Marriage sucks!

Salon reviews a book about the death of marriage.

Why would anyone submit to the doomed delusion that is marriage? The unmarried among us have surely begun to ask this question. (No doubt the married have, too, though in the past tense.) For several years now, disdain for heterosexual unions has been on the rise -- or at least the disdainful have been more vocal -- and it's become increasingly difficult to believe that a lasting marriage is possible. If it is possible, the "hard work" it requires will wring the partnership of all passion and wonderment and joy. From the narratives of wifely grievance routinely published in women's magazines to the spectacular public bust-ups of numerous celebrity marriages in which we have placed our bruised faith, it's easy to glean that we currently inhabit a vast and bleak landscape of marital discontent.

There are numbers to corroborate this: In a much-discussed recent survey of 35,000 American women, published in the July issue of Woman's Day, 72 percent of married women said they had considered leaving their husbands. Seventy-nine percent said they'd like sex more often, and 52 percent said they have no sex life to speak of. Contemporary marriage, all signs would indicate, is a long, tedious slog toward sex-starved paunchiness via an endless, embittering negotiation of banalities: who will shuttle the kids, walk the dog, prepare the meals, wash the laundry.

Last week, as though timed to the release of the survey findings, two female writers offered their respective takes on the subject. In a heavily parsed essay in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly titled "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off," writer Sandra Tsing-Loh explores the dissolution of her 20-year marriage, pinpointing as the superficial cause her extramarital affair and subsequent inability "to take on yet another home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling [her] romance." From her personal predicament she diagnoses a broader epidemic of dissatisfaction -- emotional, social, familial and, most of all, sexual -- among women. "To work, to parent, to housekeep, to be the ones who schedule 'date night' ... and then, in the bedroom, to be ignored -- it's a bum deal," she writes. Literary critic and essayist Christina Nehring, who also happens to write for the Atlantic, takes a more impersonal approach in her contrarian polemic, "A Vindication of Love"; she writes of the bankrupt state of romantic love in our society: "We inhabit a world in which every aspect of romance from meeting to mating has been streamlined, safety-checked and emptied of spiritual consequence … Romance in our day is a poor and shrunken thing."

An Ideal Husband!

Maureen Dowd writes on the wisdom that a priest imparts to young women contemplating marriage.

This weekend, we celebrate our great American pastime: messy celebrity divorces.

There’s the Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook fireworks on Long Island and the Madonna/Guy Ritchie/A-Rod Roman candle in New York.

So how do you avoid a relationship where you end up saying, “The man who I was living with, I just didn’t know who he was” — as Brinkley did in court when talking about her husband’s $3,000-a-month Internet porn and swinger site habit? (Not to mention the 18-year-old mistress/assistant.)

Father Pat Connor, a 79-year-old Catholic priest born in Australia and based in Bordentown, N.J., has spent his celibate life — including nine years as a missionary in India — mulling connubial bliss. His decades of marriage counseling led him to distill some “mostly common sense” advice about how to dodge mates who would maul your happiness.

“Hollywood says you can be deeply in love with someone and then your marriage will work,” the twinkly eyed, white-haired priest says. “But you can be deeply in love with someone to whom you cannot be successfully married.”

For 40 years, he has been giving a lecture — “Whom Not to Marry” — to high school seniors, mostly girls because they’re more interested.

“It’s important to do it before they fall seriously in love, because then it will be too late,” he explains. “Infatuation trumps judgment.”

I asked him to summarize his talk:

“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since, as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes, your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them in the race to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment.

“Does he use money responsibly? Is he stingy? Most marriages that founder do so because of money — she’s thrifty, he’s on his 10th credit card.

“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.

“Is he overly attached to his mother and her mythical apron strings? When he wants to make a decision, say, about where you should go on your honeymoon, he doesn’t consult you, he consults his mother. (I’ve known cases where the mother accompanies the couple on their honeymoon!)

“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.

“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive. That world-class misogynist, Paul of Tarsus, got it right when he said, ‘In all your dealings with one another, speak the truth to one another in love that you may grow up.’

“Don’t marry a problem character thinking you will change him. He’s a heavy drinker, or some other kind of addict, but if he marries a good woman, he’ll settle down. People are the same after marriage as before, only more so.

“Take a good, unsentimental look at his family — you’ll learn a lot about him and his attitude towards women. Kay made a monstrous mistake marrying Michael Corleone! Is there a history of divorce in the family? An atmosphere of racism, sexism or prejudice in his home? Are his goals and deepest beliefs worthy and similar to yours? I remember counseling a pious Catholic woman that it might not be prudent to marry a pious Muslim, whose attitude about women was very different. Love trumped prudence; the annulment process was instigated by her six months later.

“Imagine a religious fundamentalist married to an agnostic. One would have to pray that the fundamentalist doesn’t open the Bible and hit the page in which Abraham is willing to obey God and slit his son’s throat.

“Finally: Does he possess those character traits that add up to a good human being — the willingness to forgive, praise, be courteous? Or is he inclined to be a fibber, to fits of rage, to be a control freak, to be envious of you, to be secretive?

“After I regale a group with this talk, the despairing cry goes up: ‘But you’ve eliminated everyone!’ Life is unfair.”

more on Aishwarya's marriage to trees

Feministing.com has an interesting analysis on Indian movie actress Aishwarya Rai's marriage to trees.

Er. Yes it is an old tradition. So the question is, do we expect that Rai, since she has had all this Western success, will no longer follow what she believes is her Hindu traditions? Or that she is somehow absolved from familial pressure?

Probably not. Some Indian feminists however believe that she is setting women back.

Meanwhile, Ash’s actions have invoked the wrath of feminists and women’s rights activists in India. Shruti Singh, a Patna lawyer, filed suit against the two families, saying such ceremonies are in violation of the Indian Constitution and offensive to women.
“I agree with her,” says India-born Berkeley resident Shobha Hiatt, a women’s rights advocate. “It is shocking that people as forward thinking as the Bachchans should engage in such archaic practices. It is like moving back in time.”