Marriage is a Drag
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In this month’s Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh writes about her recent divorce from her husband of 20 years. Divorce is not, for her, what it was in the Gloria Gaynor days, a path to delirious freedom and dramatic rebirth. Instead, her marriage dissolves the way it was lived, with haggling over domestic tedium. Tsing Loh, who had the affair (as she confesses obliquely), guiltily offers to keep changing the kitty litter.
What’s ultimately distressing about her essay is not the details of the divorce (affair, alienation, what to do with the kids) but her dismal portrait of the modern American marriage. Long-term monogamy is obsolete and unnatural in any age, she argues, with some support from anthropologists. But in our age, when relationships are governed by children’s needs and defined in management speak, they are doomed.
“Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I can not take on yet another arduous home and self improvement project, that of rekindling our romance,” she writes.
The piece has its exaggerations and tropes—for example the scene where her group of girlfriends, who stand in for all womankind, suddenly break down and confess that they, too, are dying to get divorced.
But many of the details in her very vivid and damning portrait are bound to resonate. The most common and seemingly happy marriages are “companionate” marriages, where two people co-parent, co-clean, co-work, co-everything. These are the kinds of marriages middle-class feminism fought for and won, and yet ... they are miserable, in her telling, and particularly miserable for women.
The endless exhortations to “work” on a marriage, the chore that is “date night” (take heed, Obamas), the “perfect” husband who helps with the kids and cooks but then chides his wife because she forgot to deglaze the pan (“kitchen bitch,” she calls him), the wife pacing the kitchen at night eating mini Dove bars because her husband won't sleep with her. “Long-married husbands and wives should pleasantly agree to be friends, to set the bedroom aglow at night by the mute opening of separate laptops,” she writes.
How did this happen? How did the drive for equality land us here? How is it that even when we free ourselves, we do it with a whimper? Have we lost even the hope for a Gloria Gaynor-style anthem of liberation?
Photograph of couple fighting by George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Creative Images.
Hanna Rosin Double X co- editor, reporter, prefer my friends live.
Comments
It is a drag if you think so.
By: Military | Fri, 10/09/2009 - 13:38
It is a drag if you think so. I think every partner should really realize their roles in a relationship. You can avoid such problems then. militare ordine del collare
Marriage is that risky, lol..
By: Namasaja | Sat, 10/03/2009 - 15:51
Marriage is that risky, lol.. There are hard and good times to enjoy. I think the most important thing is to keep being together. Time will keep the good things and heal the bad ones. Good luck!
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Who knows marriage will turn
By: daycare | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 06:22
Who knows marriage will turn out like this before you go for it? I think it depends mostly on the two involved people. If you are not ready, it is better not to get married first.
Maireen at Dallas daycares
Who knows marriage will turn
By: daycare | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 06:19
Who knows marriage will turn out like this before you go for it? I think it depends mostly on the two involved people. If you are not ready, it is better not to get married first.
Maireen at Dallas daycares
I say, scale back on the work
By: hommerock | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 07:23
I say, scale back on the work then, if you can't handle it *all*. Or come to terms that your job is more important to you than your husband and child(ren)—which, to me is sad. Or, just have one kid (OK, a little hard if you already have more than one...)
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Its really important to
By: stephenss | Mon, 09/28/2009 - 10:35
Its really important to maintain the relationship of trust between you and your partner for the sustainability of your relationship. For this purpose you can also check out marriage therapy it will certainly help you in the same.
If marriage is a drag, than
By: Dallas Childcare | Sun, 09/27/2009 - 03:40
If marriage is a drag, than why would people married young, lol.. Spend some time to enjoy the single years. Being single is great, but getting married is too. It's just that you have to wait until the right time. Dallas preschool |preschool Dallas
I feel sorry for those women
By: hommerock | Wed, 09/23/2009 - 05:59
I feel sorry for those women with kids who really *do* have to work just to make ends meet in the economy that we now live...an economy that is PARTLY resulting from so many women flooding the employment market in the past 25 years or so, making it the norm for two adults in a household to work, driving up the cost of housing...etc. etc. etc.
I wish that we could roll back to the mid-50s except have the Internet. That would be cool.
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