Or Maybe Sandra Tsing Loh Is a Drag

Thank you, Abigail

By: bagel | Wed, 06/17/2009 - 11:53

I dragged myself through the whole wretched article, and was also struck by her near-compulsion with universalizing her experience. She strikes me as a woman who is both deeply unhappy in herself and her choices and unwilling to look within herself to find the source of that unhappiness. She thinks marriage and motherhood are flawed and doomed to fail (either by divorce or by long, dreary, unhappy marriages) because it's easier than seeing the flaws as being in her own approach and her own choices. I say this with total symapthy; I have struggled with depression and it's easy to see the problem as being anywhere other than in yourself. But I also know how much easier it is to finally take that responsibility and begin to grow and heal from it.

I hope and suspect that the article is reflective of where she is in the process, and that some day she will be able to take responsibility for her own happiness and her own choices, but wow, it's a heck of public and dreary way process.

The Love You Make

By: TsujiBan | Wed, 06/17/2009 - 15:37

It took me a long time to understand what trust really means in marriage. It's possible to have great passion and great sex and all that with someone you don't really know and trust, but as they said in South Park, there's a time and a place for that, and it's called college. :-)
I was pretty selfish for most of my marriage so far. We've been together--wow sixteen years now--and for a lot of that time, I saw marriage as yet another "happiness vending machine" in life for me to satisfy my needs. If her needs got satisfied, great, but that was not my main goal. I wanted to be an honorable husband, and I think I have been, but for most of our marriage, I was selfish in a lot of ways. (By the way I'm not talking about sex here, I'm talking about all the other stuff. I am a devout worshipper of the Church of the Female Orgasm. :-)
And then over the years I noticed this amazing thing that my wife was doing: she cared more about what I wanted a lot of the time than what she wanted. "Humbling" is not an adequate word to describe how that realization affected me.
I read in some other online article today where somebody said that people who consider their spouses their best friends are either deluded or liars. Well that person is a cynical idiot. The lesson that I learned from my wife, just by her being who she is, was that marriage is not about what you get but about what you give. That's one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned in my life. And my wife gave that to me for free.
I'm not looking down on Sandra Tsing Loh. Her marriage does not seem to be working, and you gotta do what you gotta do. Who am I to cast stones at her? But I do think that a lot of people get married without understanding that central truth. If what your spouse wants is not at least as important to you as what you want--not just for today, but for all of your tomorrows--then your marriage is not going to work. It's not another life accomplishment, like getting the McMansion in the burbs, the promotion at work, staying fit and doing all the silly things we do to try to have these storybook lives. Marriage is different. If someone is not ready to stick it out for life, there is a simple, honorable alternative: don't get married.
Maybe marriage is not for a lot of people. Divorce statistics don't make me feel self-righteous indignation, they just make me feel sad. It's too bad that so many people have to go through that, but then how will they ever know if they don't try? We can all be selfish, and most of us can be giving, and most people really try to do the right things. But to me, marriage is different than most other aspects of our lives. Marriage means changing focus from "for me" to "for us". If my wife wanted to leave me, I would want her to be happy. We separated once, and there was another man, my best friend at the time, so I'm not just whistling dixie here. It sucks, and it's painful. But I promised to love her forever and that's what I'm gonna do. To me, that's what you have to be prepared to do to be married. If someone can't live with that kind of giving, I reckon marriage may not be for them.
If there is any legitimate beef with her, it's that she didn't tell her husband *before* she cheated on him. There's that moment on the couch, with the wine glasses and kissing and getting turned on where you are supposed to think "wait a minute... I'm married, I'm violating that trust here". That's the time to say look, I can't do this yet. Can I call you in a few days? After 20 years of marriage, *with kids*, to a man she admits is a good man, she owed him that much I think.
It's old-fashioned, but it's the truth.

What is wrong with us?

By: lngrossman | Wed, 06/17/2009 - 07:54

"I'm with you, Jess, that it's not realistic to try to work full-time, nanny, clean, cook, chauffeur, and maintain a marriage."

That we are such spoiled, self-centered humans that we cannot imagine managing or juggling so many roles. Why does being able to wear so many hats make one a mutant? Why are we so quick to hand over our parenting experience to whomever, and why do we believe that if we don't, other areas of our lives would be lacking? I don't believe one needs a nanny, housekeeper, personal chef, and chauffeur to be able to have a satisfying marriage. There must be other issues involved if you truly believe your children are the problem. Perhaps you should work on your multi-tasking skills? Or maybe divorce is the answer, because if you either have to or choose to tune out of your marriage with the lame excuse that your children eat up most of your time, then you and your husband are both suffering from serious personality flaws. Aside from babies and toddlers, children are quite self-sufficient and can learn and handle certain responsibility. I don't think over-parenting and a woe-is-me attitude will get you anywhere in any of your relationships, unless you enjoy relationships with other vapid, shallow divorcees.

