Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Mawiage

It's sort of ironic that the reason I'm actually sitting down to write this is because I'm not running an Important Errand because Mr. B. left the lights on in the car (again) and it didn't start, and of course I wasn't leaving on Important Errand until fifteen minutes before the destination location closed, so I am basically fucked, which actually I would be okay with but Mr. B. has a bug up his ass about how Important Errand HAS to be done TODAY.

So, instead, I have time to finally talk about why I loved Sandra Tsing-Loh's piece about her divorce, and why all the gossip and schadenfreude about Mark Sanford kind of depresses me and, while we're at it, why I thought it was really crappy, the criticism that Edmund Andrews got a while back because, in his book about the subprime mortgage crisis and his own bad mortgage, he didn't talk about his wife's bankruptcy.

Look. Anyone who has spent five minutes on the internet knows that any time someone writes honestly about their personal life, everyone and their dog is going to jump up and down and DEMAND to know more, or pontificate about why the author is CLEARLY a BAD PERSON. Or, what's worse, how the other people in the author's life--their wife, their husband, their children--are either idiots or victims or both.

(Which that last is really obviously shitty, people. I mean, even if you think that by virtue of writing about one's life one is inviting criticism, *clearly* the non-authorial characters aren't.)

But let's be honest. If you are an adult, and you have ever in your life had a relationship with another human being, you know damn well that you have made mistakes, that the other person has made mistakes, that people get hurt and friends have tiffs and partners have problems. (And if you don't know this, then I don't care how old you are, you're not an adult.)

And the point of that kind of writing, or one point, is that it is beneficial to be honest about the human condition. Especially if, like Tsing-Loh, you can do so graciously. Because life *isn't* a crystal stair, dammit, and Cinderella stories are fantasies. This is a feminist point, though you don't need to be a feminist to embrace it; which is why I think it's extra-shitty of feminists to crucify people for this kind of honesty, by the way. We know that the Ideal Mother doesn't exist; and most of us, though we adore our children, definitely have moments (or months) when we loathe everything having to do with them.

And marriage is the same way. I mean, really: is anyone surprised to hear Tsing-Loh say that many of her friends in long marriages with children are finding that "the passion" is on the back burner?? That after twenty years, she
can pick up our girls from school every day; I can feed them dinner and kiss their noses and tell them stories; I can take them to their doctor and dentist appointments; I can earn my half—sometimes more—of the money; I can pay the bills; I can refinance the house at the best possible interest rate; I can drive my husband to the airport; in his absence, I can sort his mail; I can be home to let the plumber in on Thursday between nine and three, and I can wait for the cable guy; I can make dinner conversation with any family member; I can ask friendly questions about anybody’s day; I can administer hugs as needed to children, adults, dogs, cats; I can empty the litter box; I can stir wet food into dry.

Which is to say I can work at a career and child care and joint homeownership and even platonic male-female friendship. However, in this cluttered forest of my 40s, what I cannot authentically reconjure is the ancient dream of brides, even with the Oprah fluffery of weekly “date nights,” when gauzy candlelight obscures the messy house, child talk is nixed and silky lingerie donned, so the two of you can look into each other’s eyes and feel that “spark” again. Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance.
She says that this is a "failure," and so it is. It's a failure in terms of our idea of what A Good Marriage is Supposed to be. But maybe that failure isn't, in fact, a personal one.

The Good Marriage is Supposed to be:

sexually monogamous
between one man and one woman (even though, or rather because, men and women Are Different)
for their entire lives
begun early enough that they can have children, plural, (if they want to), without having to go through infertility treatment
passionate, again, for their entire lives
respectful at all times
mutually supportive, at all times
economically successful
able to accommodate two careers, if so desired
a friendship
something you "work" at, but it's not supposed to feel like work
flirty--but only with each other
not jealous
a PIllar of Society

Marriage should be like the early days of dating + the settled feeling of being "a couple" + a true partnership + a friendship + exciting + comfortable + productive (of kids, of material goods). People shouldn't get married "too young," but they certainly shouldn't wait "too long." They should both want to have passionate sex with each other whenever the other person wants to, but not when the other person doesn't, and god knows we don't want to see married people acting like teenagers in public places: holding hands is cute, and so are sweet chaste kisses, but come on! Especially if you already have children!

You mustn't fight--not in public, not in front of the children, and not so the neighbors can hear you. Certainly not in front of guests or friends. In fact, not only mustn't you fight, but you mustn't even act tense lest it make others uncomfortable. If one of you is abusive, then why does the other one put up with it???--but divorce, of course, is a Terrible Thing. Unless we've known all along that that person was bad for you, or that you were a terrible couple, or that the relationship was doomed, in which case for god's sake why didn't you divorce years ago? In fact, why did you get married in the first place?? We tried to tell you.

We also tried to tell you that that two careers thing wasn't going to work--you hardly spent any time together. It also doesn't work when one of you subsumes your life in the other person's career, though--I mean, don't you feel your masculinity is threatened? Isn't it your own fault that you don't have any savings or retirement or interests of your own now that he's left you/died/the children have moved out? Anyway, marriage is a total tool of patriarchy. And while we're at it, are you going to change your name or not?

If you're gay and you (want to) get married, you're just being assimilationist. And if your marriage ends, then not only are you a personal failure, but you've Undermined the Cause. Anyway, given how fucked up marriage is, why do you want to have anything to do with it? Except that oh right, we want you to save it for us, because god knows we've fucked it up. Unless of course your getting married is going to fuck it up even worse, in which case, forget it.

Marriage is a sacrament. It was ordained by god. It's a secular institution, which should include tax benefits and health insurance because it promotes stability and because financial benefits not only incentivize marriage but make it easier for spouses to support each other in hard times. But that's not fair to single people! So really, marriage shouldn't convey any benefits whatsoever--but you don't get to complain about the emotional or financial burdens of marriage, because after all, you chose to do it.

NOT that that means you can choose *how* you do it. Because your weird, unconventional marriage makes other people uncomfortable, and plus it sets a bad example for the children, who might think that it's okay to live that way. Which it isn't.

....

So yeah. I loved it that Sandra Tsing-Loh had the huevos to write about the end of her marriage, and to do so in a way that "depressed" people by saying that (duh) even really good marriages sometimes end, in part because maintaing a Really Good Marriage is virtually an impossible task.

Which isn't to say that staying married, or having a good enough marriage, or loving someone your whole life is impossible. Just that by and large, when it happens, it doesn't usually look the way outsiders--or even the people in it--expect it to.

And you know, if some of us can admit that about our own marriages? Maybe the rest of you could have the manners to admit that you don't know everything, too.

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