I’ve been a long-time reader of The Atlantic (which I still stubbornly refer to as The Atlantic Monthly) and in recent years I’ve enjoyed seeing my old childhood friend, Sandra Tsing Loh, author the occasional book review. So imagine my surprise when I glanced at the cover of the July/August issue and saw the teaser: “Sandra Tsing Loh: The Case Against Marriage.” The actual article’s title was even worse: “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” with the subtitle: “The author is ending her marriage. Isn’t it time you did the same?”
Now divorce is sad, especially when there are kids involved. But using one’s personal break-up as a platform to condemn the entire institution of marriage? Even for Sandra, who can be, shall we say, a bit melodramatic in her humor and style, this seemed extreme. The personal details, which she unfortunately saw fit to parade for our voyeuristic discomfort, were fairly prosaic. A suburban marriage gone cold, with two intelligent, loving parents who apparently became absorbed in their work (her soon-to-be-ex is a musician who travels a lot with his band). Then she met another man, an affair ensued, and (as she put it), she and her husband cried, they rented their hair, they bewailed the fate of their children, but she decided she didn’t have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in her marriage.
I know the publishing industry is in a dither about shrinking revenue models and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge my old friend the opportunity to earn her crust of bread. But the reason I read The Atlantic is that its topics and analysis are typically pitched at a slightly more elevated level than People. (I also subscribe to The New Yorker and like a lot of folks I was dismayed during Tina Brown’s editorial tenure, but that ship righted itself – bless you, David Remnick! – and it now produces, I think, the perfect blend of popular interest, social humor and intellectual heft.) Whither The Atlantic?
To be fair, for the past few years the magazine has kept up a running forum parsing the societal pressures affecting educated, haute bourgeois women, often housing the eloquent post-feminist book reviews of Caitlin Flanagan. Flanagan, who like Sandra, is a Los Angeles-based working mother of two, tacks perhaps a bit more towards the traditional side of the family values waters, although I haven’t discerned that much that separates them. Both witty prose stylists, they have (until Sandra’s latest personal bombshell) demonstrated a healthy regard for the frustrating joys of juggling school lunches, busy working husbands and their own mid-track literary careers. Where they apparently parted company is sex.
Sex, you gulp? I don’t toss this out cavalierly and I certainly don’t mean to be, in any way, titillating or invasive. But Sandra’s article goes to great lengths to describe the lack of sex in her own marriage and those of her circle of woman friends. This, in a nutshell, is her argument: middle class marriage gets routine, so with the parents exhausted from their work-a-day chores, sex gets left by the wayside. Knowing this, why bother getting married in the first place?
To which Caitlin Flanagan would no doubt respond: for the kids. And furthermore: you (married couples out there) have got to make more of an effort in the bedroom.
Now I’m not just writing this because I read The Atlantic or because I went to school with the author of the article in question or because I’m a guy with an axe to grind. The subject intimately interests me. I, too, am married, with a kid, and with a wife who writes professionally part-time while serving as the primary caregiver at home. I am the exact same age as both Sandra Tsing Loh and Caitlin Flanagan, with very similar socioeconomic backgrounds (intellectual parents, suburban middle class upbringing, graduate school education). I know about the trade-offs required in a relationship with two creative, working parents. Would I like my marriage to have a more robust sex life? You bet. I mean, we’re doing okay – I promise sweetheart, this is all that I’m going to be writing on the subject! – but let’s face it, there are seasons in most people’s lives and the to-hell-with-dinner, rip-the-clothes-off-on-a-daily-basis stuff typically wanes a bit once you settle down and have a family, especially when economic pressures exist.
I imagine it was ever thus. What changed, in modern times, is that divorce gradually became more acceptable. To read the psychological literature, it is nevertheless devastating on children – I don’t think anyone should delude themselves about that – although there are certainly unhealthy marriages that should be ended for the sake of the kids. But for the most part, marriages are like epic voyages: there are joys and strains, there are boring stretches and transcendental moments and there are times when you wonder whether to pack it all in. And like the saying goes, it isn’t so much the destination that counts but the journey itself.
And I do believe that children fundamentally alter the marital landscape. Without kids, a divorce is just a breakup with annoying costs and paperwork. With kids in the picture, it’s a whole different ballgame.
Ayelet Waldman, the Berkeley lawyer and novelist, stirred things up a few years ago when she “confessed” in a New York Times essay (titled, “Truly, Madly, Guiltily”) that she loved her husband more than her kids, even going so far as to say that she would get over the death of one of her children but that she’d be inconsolable if she ever lost her spouse. She then took her faux mea culpa act onto Oprah where she and her hostess cleverly turned the tables on an initially hostile female audience. As some of these women fessed up to living in loveless marriages, perpetuated for the sake of the children, Waldman emerged triumphant.
Personally, I don’t think it was Waldman’s placing her husband – the absurdly talented writer, Michael Chabon – at the top of her domestic pecking order that pissed off so many women. (The men, of course, had there been any in the studio, would have been cheering fit to bust.) No, more likely it was Waldman’s gleeful boasting that, four kids later, she and her hubby have an incredibly hot sex life, routinely going at it like newlyweds on a tropical honeymoon. Who wants to hear that when you aren’t getting any? But assuming, for the sake of argument, Waldman is telling it like it is, I say: more power to them. We all need role models to aspire to, be they literary or conjugal. I just hope, for their sake, they reach their golden anniversary and beyond. Anything less, and the collective schadenfreude will be palpable.
On the flipside, a very close friend of mine has been undergoing a horrific divorce. Actually, it’s more of a custody battle – there is so much money at stake (he runs a hedge fund) that there will be plenty for everyone, even after the lawyers have had their feast at the trough. Hearing some of his stories would make your blood run cold. I mean, Alec Baldwin, who has famously endured a protracted custody battle with his ex-wife, Kim Basinger, and has even written a book about it, would meekly fold his cards in a divorce war stories showdown with my friend. So what brought him and the mother of his two beautiful kids to the precipice? I won’t go into the details, one, for privacy reasons and two, because no one really knows what goes on in a marriage anyway, except for the participants, and even they sometimes aren’t quite sure. Suffice to say that there are usually plenty of issues and fault to go around. And sometimes you just get unlucky in who you choose for a spouse – which can often mean that the spouse was unlucky with who they got for parents.
For these and other reasons I prefer not to sit in judgment of another person’s marriage. I’ve got enough miles on my own domestic odometer to know that it’s an exceedingly complex, occasionally frustrating, but often immensely satisfying institution. At some stage in life you discover true humility (which, as Socrates demonstrated, is the alter ego of wisdom). You get knocked around a bit, maybe sit out an inning, and your youthful romantic illusions get washed away. That doesn’t mean you take your ball and go home, but – to continue the sports metaphor – staying in the game requires a respect for the rules, a wary eye for errant passes and a reluctance to engage in trash talking.
So: the case against marriage? It’s almost too easy to make, especially when times are tough. But, if we’re being really honest with ourselves, what’s the reason why we yearn for a happy ending when we watch that boy-meets-girl fable at the cinema? This: it’s what, deep down, we truly want. To be with someone we get, fully and completely, and who gets us the same way. Someone who can share the heartaches and the triumphs that fate dishes out. A fellow traveler on the journey of life. And even if it sometimes doesn’t work out, that’s not a bad thing to shoot for.