Who's she kidding?

By: Mizz.Givens | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 20:57

No time for "gauzy candelight dinners," but time for an affair? Give me a break. Marriage requires commitment and fidelity, by the way, and clearly the author is interested in neither. I hope, while her daughters are in therapy discussing the effects of the divorce on their psyches, the author is comforted by her glass of Merlot.

A Drag and, I Hope, an Anomoly

By: Human Jai Alaig... | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 20:37

I'm glad Ms. Pilgrim got around to finding the critical flaw in Tsing Loh's argument - the author herself. What a distasteful, self-absorbed woman. I would never judge someone because they got a divorce, be the reason an insurmountable hill of mundanity or a horrific one like spousal abuse. If her marriage wasn't working, it wasn't working. Fine, it's her business. But to have her marriage dissolve - helped along by the repugnant act of her own adultery, mind you - and to then turn around and make the argument that because her own union failed, the entire institution should be scrapped (or at the very least, studiously avoided by any right-thinking person) is ridiculous and more of a revelation of Tsing Loh's shallow character than a credible thesis. That marriage works for some and doesn't work for others seems to me rather obvious - to write an article like Tsing Loh's is an adolescent reaction to a personal failure. "I can't believe I didn't get the scholarship! That school sucks, I can't believe anybody would even GO there!" That a bunch of her close friends are also swirling the idea of divorce around in itself means nothing - birds of a feather flock together after all, so the fabulous kitchen that hosts these Girls' Nights was probably chock full of faux-intellectual affirmation. Reading this article as a guy in his late-20s currently contemplating marriage, I've got to say I only feel better about popping the question some day. Daunting and frightening as the decision to spend your life with one person can be (and exciting and hopeful), knowing that my girlfriend is nothing like THIS stunted woman makes me feel a lot more confident about the whole thing.

How much of the article did you read?

By: SonofMacPhisto | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 19:30

As a long time reader, first time poster at Double X let me say that subject line as gently as possible. :)

While the intro to the piece might not be everyone's cup of prose, I'd encourage us all to focus on the purpose of her piece. To me, it seems her thesis was her own personal experience led her to question the institution of marriage in American society and provide potential alternatives especially tailored for the 21st Century.

Seems like an essential discussion to have. As a 27-year old, childless divorcee I could relate to a lot of the pain and shock the author expressed. Like the author, I'm by far the first and only person in my social circle to experience divorce. It's a very strange and lonely vanguard.

That leads me to think it's silly to say Tsing Loh used this piece to 'absolve her guilty conscience.' Our marriage practices in America are a spectacular disaster and would be farce if not for the personal and societal wreckage it leaves behind. We *need* to figure out a better way of doing it. Tsing Loh came to this conclusion through her own experiences. No surprise there: write what you know, after all.

I'm afraid if we accuse her and the Atlantic of something so increasingly lame as to be on the same level as reality TV, we stifle discussion on a topic people, like Tsing Loh's friends, are desperate to talk about.

but I agree she is a drag.

By: lightening | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 16:31

but I agree she is a drag. Just not for the same reasons

I felt like she was accepting

By: lightening | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 16:27

I felt like she was accepting the blame...I mean, she never came right out and said "I have done all these things wrong, a)...b)...c)..." But it seems to me that she is not passing the blame away. I that that her response is natural, I mean, if she was putting away some of her feelings about her dying marriage (as we all recognize, marriages typically do not end overnight) then it probably does come as a surprise and shock to be faced with divorce. Additionally, why does she have to fess up to be responsible for everything? Because she wrote the article? What about her former partner?

A Drag

By: Foobs | Tue, 06/16/2009 - 16:00

I think that you hit the nail on the head. I read the piece, and it is incredibly passive, as if these things happened to her and weren't things she did. It was remarkable in the author's apparent total lack of a capacity for self-reflection (maybe she could write a tell-all essay about that).

The point that is, I think, very clear in the essay though it is never made is that by the time choices get big they are very hard. It is difficult to fix a marriage when it has reached the point where having an affair seems a reasonable choice, when you haven't had sex in years, etc., just like it is difficult to write a 50 page paper in 12 hours. The real key in life is to make the small choices along the way right so that things never get desperate.

The nicest thing I can say about the author is that, while she can't blame herself, she won't blame her ex (mostly). Since the blame has to go somewhere, she lobs it at an institution (such things are always good for taking blame).