A Vindication of Sanity
I picked perhaps the worst (best?) time of my life so far to read Vindication of Love by Cristina Nehring, considering her position is that romance is dead in the modern world-“romance” being distance, pain, humiliation, sexual frustration, sexy fights, etc.-and that we need to reclaim it. Her examples of real romance include adolescent folly (Romeo and Juliet), absurd distance and castration (Heloise and Abelard) and fucking needless dramz (Tristan and Isolde). Oh yeah, and glorified suicide (Goethe’s miserable Werther.)
Apparently, Americans today have seriously effed up the troubadour sense of love-it needs to be forbidden, preferably adulterous. You’re supposed to love your mis(ter)ess, not your spouse (say dead poets from nine centuries ago.) You’re supposed to fall madly in love at first sight, then hide for a few months, writing feverish letters to the loved one. You may never actually see this person again-this stokes desire, creativity, and romance.
And if you actually do consummate the love, make sure it only happens once. Then you should move away, go off to war, fall on your sword (literally, like Shakespeare’s Marc Antony). Because if you try to cohabitate with or marry your love, you will grow bored, the magic will die. (Unless you want to live like Frida and Diego-just divorce, remarry, and cheat a lot. That is the romantic way to do marriage, duh.)
(She also spews some whack ass shit about how sexy it is not to know your body or how to give yourself orgasms? The mystery is the thrill? No thanks. I live in the same city as this little gem.)
Not that I have ever been on board with the message of current American chick flicks or ladymags. Obvi, getting married is not the only way a person (but specifically an affluent, straight white woman) can be fulfilled. And clearly I know that marriage isn’t simply happily ever after-it, like every relationship, takes tons of work.
But Nehring’s critique of modern romance veers off into directions I’d never considered (and feel altogether “meh” about). Sex shops and porn commodify sex, which sucks, because sex should be a sensual, sensual secret. (Perhaps. But I will take commodified sex over Victorian prudery any goddamn day.) Marriage always kills romance, and this is a travesty. (Not that I’m an expert-but perhaps this isn’t absolutely true? And if it is, is this a bad thing? Being Tristan or Isolde sounds exhausting.) The Interwebz and cell phones prevent romance, because one can always be in contact with their lover, and absence ROOLZ. Long distance is teh sex. And on and on.
I call bullshit.
I seem to find myself in a relationship that meets much of the criteria for classical Western romance. Transatlantic lovers like Peej and myself probably meet the distance requirement. We’re of different nationalities, religions, and ethnic backgrounds--transgressive love, I think so! We’re very open to debate, so sexy fights ahoy!
(Although, yesterday when I saw slam poet Miles Walser perform this at Queer Open Mic, I was inclined to agree with some of that noise.)
But I have to take issue with the celebration of distance. I get it--I turn my cell phone off sometimes, too. The lack of personal computer hasn’t killed me yet. A break from social media is often needed.
PJ and I have been living on separate continents for almost all of our nearly-four-year-relationship. There are no words for how miserable, lonely, and stressed this fact can make me. When my laptop died in April, and when my AmeriCorps term ended last week, we lost additional means of communication. Each lost avenue is another stress in my life. I don’t feel like it’s made me more in love or romantic.
Not that Nehring says that love feels good. Ecstatic, yes. Sublime, absolutely. But no warm fuzzies-apparently the most common indicators of true lovers are their tears, their blood, their deaths. The suffering for love gets the most print.
Well, I am suffering. I have parents who are rather vocal about their opinion that I am wasting my life, working in a low-skill job while I wait to hear back from grad school in PJ’s 'hood. The department I’m applying to in that school is giving me HELL-no, I cannot call you at 9 a.m. your time, because that is 2 a.m. my time and I have work the next day! (Not that I have a land line or a computer to make that call possible, anyway.)
As happy as I am with my current job, I will admit that sometimes it is humiliating to do work irrelevant to my career goals. And while a Masters degree is certainly in my own best interests, the only reason I’ve applied at all is to have the chance to live in the same city as Peej. I am indeed humiliating myself for love.
It does not feel sexy. It does not make me feel more alive. It makes me feel batshit crazy.
Absent from Nehring’s book are concepts like, oh, dignity. Respect. Peace. Fulfillment. I value those things, you know? Maybe I privilege them above a love like Guinevere’s for Lancelot (not least because they are FICTIONAL CHARACTERS).
And so after what was looking like the second week in a row of being stood up by PJ for our phone date today, I tried to frame the situation differently. Is an hour lying under the covers crying somehow not pathetic, but beautiful? (I mean, there was sunlight coming in through the curtains, making my walls look more lavender than usual, and my bedsheets especially orange.) Is my pacing and nausea normal, instead of troubling? Is the barefoot girl trying to fall into a book at a café to calm herself down… admirable?
N… no. I’ve decided not.
And then, the call comes, four hours late. I sit on a shady bit of grass in library mall as we talk for two hours about our earliest childhood memories. The clear sky seems like a gift. I feel hunger for the first time all day.
Would the call be as gratifying if not for the despair first? I can’t say that I know for sure, but I’m also unwilling to celebrate suffering.
