Lileks: On Marriage and "Liberation"

This sort of meander from drowsy-everyday into political discourse is why we love us some Lileks.

So either Cletus Hogg of Prong Holler, West Virginia is handling the Times' analysis, or the author is being disingenuous when he includes the 15-year-olds in the unmarried pool. I had to smile when I read this:

Similarly, Shelley Fidler, 59, a public policy adviser at a law firm, has sworn off marriage. She moved from rural Virginia to the vibrant Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, D.C., when her 30-year marriage ended. "The benefits were completely unforeseen for me," Ms. Fidler said, "the free time, the amount of time I get to spend with friends, the time I have alone, which I value tremendously, the flexibility in terms of work, travel and cultural events."

Ah, my old home! Romantically multicultural Adams-Morgan, as the Amtrak tour magazine called it. (I read that on a train out of D.C., after the riots.) "Vibrant" was the other word used in the glossies, and means neon and unusual fusion restaurants (Madagascar tapas, Tibetan Yeti Flank steak) with some "funky" stores, venerable booze-nooks and some hot new bars-of-the-week, an absence of major clothing chains, no parking and bums galore. I loved it; I hated it. I loved the variety and buzz the density and popularity generated; I hated the dirt and trash and interludes of urban decriptitude.

Anyway. It's nice that the people who don't want to get married don't feel pressured to be married; if they're happy, they're happy, and no one's hurt. But it's the free-to-be-me vibe coupled with the when-I-grow-old-I-shall-wear-purple stuff that gets embarrassing.

Elissa B. Terris, 59, of Marietta, Ga., divorced in 2005 after being married for 34 years and raising a daughter, who is now an adult."A gentleman asked me to marry him and I said no," she recalled. "I told him, 'I'm just beginning to fly again, I'm just beginning to be me. Don't take that away.'"

The gentleman should buy a telescope, identify the star responsible for his luck, and thank it. She goes on:

"Marriage kind of aged me because there weren't options," Ms. Terris said. "There was only one way to go. Now I have choices. One night I slept on the other side of the bed, and I thought, I like this side."

That's the saddest thing I read in the paper today. I have no doubt she's probably happier, and if she ends up spending the next 20 years throwing pots and taking extension courses, fine. But I'm sure you'll see more of this, and that's not always good news. To my parent's generation, divorce for no good reason was proof of moral failure. If someone cheated, that was a reason. If someone knocked you around, that was a reason. Decades of long nasty fights over things great and small, that was a reason. But splitting because the kids were out and it was time to have a room in which no hairy saggy-arsed ex-satyr would wad up his underwear and toss it in the corner? Not a reason.

There are no husbands quoted in the article. I wonder what they thought. It reminded me of a Mary Tyler Moore episode in which Lou Grant's wife moves out ... He's absolutely baffled. Heartbroken. Has no idea what to do. He's unmanned, in the truest sense of the word: his identity consisted of being The Guy, and to men of his ilk, men sure and true, that meant Husband and Father. It was unthinkable that the wife would leave the den after the daughters had struck out on their own, because it made no sense. Something might be gained, yes, but what would be lost?

As it turned out, his wife married a dork, and Lou Grant took up with Sheree North, which should be a lesson. (Frankly, I never found her attractive; I think she looks like Hamilton Burger.)

These articles never seem to interview the Florence King models, the resolutely unmarried and indifferent-to-the-institution women who would regard the newly-liberated sisters with amused contempt. I expect it's one thing to be a hard-core spinster who's forged an individual path from day one and has a hard shell, a gimlet eye, and a perspective on human relations as vaulable as a film critic's assessment of cinema. (He's never slapped a reel o film in a camera, but he knows the difference between Citizen Kane and Porky's IV.) It's different to be be a 60-something who just shed Hubby the Dull and exults in the chance to attend an exhibit on Salvadoran Textiles without the glum red-hot resentment that follows from knowing your husband doesn’t care about Salvadoran textile exhibits, never did, never will, and doesn't get why you like them.

It's a consequence of the triumph or Romantic Love, I suppose; if you don't mesh at the elemental level, something's wrong. The notion of simply inhabiting the same road as you move towards the horizon isn't enough; you must both be fascinated by the same things. I prefer the model where one person is interested in the flowers that grow by the road, and the other discourses on the history of pavement, and you both speculate on the birds in the boughs above. But that's just me. (Or rather us.) I'm sure marriages built around interests intensely shared work just as well. It all depends on what you put it into it, to state the obvious. It's like a fireplace: you can let it go out, or you can add wood. Ahem.

Anyway.

Since the story's methodology is fubar, what's the point? Lay some snark on marriage, add another questionable statistic to the pool of Things Smart People Know To Be So, give aid and comfort to the readers who see the prospects of marriage slipping away for good, and erode, ever so gently, the stature of a venerable but quaintly outdated institution. I imagine the tone of the piece would be different if a majority of men divorced their wives to throw some hose in the trophy-babe pool, and pronounced their new freedom from responsibility and duty a great revelation. Sure, my kids don't get to come home for Christmas and have 'Mom and Dad and the old ornaments and traditions', but the other night I slept with a 20-year old on the other side of the bed, and I thought, "I like this".