[caption id="attachment_117" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Ties that Bind?"]
[/caption]The topic is ostensibly about infidelity and our (read "American") schizophrenic relationship to it: on one hand we consider cheating
a truly abhorrent, despicable, and immoral act, and yet it's estimated that 30% of partners have had an affair. This sort of fractured disjunction between our opinions and behaviors is described by the author at some point as a "do what I say, not as I do" philosophy, but I think it has to do with our inability to see long-term benefits at the risk of short-term gains. Look at how easy it is to keep smoking or overeating in the face of scientific evidence that it's bad for you long-term. And what about doing drugs or selling your stocks in a bear market or taking one more hit in Blackjack when you're already showing 17? Truth is, it's hard in the face of immediate sensual gratification to turn it down, to expect our rational mind to kick in and convince us that it's not worth it. But that kind of impulse control is difficult, which is why I think that while we frown on bad behaviors, we're willing to give a pass to those who commit them.
This all also raises larger questions about marriage as a whole. As someone who only recently took that trip down the aisle myself, I have spent the better part of my adult life wondering "Why are we so fixated on being married?" And I mean that from the point of view of both society and as an individual. I was shocked to find myself blubbering and feeling sorry for myself attending the weddings of my closest friends through my twenties - when would be my chance to walk down the aisle? And after a sobering talk with my partner about the likelihood of our getting married (at the time, slim to none), I remember driving by a wedding dress store and almost suppressing the urge to fall into an unstoppable crying spree. I'll be the first to tell you that there's a lot to unpack in those moments - the conflation of weddings and marriage, the pressure to become a bride, the disappointment when you fail to ever be a bride (which I think is worse if you are part of a couple than if you are single), the exhaustion/embitterment/resentment from fighting off the pressure to get married, etc. But in spite of all that understanding of why I was where emotionally in those moments, as a card-carrying self-proclaimed feminist I was deeply ashamed of myself.
At our core we are a society who hasn't really figured out what marriage means to us. I think as pointed out in the CSM article, we want to be partnered up, but we want to be happy, but these are presented as two mutually exclusive things, like we're okay with this structure that is totally the norm but at odds with the value of our individual hapiness. I think if you pose the question at large "Why marriage" the traditional answers - safety + security - are not there anymore. Women and men alike can get jobs, have careers, save for retirement, build networks of friends and social circles they can turn to for support and companionship. Monogamy, emotional intimacy, even child rearing - these things are all possible within a partnership that's not called marriage. Why is that commitment and institutional recognition so important? Or maybe the question is really why is a commitment such a precursor to institutional recognition? Why do I get different medical benefits, different legal benefits, different authority over and different access to my partner once I'm his "wife"? While marriage may imply a lifelong commitment (and thus a shared investment in all members' futures), divorce rates show this doesn't play out in practice. And it's certainly not predicated on any past performance - you can get married to someone you barely know, and only a handful of states have common-law marriages which automatically elevate certain long term partnerships.
Because this is a huge topic (and one I expect to return to frequently), there's obviously no hope here for any cheap and easy answers that might also prove to be true or fulfilling. I know as as individual I struggled to really see and separate my own feeling and beliefs from the ideology of conventional marriage: the husband and I had to redefine it on our own terms. And every day our our relationship with respect to conventional marriage continues to be a tug of war - I don't know how much I can refer to "my husband" without being part of the problem that is the tidal pressure to get married. How much can and should be excited when new friends announced that they are engaged? How much will I fight to still get people to call me by "Ms." instead of "Mrs." and not assume I've taken my husband's last name? These day-to-day mini battles are part of my uphill battle against a pretty big ideological hill, and not one that I'm entirely opposed to either. Hope I packed enough applesauce bars for the journey because it's going to be a long journey.
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