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"Avoid marriage"

The Internets are abuzz with news of Sandra Tsing Loh's divorce and, more specifically, her anti-marriage essay in the Atlantic (which I first came across through Amber).

So here's what I got out of this piece:

• Marriage requires too much work.
  
• So much work, in fact, that most people just don't have the temperament for it.
  
• Women are especially unsatisfied because they are expected to initiate and/or do most of that work.
  
• We in the U.S. tend to overemphasize the importance of marriage, and have an unrealistic view of it, leading us to have a high divorce rate.
  
• Married couples in their 40s and up rarely, if ever, have sex.

Leaving aside the last item, of which I have no personal knowledge, I think she makes some good points. (Side note: JW said this article made him throw up. Those were his exact words.) I agree that many people enter into marriage with unrealistic expectations and without understanding the work it's going to take, and that eventually they find themselves unwilling or unable to keep their marriages going. And I agree that it's a good idea for people to think carefully about whether they are suited for marriage, and to consider alternatives without being stigmatized.

It's scary if you think she's saying that this breakdown is inevitable, that after a time your marriage just wears out and you can't bring yourself to rekindle it yet again.

But I can't believe that, because among all the reasons she lists for staying married (for the dual income, for the kids, to avoid being alone, to prove that we can) she never once mentions her actual husband.

So, I do think post-divorce anti-marriage screeds tend to be a little reductionist: my marriage failed, so marriage is a bad idea. But it didn't make me throw up.

Full post as published by Magic Cookie on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).