Tuesday, August 26, 2008

She's happily married?

We don't know what to think about this story on CNN.com, but culled from Oprah.com.

I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m.

If you contemplate divorce every day, should you not go ahead and get one? Or is the author, Ellen Tien, being satirical, as suggested in the accompanying comments?

We had a hard time slogging through the whole piece, so we picked out some salient points for your consumption.

To be sure, there will be throngs of angry women who will decry me for plunging a stake into the heart of holy matrimony. "My husband is my lifeline," I've heard said (and that's bad news for the aorta). "My husband and I never fight" is another marital chestnut -- again, bad news (not to mention a big fat lie), since according to the experts, the strongest relationships are the ones in which people can continually agree to disagree. "My husband is my best friend," others will aver.

No. Your husband is not your best friend. Your best friend is your best friend. If your husband were your best friend, what would that make your best friend -- the dog? When a woman tells me that her husband is her best friend, what I hear is: I don't really have any friends.

Not entirely sure we go along with this statement. Our husbands are our best friends. We tell them everything - and we don't compete with them over whose outfit looks the best today.

Having choices is a cornerstone of strength: Choosers won't be beggars. "Thinking about divorce is kind of like living in New York City with its museums and theater and culture," a doctor friend of mine said. "You may never actually go to any of these places, but for some reason, just the idea that you could if you wanted to makes you feel better."

Maybe one day, marriage -- like the human appendix, male nipples, or your pinky toes -- will become a vestigial structure that will, in a millennium or two, be obsolete. Our great-great-great-grandchildren's grandchildren will ask each other in passing, "Remember marriage? What was its function again? Was it that maladaptive organ that intermittently produced gastrointestinal antigens and sometimes got so inflamed that it painfully erupted?"

Yes. Yes it was.

Until that day of obsolescence, we can confront the dilemma and consider the choice a privilege. Once upon a time is the stuff of fairy tales. As for happily ever after -- see appendix.

Well, perhaps one day the institution of marriage will be obsolete. But we like to think of a couple we met recently, 61 years together, who still say "I love you" to one another every day.

What do you think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am a young man, never married. This article makes me sick to my stomach and has the ability to kill the idea of marriage for any of us unmarried.

Applaud Women said...

Thanks for leaving a comment, Rob.