From a friend's locked post, where it seems to be causing significant controversy:
An article from The Atlantic on divorce and the author's suggestions for alternatives to traditional marriage: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/divorce
My friend wrote that everyone on her F-list seems to hate it.
Personally, I liked it. But then, I'm a die-hard romantic who has a very cynical attitude toward traditional marriage.
I recognized more than a few elements of my own former marriage in the article, plus those of a couple of friends.
Marriage is an idealistic institution which I think most people would really like to have unfold as per our cultural dreams. The reality, however, seems to fall short far too often. Promising to stay together "until death do us part" sets us up for failure in a world where we live far longer than our even recent ancestors, with far more complex lives.
Personally, I think that there need to be more socially-acceptable ways for people to pair up -- or triad or group up -- to create domestic/sexual/parenting alliances. It will make life a lot easier for a lot of us, including kids.
My biggest twitch with the article was her dismissal of "open marriage" as a failed idea which most people find "icky." In fact, more and more people are embracing polyamory as a healthy way of acknowledging that long-term monogamy is not always the best relationship model for all people. It's not for everyone, but neither is monogamy.
At it's core, marriage is a very private and personal institution. No one can truly understand the full dynamics of someone else's marriage. I would never try to prescribe what marriage "should" be for everyone. What I advocate for is opening up our cultural sensibilities to allow for more legitimate options in the area of personal unions and family-making.
An article from The Atlantic on divorce and the author's suggestions for alternatives to traditional marriage: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/divorce
My friend wrote that everyone on her F-list seems to hate it.
Personally, I liked it. But then, I'm a die-hard romantic who has a very cynical attitude toward traditional marriage.
I recognized more than a few elements of my own former marriage in the article, plus those of a couple of friends.
Marriage is an idealistic institution which I think most people would really like to have unfold as per our cultural dreams. The reality, however, seems to fall short far too often. Promising to stay together "until death do us part" sets us up for failure in a world where we live far longer than our even recent ancestors, with far more complex lives.
Personally, I think that there need to be more socially-acceptable ways for people to pair up -- or triad or group up -- to create domestic/sexual/parenting alliances. It will make life a lot easier for a lot of us, including kids.
My biggest twitch with the article was her dismissal of "open marriage" as a failed idea which most people find "icky." In fact, more and more people are embracing polyamory as a healthy way of acknowledging that long-term monogamy is not always the best relationship model for all people. It's not for everyone, but neither is monogamy.
At it's core, marriage is a very private and personal institution. No one can truly understand the full dynamics of someone else's marriage. I would never try to prescribe what marriage "should" be for everyone. What I advocate for is opening up our cultural sensibilities to allow for more legitimate options in the area of personal unions and family-making.
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Comments
I'll be interested to see what kind of response you get.
I'll be interested in the reaction here as well.
I think everyone should take a hard look at themselves, and their partner(s), and figure out what will really work for them. Open marriage or monogamy, kids or no kids, sexual passion or companionship, whatever. (Or here's an even stranger concept - living together or NOT living together - some married or otherwise deeply committed couples really do live apart and enjoy that, which is quite the anathema to mainstream expectations.) And even, marriage/long-term relationships versus never settling down. Because not everyone wants to do that, nor should they (especially if they don't want kids either).
I think it's really sad, how she talked about so many Americans believing in the old concept of marriage, and yet so many failing at it spectacularly. Wouldn't it be saner for us to update our ideas about what loving another person (or persons) looks like?
I certainly think so!
And I love the way you and your partner have worked out your own living arrangements.
My partners are also my closest friends, and I'm baffled that other people do not arrange their lives like that.
I agree.
The problem with marriage, I think, is that, at its core, it's exactly the *opposite* of what you describe: A very public, social institution for the orderly rearing of children and the transfer of property through a family line from one generation to the next, with the side benefit of satisfying sexual and emotional needs in a likewise orderly fashion. Our culture has been trying to change that for a couple of centuries, but it's going to take a lot longer than that to change an institution that seems to have been in place at least since Egypt and Sumer.
That said, I have never seen so many poisonous unquestioned assumptions about marriage in one place as in that article. Not only are there other ways for people to bond that in heterosexual monogamy, there are other, happier ways to do heterosexual monogamy than what that writer describes.
Those of us who are in traditional, intended-to-be-lifelong, monogamous marriages get immense amounts of shit thrown our way these days for what should be our free choice. Your open-mindedness is rare; it's much more common for people to tell me that I'm a pervert for being monogamous, or that my marriage just hasn't broken up yet but it will, or that obviously my marriage is a sham because nobody could actually stay happily married to one person for so many years, or that the kind of marriage I have should not be legal and is inherently abusive to me as a woman.
Yah. Fuck them and the horses they rode in on. It's not appropriate to treat divorce as a stigma or failure, but neither is it appropriate to treat traditional marriage as a stigma or failure.
Heron61 also has some very cogent criticisms about the piece.
Ack! I know! That kind of attitude infuriates me too.
A particular friend of mine here on LJ has given me a lot of insights into the disrespectful way all too much of polyamorous culture treats monogamous people and relationships. That's one reason I go out of my way these days to affirm monogamy as The Best Choice for many people when I strongly advocate having other options open to people.
Why do human beings get so upset when other people want to do things differently than they do?
I did enjoy reading the "divorce" article -- it's an entertaining little vignette about upper-middle-class middle-aged "will we ever have hot sex again?" angst, not unlike an episode of Sex and the City. Come to think of it, not at all unlike an episode of Sex and the City. And worth about as much time and attention.
After reading both articles, my primary impression of the author is that she doesn't seem to be very good at intimacy and relationships in general, and has a very narrow sense of the possibilities outside her own somewhat rareified social circle.
I have not read all of her columns, but the ones I have read reeked of a woman living in a privileged, insular world who is frustrated with her inability to find meaning in her own life and not understanding why she is so unhappy.
I suspect that you're right about the combined pressure of being a columnist and living in a rather insular world.