(no subject)
the person whom you choose to marry is perhaps the single most vivid representation of your own personality. you spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world. there is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry. that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.
a notion that the emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership. moreover, they would likely agree that there is not one special person waiting for you somewhere in this world who will make your life magically complete, but that there are any number of people (right in your own community, probably) with whom you could seal a respectful bond. then you could live and work alongside that person for years, with the hope that tenderness and affection would be the gradual outcome of your union.
one of the first things that changes in any society when women start to earn their own income is the nature of marriage. you see this trend across all nations and all people. the more financially autonomous a woman becomes, the later in life she will get married, if ever.
it is true that my parents connect not only as friends, but also very much on a bodily level. they are physical in every way together ---hiking, biking, and farming side by side. my parents have always had a certain sexual chemistry ever since the day they met. I grew up watching that play out, and I think that's a rare gift ---knowing that your parents are physically satisfying to each other. so one big part of my parent's marriage, as my mother was reminding me, has always been lodged somewhere beyond the rational, hidden someplace deep in the sexual body. and that degree of intimacy is something beyond any explanation, beyond any argument.
then there is the companionship. my parents have been married for over forty years now. by and large they've worked out their deal. they live in a pretty smooth routine, their habits polished by time's current. they orbit each other in the same basic pattern every day: coffee, dog, breakfast, newspaper, garden, bills, chores, radio, lunch, groceries, dog, dinner, reading, dog, bed...and repeat.
the poet jack gilbert wrote that marriage is what happens "between the memorable." he said that we often look back on our marriages years later, perhaps after one spouse has died, and all we can recall are "the vacations, and emergencies" ---the high points and low points. the rest of it blends into a blurry sort of daily sameness. but it is that very blurred sameness, the poet argues, that comprises marriage. marriage IS those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. how do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody ---so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
my father has had to learn how to tolerate and endure the effects of being managed at every turn by a hyperorganized wife. in this regard, the two of them are horribly ill-matched. my father takes life as it comes; my mother makes life happen.
also, while it's true that my mother has given up more of her personal ambitions in marriage than my father ever did, she demands far more out of marriage than he ever will. he is far more accepting of her than she is of him. "she's the best Carol she can be," he often says, while one gets the feeling that my mother believes her husband could be ---maybe even should be--- a much better man. she commands him at every turn. she's subtle and graceful enough in her methods of control that you don't always realize that she's doing it, but trust me: mom is always steering the boat.
Robert frost wrote that "a man must partly give up being a man" in order to enter into marriage. ...already describing marriage as a repressive tool used against women, but it's important to remember that marriage is often used a repressive tool against men, too. marriage is a harness of civilization, linking a man to a set of obligations and thereby containing his restless energies.
a notion that the emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership. moreover, they would likely agree that there is not one special person waiting for you somewhere in this world who will make your life magically complete, but that there are any number of people (right in your own community, probably) with whom you could seal a respectful bond. then you could live and work alongside that person for years, with the hope that tenderness and affection would be the gradual outcome of your union.
one of the first things that changes in any society when women start to earn their own income is the nature of marriage. you see this trend across all nations and all people. the more financially autonomous a woman becomes, the later in life she will get married, if ever.
it is true that my parents connect not only as friends, but also very much on a bodily level. they are physical in every way together ---hiking, biking, and farming side by side. my parents have always had a certain sexual chemistry ever since the day they met. I grew up watching that play out, and I think that's a rare gift ---knowing that your parents are physically satisfying to each other. so one big part of my parent's marriage, as my mother was reminding me, has always been lodged somewhere beyond the rational, hidden someplace deep in the sexual body. and that degree of intimacy is something beyond any explanation, beyond any argument.
then there is the companionship. my parents have been married for over forty years now. by and large they've worked out their deal. they live in a pretty smooth routine, their habits polished by time's current. they orbit each other in the same basic pattern every day: coffee, dog, breakfast, newspaper, garden, bills, chores, radio, lunch, groceries, dog, dinner, reading, dog, bed...and repeat.
the poet jack gilbert wrote that marriage is what happens "between the memorable." he said that we often look back on our marriages years later, perhaps after one spouse has died, and all we can recall are "the vacations, and emergencies" ---the high points and low points. the rest of it blends into a blurry sort of daily sameness. but it is that very blurred sameness, the poet argues, that comprises marriage. marriage IS those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. how do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody ---so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?
my father has had to learn how to tolerate and endure the effects of being managed at every turn by a hyperorganized wife. in this regard, the two of them are horribly ill-matched. my father takes life as it comes; my mother makes life happen.
also, while it's true that my mother has given up more of her personal ambitions in marriage than my father ever did, she demands far more out of marriage than he ever will. he is far more accepting of her than she is of him. "she's the best Carol she can be," he often says, while one gets the feeling that my mother believes her husband could be ---maybe even should be--- a much better man. she commands him at every turn. she's subtle and graceful enough in her methods of control that you don't always realize that she's doing it, but trust me: mom is always steering the boat.
Robert frost wrote that "a man must partly give up being a man" in order to enter into marriage. ...already describing marriage as a repressive tool used against women, but it's important to remember that marriage is often used a repressive tool against men, too. marriage is a harness of civilization, linking a man to a set of obligations and thereby containing his restless energies.