The Presence of the Absence
When I was reading the book on Elizabeth Cady Stanton awhile back, I was somewhat surprised to discover that she was among the early radical voices to push for laws ensuring not only equality in marriage, but also divorce:
To live without intimacy in the most intimate of circumstances is to sustain permanent damage to the spirit. Forced by law and custom to live in the presence of such an absence, one's inner being closes down -- is made cold, defensive, remote -- and all too soon one becomes incapable of human empathy: a danger both to oneself and to the world...
...
So here they were, Elizabeth and Henry [her husband], two of the most decent, freethinking, privileged people in America, with each one extending the other a remarkable amount of personal freedom -- yet happiness eluded them. Marriage left each of them drifting about inside an isolation of spirit that, in time, grew oppressive (and indeed, as the years went on, they came to live more and more apart). Out of this emptiness in her own life, Stanton's thinking took an empathetic leap, allowing her to imagine fully a life trapped inside a really soul-deadening marriage. Better, far better, she realized, to be alone, than to face the intolerable loneliness that one experienced in the presence of the absence. The laws regarding marriage and divorce had to be altered.
A friend asked me today why weekends are difficult for me, and this captures it well -- the presence of the absence crowds in, with little room to spare.
To live without intimacy in the most intimate of circumstances is to sustain permanent damage to the spirit. Forced by law and custom to live in the presence of such an absence, one's inner being closes down -- is made cold, defensive, remote -- and all too soon one becomes incapable of human empathy: a danger both to oneself and to the world...
...
So here they were, Elizabeth and Henry [her husband], two of the most decent, freethinking, privileged people in America, with each one extending the other a remarkable amount of personal freedom -- yet happiness eluded them. Marriage left each of them drifting about inside an isolation of spirit that, in time, grew oppressive (and indeed, as the years went on, they came to live more and more apart). Out of this emptiness in her own life, Stanton's thinking took an empathetic leap, allowing her to imagine fully a life trapped inside a really soul-deadening marriage. Better, far better, she realized, to be alone, than to face the intolerable loneliness that one experienced in the presence of the absence. The laws regarding marriage and divorce had to be altered.
A friend asked me today why weekends are difficult for me, and this captures it well -- the presence of the absence crowds in, with little room to spare.