Other People's Marriages

[snore emoji]

I’m still taking your complaints. Thank you to everyone who’s submitted some so far. YOU ARE SEEN. I’m going to run them in the next week or two. KEEP ‘EM COMING.

Before you read on, I should caveat this whole post by saying not only have I not read Lindy West’s new memoir, or Belle Burden’s divorce memoir for that matter (beyond noting that the NYT support seemed outsized)(also, Gwyneth has apparently been cast in the adaptation…reign on thin white blonde women), I have only cursorily been aware of the discussion, which in both cases has seemingly set parts of the internet on fire. I’ve seen the smoke from a distance.

The reason for this is because at this point in my life I am so bored to death by other people’s marriages I cannot fathom paying to spend time in them on purpose. Here are the people whose marriages I will spend time hearing about on purpose: Friends I love. Friends whose partners cook for me. That’s it.

The reluctant bride. On behalf of the many many many many women throughout history who had, and still have, no choice about much of anything.

Much like riding the NYC subway will very quickly make you disinterested in how other people choose to dress (unless they earn your interest), choose to love, choose to read etc. (the intimacy of being jammed up against people on your commute to work doesn’t so much breed contempt as disinterest) being adjacent to other people’s marriages for any length of time, even the “good” ones, will quickly disabuse you of the belief that marriage is, as a general proposition, a) romantic b) exciting c) all that interesting to anyone but the people directly in it.

(I do think part of marriage counseling should involve preparing couples for the general mundaneness of it all.)

My impression of some of the outrage over Lindy West, and Belle Burden, and this continuing obsession over Love Story (a weird name for a tale that has always seemed anything but) is that it has something to do with an abiding belief in the fantasy of marriage. Marriage as a goal. Marriage as a solution. Marriage as fulfillment. You’re either a fool for pursuing it, or you’re a fool for trying to live outside its traditional constraints.

As my friend Aminatou Sow has said: getting married is not an achievement.