indiemaiden:

This article was really useful in helping me discern just what it is that I want when a lonely mood hits me. I’m more than happy living in my room alone; it’s the support system that I need to concentrate on developing more fully. This may require me to stop leaving so many people behind every time I relocate myself. It may also require letting more people in. Food for introspective thought, certainly.

Ayyy there is so much to unpack in this article (which I think, for what it’s worth, is about 50 times more magnanimous and evenhanded than I normally expect from the But I’m Upper Middle Class and White, What Could Possibly Be Wrong With My Choices? genre of essay writing). But my first thought is that all this rhetoric pitting marriage against community is going to create a generation of sociopaths who are both unmarried/childless and unmoored from the traditional bonds of extended family and community (hey, the second part is a demographic phenomenon that has been happening for decades whether we like it or not). Are educated, ambitious, independent women really lukewarm on the idea of marriage because we believe our other ties to family and friends are strong and more than sufficient? Or are we lukewarm on marriage because we were raised to pursue our own success above all else? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with pursuing success, but after examining my own feelings on marriage over the past couple of years, I can say that for me it was the latter. I love my friends and family, but over the past few years I’ve realized that I was not raised to sacrifice for others, including a romantic partner. I also realized that life will entail sacrifices whether I’m ready for them or not. I have been unlearning, learning, and relearning a lot of things since I decided to get married.

Yes, it’s great that the author has female friends who put her up in picturesque locales in America’s most writerly cities, but she says nothing about the flip side of community bonds. What would happen if this author has to take care of a parent with Alzheimer’s, or a brother with an addiction? What if a friend lost her job, couldn’t pay her mortgage, and needed a place to stay? I know plenty of single people, some in my own family, who handle these kinds of situations like champs, but I worry that so much feel-good talk about devaluing committed monogamous relationships obscures the fact that we have not developed an alternative way to teach people about the importance of commitment in general.

Last year, only a couple of months before we decided to get married, a really smart, really kind dude named Clif told me something that I’ve mulled over many times since. I was interviewing him for a three-minute video piece on the after-effects of the Kent State shootings on Boston’s college campuses, but our tape ran well over an hour. One of the things that had struck me, from interviewing him and others of his generation, was how many of them got married so young, and in most cases stayed married. This even held for the one gay man I interviewed, who still lived in a literal shrine to the longtime partner he’d lost five years prior. “You were supposed to be known as social revolutionaries,” I said (and Clif was one of the most radical). “What would have been the appeal in settling down, especially in such a conventional way?”

“We didn’t have anyone else,” he said. “A lot of us could barely even speak to our parents. You didn’t want to feel like you were alone.”

Coming off the worst year of my life, this made a lot of sense. I was marginally employed and just returning to good speaking terms with my own parents. I had friends in several major cities, none of whom I could afford to visit. It was very clear to me, in that moment, that Bjorn had gotten me through that year. Maybe others could have, but no one else did. Maybe that sounds weak or maybe it sounds cold and calculating. Maybe it is a stupid reason to get married, but I guess I’ll have to wait to find out.

Clif died in February at 62. He was survived by his wife of 40 years.

(Source: unshared)

1. summerstaycation reblogged this from unshared and added:

   Yikes, I’m sorry. I tend to think that leaving a relationship is not any more or less selfless or selfish than staying...

2. unshared reblogged this from summerstaycation and added:

   Okay, so I posted this for trash dick and then ran off to teach undergrads at America’s second-most prestigious college...

3. indiemaiden reblogged this from unshared and added:

   This article was really useful in helping me discern just what it is that I want when a lonely mood hits me. I’m more...

4. unshared posted this