The Marriage Lines

The marriage lines, also called relationship or affection lines, are the short horizontal creases on the outer edge of the palm below the little finger, above the heart line, and the tradition reads them for significant relationships, taking their number, length and clarity for the number and quality of attachments, with forks and breaks read for separation. These are among the most frequently asked-about features in commercial palm reading and among the least defensible. They are minor secondary creases whose formation is not well characterised, their number varies with the observer counting them, and no association with relationship history has been demonstrated. The reading also assumes a particular model of a life course, one or two lasting marriages, that is culturally specific, and the interpretations offered in the nineteenth-century sources take that model for granted in ways a present-day reader should treat with caution.