loving, a Black and Native American woman and a white man, married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, were exiled from Virginia, and won Loving v. Virginia (1967), which struck down U.S. bans on interracial marriage.
Mimi Alford
Mimi Alford, born Marion "Mimi" Beardsley, is the American author of Once Upon a Secret (2012), a No. 1 New York Times bestseller describing her 1962-1963 affair with President John F. Kennedy while a nineteen-year-old White House press office intern.
Miscegenation
Miscegenation: pejorative term for interracial marriage and sex, coined in an 1863 hoax pamphlet from Latin miscere and genus; also the label for US anti-miscegenation laws struck down by Loving v. Virginia in 1967.
Mistress (lover)
Mistress (lover): a woman in a long-term sexual relationship with a man, usually married, often financially supported. From Old French maistresse; distinct from concubine; central to the French maîtresse en titre court institution.
MK Pritzker
MK (Mary Kathryn) Muenster Pritzker, first lady of Illinois since 2019, wife of Governor JB Pritzker; Pritzker Family Foundation leader, Evergreen Invitational founder, Governor's Mansion restorer, and advocate for incarcerated women.
Monica Lewinsky
Monica Lewinsky (born 1973), American anti-bullying activist, producer, and former White House intern central to the 1998 Clinton scandal; known for the TED talk The Price of Shame, Impeachment: American Crime Story, and the podcast Reclaiming.
Monogamy
Monogamy: exclusive pairing of one male and one female, defined separately as genetic, sexual, and social monogamy. Rare in mammals (under 10% of species), common in birds; humans average 66% full siblings, with 85% of societies historically permitting polygyny.
Morganatic marriage
Morganatic marriage (Ehe zur linken Hand, left-handed marriage): a legal marriage between spouses of unequal rank in which the lower-ranking spouse and children get no title or succession rights; German, Lombard-derived institution.
Mormonism and polygamy
Mormonism and polygamy covers plural marriage in the LDS Church: introduced by Joseph Smith in the 1840s, announced in 1852, ended by Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto and the 1904 Second Manifesto, with FLDS splinter groups persisting.
Mughal Harem
Mughal Harem: the imperial women's quarters (haram, haraman-i padshah) of the Mughal dynasty, a secluding yet politically active household where figures like Nur Jahan and Jahanara Begum wielded real power.
Mumtaz Mahal (ممتاز محل)
Mumtaz Mahal (ممتاز محل), born Arjumand Banu Begum (1593-1631), empress consort of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan I; married 1612, died at Burhanpur after her fourteenth child; the Taj Mahal is her tomb.
MyEx.com
MyEx.com was a Nevada-operated revenge porn website (EMP Media, launched about 2011) that posted intimate images with personal data and charged $499-$2,800 removal fees; the FTC shut it down in 2018. Distinct from the Saudi MyEx app at my-ex.app.