Happy anniversary but let’s not do this again!
We recently noted our 15th wedding anniversary. I said, “noted” and not “celebrated” since we actually didn’t even notice that it was our 15th anniversary. Having said that, we are still happily married, churning together in a life that keeps us constantly occupied and harried with the business of just living.
So, I had to chuckle when I came across a Washington Post article that introduced a concept both amusing and revealing: the “airport divorce.” Some couples, the article explains, have learned to preserve peace while traveling by separating at the airport. One partner arrives early, savoring quiet coffee and control. The other arrives late, energized by spontaneity. They reunite at the gate or on the plane, having avoided unnecessary conflict.
It is an ingenious solution, and perhaps even a healthy one in moderation. But beneath the humor lies a deeper truth about modern relationships — one that resonates strongly in South Korea today. The airport divorce is not really about travel. It is about how contemporary couples struggle to remain emotionally resilient and patient in the face of inevitable differences.
Marriage, by definition, brings together two people with distinct personalities, tastes, emotional rhythms and coping styles. For generations, couples were expected to endure these differences. The expectation was not constant happiness but durability. The idea of the “airport divorce” is revealing because it acknowledges difference without insisting on total emotional fusion. But it also raises an uncomfortable question: if separation becomes the default response to stress, what happens when life’s challenges cannot be compartmentalized so neatly? What’s marriage without fusion?
Marriage — and long-term partnership — demands a form of resilience that modern culture rarely celebrates. It requires staying present when things are awkward, boring or frustrating. It requires learning when to compromise and when to endure. Most importantly, it requires the belief that marriage is a fusion of two whole beings to form one collective, holistic being.
Venerable Pomnyun recently made news when he officiated a celebrity wedding. He compared a marriage to two circles coming together to fuse into one seamless, cohesive circle, instead of two semicircles coming together to form a complete circle. In the latter, the separation is still there, always ready to be cleaved into two separate halves again with enough tension. What’s important here is that there are no independent shapes any longer in a fused marriage. What was two is now one; however, marriage is now expected to be a persistent state of 1+1.
In Korean culture, where emotional restraint and harmony have long been valued, couples historically endured by losing, rather than asserting themselves. Today’s younger generation, by contrast, is far more emotionally expressive — yet paradoxically less patient with emotional friction. When differences emerge, the instinct is often to disengage, redefine boundaries, or opt out entirely. This dynamic helps explain why many young Koreans say they fear marriage. It is not only financial risk they worry about, but emotional entrapment — the idea of being permanently fused to someone whose habits, moods, or values may clash with their own evolving identity. In a society that increasingly emphasizes individual well-being and self-actualization, marriage can feel like an unreasonable redrawing of their individual shapes.
Travel, as the Post article suggests, becomes a microcosm of marriage itself. Delays, fatigue, disrupted routines and unmet expectations magnify differences. The partner who wants structure collides with the one who wants flexibility. The partner who seeks emotional reassurance clashes with the one who needs space. These are not signs of incompatibility; they are signs of humanity. What has changed is not that couples have more differences than before, but that they have less confidence in their ability to survive them.
For young Koreans watching their parents’ marriages, many of which were shaped by sacrifice without emotional fulfillment, rejection of marriage can feel like progress. But rejecting unhealthy models does not require rejecting commitment altogether. The task for this generation is not to abandon marriage, but to rediscover it — not as a site of suffering or constant happiness, but as a shared practice of patience and mutual understanding. Marriage should not be viewed as an invasion of privacy, forcing one to lose him/herself. Marriage, by definition, is about losing oneself willingly into a new state of fused being.
The decline in marriage rates may reflect rational responses to economic realities, but it also mirrors a cultural impatience with imperfection. We live in a time when mismatched preferences are treated as red flags rather than invitations to understand. Emotional difference is seen as incompatibility rather than an opportunity for mutual growth.
Marriage is not a constant state of harmony. It is a long conversation between two imperfect people. If young Koreans are to reconsider it, the conversation must shift — away from fear of limitation and toward confidence in resilience and fusion. Without patience, no relationship can endure. But with it, even missed flights, mismatched temperaments and life’s inevitable disruptions become part of the journey rather than reasons to abandon it.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect The Korea Times’ editorial stance.