Under Federal Law (COBRA), companies with 20 or more employees are required to offer health care coverage at the group rate to former spouses of employees for three years after a divorce. In some states, companies with fewer employees are required to do the same. So, while it would be less expensive for your former wife to have been covered as a spouse under your family plan, it’s probably just a mistake to believe that your former wife will not have health insurance coverage unless she delays the divorce.

But such an observation doesn’t really touch the deep and complex issues that your and your former wife’s arguments raise about the nature and value of marriage.

Let’s imagine that there were no such federal law guaranteeing a three-year continuation of health insurance coverage for former spouses. If you stayed married for the sake of providing your wife health insurance coverage, wouldn’t you be doing something dishonest? Wouldn’t you be pretending, for the purpose of defrauding a health insurance company, that you were married, when in fact you were nothing of the sort? I think that we all recognize the possibility of legal but pretend marriages. When we learn that two people married so that one of them could get a green card, and when we learn further that they hardly know one another, have no affection for one another, do not live together, in fact spend no time together, and have significant intimate relationships with other people, I think that we’re inclined to say that, although they are “technically” or legally married, they are really nothing of the sort. They are just pretending to be married for the purpose of gaining one of the legal benefits of marriage. While the prima facie immorality of deception can be overridden by other moral considerations, it does seem as if there is a sort of deception involved in the case of “green-card marriages.”

You don’t say enough about your relationship with your former wife to help us to decide whether your marriage, if you had stayed married, would have been a pretend marriage in the way that the green-card marriage I describe seems to me to be a pretend marriage. The argument that your former wife offered against staying married seems to suggest that she herself believed that the activities in which she wanted to engage– “meeting and dating others”– were incompatible with the norms of marriage, and she didn’t want your children to acquire what to her mind was a false view about the norms of marriage (namely, that the practice of meeting and dating others was compatible with marriage). Such a marriage, on her view, would be a mockery of a marriage.

But is it? Of course, there is no book to which we can appeal in order to look up the “rules of marriage.” So the question is really whether it is a good idea for us to hold ourselves to this norm.

Studies on the frequency of adultery, both now and in the past, suggest that, despite what we commonly say marriage ought to be, a large proportion of married people do not live up to that norm. In fact, it appears that human beings go through pretty predictable cycles of sexual satisfaction with their partners, with infatuation and high levels of sexual excitement with a given partner typically lasting for only a few years, to be followed (if not interrupted) by deep affection and comfort. It seems that, biologically speaking, our sexual instincts drive us toward “serial monogamy”– that is, towards a series of monogamous relationships. Such drives were likely to have been to the evolutionary advantage of our distant ancestors (couples stayed together long enough to get their progeny through the extremely dependent stage of infancy (approx. four years), but they “moved on” for the sake of gaining more biologically diverse progeny). I don’t know whether life is more or less complex for our own children, and so whether the lessons that they need to learn in order to be successful adults are more difficult and time-consuming (approx. 18 or more years). Yet it does seem that children have many fewer adults in their lives on whom they can constantly rely to provide them with instruction, guidance, and support that they need in order to flourish as adults. Parents are expected to do most of this work. In this context, it seems, the practice of serial monogamy– if it involves the constant break-up and reconfiguration of families-- does not serve the interests of children very well. (In fact, I’m not sure that, in the end, it serves well the interests of the adults involved, even those without children. These instincts encourage a kind of relationship treadmill, a constant quest not only for the necessarily short-lived, highly sexually charged infatuation, but also for the imaginary “soul-mate” who has all of the best features of all of one’s former lovers and none of their flaws, a quest that is bound to lead to disappointment and loneliness.)

The answer that social conservatives offer to the challenges we face is a much stronger moral condemnation of sexual infidelity and the promotion of legal obstacles to divorce. Given the kinds of beings that we are, it seems to me that such an approach would lead only to destructive self-flagellation, hypocrisy, and misery.

I would advocate instead having a much less rigid conception of marriage. Marriage is a complex social institution designed to serve many different and important functions, some of which, in our complex and rapidly changing society, are at odds with one another. Why couldn’t your wife date other people and still be married to you– in the sense of being your beloved life partner and co-parent? If the norm against such a marriage were dropped, I suspect that there would be a whole lot less confusion in people’s minds about the significance of their sexual instincts– no, it doesn’t mean that you don’t still love and cherish your spouse; no, it doesn’t mean than you should live in separate households and be with your children much less frequently; it just means that your biological instincts are kicking in. If you need to “date” in order to get it out of your system, then that’s what you need to do. (Of course, for humans, biology isn't destiny, and many people reasonably choose the goods that monogamy allows, even if it involves some short-term frustration.)

So, to return to your question about health insurance. I do not believe that any deception would be involved if you and your spouse had a less conventional marriage. There are good reasons for health insurance companies to offer family rates that cover children and spouses, and these reasons apply to a wide range of types of relationships and families. If, however, you have in mind discarding all aspects of your relationship that are typically characteristic of marriage, and preserving only the legal fiction of marriage, then it does seem to me that there is a kind of dishonesty involved. But, again, whether the prima facie immorality of such deception is overridden by other moral considerations is an open question.