I will admit that I did find one comofort in Vindication of Love. In the Chapter "Love as Failure," Nehring says that romance requires risk--the greater the risk (and chance for failure), the greater the love. And even if the lovers fail at their high-stakes game, they've actually won because they took the risk in the first place.
I have a lot to lose right now. Failure is very possible. But the fact that I'm taking the risk at all is kinda sexy.
Apparently, Americans today have seriously effed up the troubadour sense of love-it needs to be forbidden, preferably adulterous. You’re supposed to love your mis(ter)ess, not your spouse (say dead poets from nine centuries ago.) You’re supposed to fall madly in love at first sight, then hide for a few months, writing feverish letters to the loved one. You may never actually see this person again-this stokes desire, creativity, and romance.
And if you actually do consummate the love, make sure it only happens once. Then you should move away, go off to war, fall on your sword (literally, like Shakespeare’s Marc Antony). Because if you try to cohabitate with or marry your love, you will grow bored, the magic will die. (Unless you want to live like Frida and Diego-just divorce, remarry, and cheat a lot. That is the romantic way to do marriage, duh.)
(She also spews some whack ass shit about how sexy it is not to know your body or how to give yourself orgasms? The mystery is the thrill? No thanks. I live in the same city as this little gem.)
Not that I have ever been on board with the message of current American chick flicks or ladymags. Obvi, getting married is not the only way a person (but specifically an affluent, straight white woman) can be fulfilled. And clearly I know that marriage isn’t simply happily ever after-it, like every relationship, takes tons of work.
But Nehring’s critique of modern romance veers off into directions I’d never considered (and feel altogether “meh” about). Sex shops and porn commodify sex, which sucks, because sex should be a sensual, sensual secret. (Perhaps. But I will take commodified sex over Victorian prudery any goddamn day.) Marriage always kills romance, and this is a travesty. (Not that I’m an expert-but perhaps this isn’t absolutely true? And if it is, is this a bad thing? Being Tristan or Isolde sounds exhausting.) The Interwebz and cell phones prevent romance, because one can always be in contact with their lover, and absence ROOLZ. Long distance is teh sex. And on and on.
I call bullshit.
I seem to find myself in a relationship that meets much of the criteria for classical Western romance. Transatlantic lovers like Peej and myself probably meet the distance requirement. We’re of different nationalities, religions, and ethnic backgrounds--transgressive love, I think so! We’re very open to debate, so sexy fights ahoy!
(Although, yesterday when I saw slam poet Miles Walser perform this at Queer Open Mic, I was inclined to agree with some of that noise.)
But I have to take issue with the celebration of distance. I get it--I turn my cell phone off sometimes, too. The lack of personal computer hasn’t killed me yet. A break from social media is often needed.
PJ and I have been living on separate continents for almost all of our nearly-four-year-relationship. There are no words for how miserable, lonely, and stressed this fact can make me. When my laptop died in April, and when my AmeriCorps term ended last week, we lost additional means of communication. Each lost avenue is another stress in my life. I don’t feel like it’s made me more in love or romantic.
Not that Nehring says that love feels good. Ecstatic, yes. Sublime, absolutely. But no warm fuzzies-apparently the most common indicators of true lovers are their tears, their blood, their deaths. The suffering for love gets the most print.
Well, I am suffering. I have parents who are rather vocal about their opinion that I am wasting my life, working in a low-skill job while I wait to hear back from grad school in PJ’s 'hood. The department I’m applying to in that school is giving me HELL-no, I cannot call you at 9 a.m. your time, because that is 2 a.m. my time and I have work the next day! (Not that I have a land line or a computer to make that call possible, anyway.)
As happy as I am with my current job, I will admit that sometimes it is humiliating to do work irrelevant to my career goals. And while a Masters degree is certainly in my own best interests, the only reason I’ve applied at all is to have the chance to live in the same city as Peej. I am indeed humiliating myself for love.
It does not feel sexy. It does not make me feel more alive. It makes me feel batshit crazy.
Absent from Nehring’s book are concepts like, oh, dignity. Respect. Peace. Fulfillment. I value those things, you know? Maybe I privilege them above a love like Guinevere’s for Lancelot (not least because they are FICTIONAL CHARACTERS).
And so after what was looking like the second week in a row of being stood up by PJ for our phone date today, I tried to frame the situation differently. Is an hour lying under the covers crying somehow not pathetic, but beautiful? (I mean, there was sunlight coming in through the curtains, making my walls look more lavender than usual, and my bedsheets especially orange.) Is my pacing and nausea normal, instead of troubling? Is the barefoot girl trying to fall into a book at a café to calm herself down… admirable?
N… no. I’ve decided not.
And then, the call comes, four hours late. I sit on a shady bit of grass in library mall as we talk for two hours about our earliest childhood memories. The clear sky seems like a gift. I feel hunger for the first time all day.
Would the call be as gratifying if not for the despair first? I can’t say that I know for sure, but I’m also unwilling to celebrate suffering.
I will admit that I did find one comofort in Vindication of Love. In the Chapter "Love as Failure," Nehring says that romance requires risk--the greater the risk (and chance for failure), the greater the love. And even if the lovers fail at their high-stakes game, they've actually won because they took the risk in the first place.
I have a lot to lose right now. Failure is very possible. But the fact that I'm taking the risk at all is kinda sexy.