Can I tell you how fabulous The Atlantic Monthly is? The new issue arrived yesterday, and I stayed up way past my bedtime taking my first read of it.
Here's one of the most interesting pieces in it: a long essay by Lori Gottlieb, who writes that when she hit 40, she got tired of waiting to find Mr. Right to marry and start a family with, so she got some donor sperm and conceived a baby. What she didn't anticipate, she said, was how completely exhausting parenthood was, and how much she wishes she had a husband to help her. Her long essay is a provocative meditation on how we have unrealistic expectations of marriage and partnership, one that leads us to put off marriage with the anticipation that Mr. (or Miss) Perfect is in our future. Here's the gist of her piece:
At their core, they post one of the most complicated, painful, and pervasive dilemmas many single women are forced to grapple with nowadays: Is it better to be alone, or to settle?My advice is this: Settle! That's right. Don't worry about passion or intense connection. Don't nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling "Bravo!" in move theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year. (It's hard to maintain that level of zing when the conversation morphs into discussions about who's changing the diapers or balancing the checkbook.)
This is a question that both men and women have to face, but Gottlieb points out that for reasons more biological than cultural, women have to deal with it more often, and more intensely. She concludes:
I also acknowledge the power of the grass-is-always-greener phenomenon, and allow for the possibility that my life alone is better (if far more difficult) than the life I would have in a comfortable but tepid marriage.But then my married friends say things like, "Oh, you're so lucky you don't have to negotiate with your husband about the cost of piano lessons" or "You're so lucky, you don't have anyone putting the kid in front of the TV and you can raise your son the way you want." I'll even hear things like, "You're so lucky, you don't have to have sex with someone you don't want to."
The lists go on, and each time, I say, "OK, if you're so unhappy, and if I'm so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over here!"
Not one person has taken me up on this offer.
Julie and I, married 10 years now, talked about this last night. We didn't reach any hard and fast conclusions, but we agreed that married-with-children life is way more difficult than single people realize, and that the things that make for an exciting boyfriend or girlfriend don't always make for a good partner in a lifelong marriage with children -- but that's something that's very, very hard for single people to understand. You couldn't possibly have explained it to me as a single man before I lived it (nor could you have explained the intense joys of childraising).
I was fortunate: I didn't have to settle. Now, I expect that every married man and woman will say that they didn't settle, even if they kind of think they did. Still, it's really true in my case. I had decided that as much as I wanted to be married, that I was probably the sort of person who was too eccentric and easily bored to marry, and that I would be better off living alone for the rest of my life than marrying someone for the sake of children and companionship. I was prepared to do that. And then came Julie. That said, I do think it's true that folks generally in this culture have way too unrealistic expectations about what marriage is. Tolkien says married people are "companions in shipwreck." That is: don't believe what the movies tell you about Romance; be more practical than that.
Which is true, I guess, but if you're going to have to spend the rest of your life on a desert island with somebody, that raises the stakes, doesn't it? Biological reality means you can't put the choice off forever, not if you want to have children. So at some point, you have to decide what you're willing to accept. Thing is, our individualist consumer culture trains us to expect 100 percent guaranteed satisfaction, but life doesn't work that way.
This is a hard question to resolve. Your thoughts?
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That was a very good read. Thanks, I Agree I didn't have to settle either. It is true we decide what we accept or not accept. I enjoyed reading this. Thank you.
One of the reasons our marriages have such a hard time working out is that most people marry (for the first time, anyway) at an age when they simply cannot imagine growing older and then old. And nobody tells them that:
"for better or worse" means "when you lose your job and one of the kids has ADHD",
or that "for richer or for poorer" means "when the job market for your kind of work dries up altogether where you and your family are living, or when you start a business and it goes bust",
or that "in sickness and in health" means that one of you may have to become a caregiver for the other, and that almost certainly, one of you will have to see the other through a terminal illness,
and "till death do us part" means that one of you will almost certainly have to make end-of-life decisions for the other.
Most of us don't marry with a view to growing old together, because most of us don't live with a view to growing old period. If we did, we would realize that marriage, like the old age of which it should be a component, is not for sissies.
I visited the website Feministing, which you might gather by the mere name is pretty feminist. Reading through the comments, the 30 something females were pretty hot and bothered about the woman who dared to speak for all women. They spared her nothing.
Well, that's not too surprising, I suppose. I was curious if any of the feminists there were going to give this single hurting mother the benefit of the doubt and assume that her pain was not who she really was, and that she was more than her lonely self. Not so much. They jumped on her.
I found that pretty disappointing but I didn't bother to gently make this point over there. I tried before to counter the group ethos over there a few times, the first being the infamous Jessica Valenti breast controversy with Ann Althouse. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's probably for the best, but there's always google and bloggingheadstv for the brave of heart.
I am a father of three and not a Catholic, but I feel for this 40ish woman who had a kid without a dad. My own are 4,4, and 2 1/2. I cannot imagine going it alone! Imposible! It's one thing to fly solo if the spouse dies or abuses you, but quite another to decide to shoot the moon up front.
A woman I dated 10 years ago, her father became schizophrenic at 6, so he became violent and was yanked out of the house. She grew up solid so she thought it ok to try herself to parent solo. She's trying that now - but we've become estranged. I don't think it's going well for her. But no one could tell her otherwise. She turned out ok, so that's that.
Marian Neudel's post made me post. Amen to that! I just can't believe how rough it is, getting older. It's the most surreal thing in the world. So odd, I don't even have much of a point to this post, I suppose.
I'm 37, far older than the 20 year olds at Feministing who scoff off Gottlieb. But I just feel bad for her; she made a terrible error in judgement and now she's stuck. But the idea that settling is ok - that's such crap.
Parenting is such hard work, right now my boy is sobbing at bedtime, refusing to sleep. My wife is trying to get him to settle down. I will go up to help if it does't take. But what could be worse for the kids than to have a marriage where the kids see two adults who don't love each other and are just caretakers?
Her essay is STILL so selfish, she never mentions how settling affects kids, which is always what it comes down to. Settling is what would've been best for her. The sad thing is, settling never works either, because then you're just trapped in an unhappy relationship. We've all been there, too. That doesn't work either.
Settling doesn't work. Deliberate single motherhood doesn't work. The bullseye is really the only target here, I'm afraid.
I am a 43 year man who has been married for almost 21 years. A few weeks ago I read the article by Ms. Lori Gottlieb and have been discussing it with both my married and single friends non-stop. I guess I should mention that I pastor of a progressive non-demoniational Christian church outside of Washington DC and am a pre-marital and marriage counselor. After reading the article several times and wrestling the "settling" issue in my mind, I believe Ms. Gottlieb is both right and wrong in her observation. She is correct that a great deal of singles (both men and women) who desire to be married get trapped in the snare of whether to settle or not only to discover often late in their 30s and 40s that most of their married friends who are content in long standing relationships settled on some things.
However, I think her description of this as a morbid
Debbie Sherlock hallway:Pickering yes!retrieves atrophy
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