BOOKS AND ARTS FEBRUARY 24, 2010
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Now that Valentine’s Day is safely around the corner and all the romantic breezes have blown out to sea, let’s take a cold, hard look at Lori Gottlieb, the marriage maven of the post-Sex and the City era. Savvy enough to publish a book about marriage in time for V-Day and reap the subsequent media blitz, Gottlieb has suffered from poorer timing in her love life. Two years ago, she lamented her ill-advised dating strategy in The Atlantic: Rather than “settle for” (read: marry) one of her numerous boyfriends during her twenties or thirties, she kept holding out for “something better,” convinced she had not yet met her “soul mate.” But still alone at age 40, with a sperm-donated baby and no husband prospects on her horizon, Gottlieb doubted the wisdom of her choice. “Marrying Mr. Good Enough might be an equally viable option, especially if you’re looking for a stable, reliable life companion,” she wrote. “Madame Bovary might not see it that way, but if she’d remained single, I’ll bet she would have been even more depressed than she was while living with her "tedious but caring" husband.
Now she’s spun the article into one of those books whose argument doesn’t go much further than the title: Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Women today, Gottlieb explains, have unrealistic expectations of the qualities they want in a mate, bringing a checklist 30 items long to the dating table and automatically excluding anyone who doesn’t perfectly conform. (He’s blond; she prefers tall, dark, and handsome. Next!) If you really want to get married, she writes, you should stop looking for qualities immediately attractive in a boyfriend—passion, intensity, brilliance—and open your mind to men who on the surface might be less scintillating but in the long run would make better partners.
What’s interesting about all this isn’t the dating advice Gottlieb offers, which is nothing new. Among the old standards she falls back on is the wisdom of the arranged marriage, in which partners unite owing to a meeting of values rather than minds or hearts and fall in love later (ideally). While her evidence is largely anecdotal, buffered with statistics from the National Marriage Project and various psychological studies, her research methods are clever. At the book’s start, she interviews a group of single women in their late 30s and early 40s. A friend tells Gottlieb, “Even if he’s not the love of your life, make sure he’s someone you respect intellectually, [who] makes you laugh, appreciates you. … I bet there are plenty of these men in the older, overweight, and bald category (which they all eventually become anyway).” But it’s not “settling” to marry a guy who is intelligent, funny, appreciative, and so on, if you connect with him intellectually and emotionally—as many of these women, even Gottlieb herself, say they did with their boyfriends. To marry a man you “adore,” even if sparks didn’t fly at the first meeting, sounds like a rational start for a happy relationship, not a radical way to readjust your priorities. What is settling is to accept a vision of marriage utterly different from the one you thought you wanted. This happens to be exactly what Gottlieb originally suggested, perhaps inadvertently, in her Atlantic article. Charles Bovary, after all, wasn’t “tedious but caring"; he didn’t respect Emma, make her laugh, or appreciate her. To suggest that the Bovary marriage might have had a happier ending if Emma had just readjusted her expectations is like saying Werther could have been cured by a little Prozac.
Gottlieb never devotes her considerable analytic skills to the most obvious question: Why does she assume that being married is better than being single? In the article, she acknowledged that marriages might not always be ideal, and even admitted the possibility that her life alone “is better (if far more difficult) than the life I would have in a comfortable but tepid marriage.” But she made it clear that she’d still rather be unhappily married than on her own. “My married friends with kids don’t spend that much time with their husbands anyway (between work and child care), and in many cases, their biggest complaint seems to be that they never see each other,” she explained. “So if you rarely see your husband—but he’s a decent guy who takes out the trash and sets up the baby gear, and he provides a second income that allows you to spend time with your child instead of working 60 hours a week to support a family on your own—how much does it matter whether the guy you marry is The One?” But I would venture that rarely seeing your husband isn’t what most women envision when they think about marriage. We can take out the trash and set up the baby gear ourselves; that’s not why people want partners.
In Gottlieb’s unashamedly marriage-boosting book, I counted all of two references to unhappy marriages. Marriage is simply presumed to be a good, better by definition than being single. There is no awareness of domestic violence and other abuse—not to mention other far more minor grievances that seem petty on the surface but erode a person’s well-being: the daily squabbles, the claustrophobia, the loneliness of discovering that the person you thought would be your constant companion no longer has the interest or ability to meet your needs. In ten years, will Gottlieb’s comfortably, tepidly married subjects reunite for the sequel, Divorce Him? That’s a book I’d be curious to read.
Ruth Franklin is a senior editor of The New Republic.
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11 comments
Approaching the end of middle age, I"ve seen plenty of marriages that failed, and plenty that succeeded. Both the statistical and anecdotal evidence I've been able to garner in that time strongly suggest that well-married folks are overall more satisfied with their lives, live longer, and are healthier. I'm not surprised Gottlieb begins with the assumption that marriage is a good thing. The more interesting question is what REALLY makes a marriage work? What separates the well-married from the unmarried or unwell-married? I suspect that for most of us, it's a corallary to the "good enough" guide Gottlieb proposes for husband material. One can be well married as long as the fundamentals are "good enough" in the long stretch to justify living through the impossible parts, repairing the normal wear and tear, and investing in the growth areas or your marriage. In my case, I have more respect, admiration and love for my wife of 33 years now than at any earlier time, notwithstanding that I know a great deal more about her now, that, had I bothered to learn it (if it were even possible to do so) 35 years ago, would have disqualified her from being "the one." People fall short of ideals - every one of us, and pretty much most days. Being well married is not about finding the perfect complement to oneself, it's about charting a course together that gives the two of you, plus any children you add to the mix, opportunity and room to grow together, support each other, and as the passion wanes, provide the kind of mutual satisfactions that make life first, bearable, and ultimately meaningful. If you want more than that for yourself, and you happen to be drop dead beautiful, or Nobel-quality brilliant, then focus on your career, and let the romantic and marriage chips fall where they may. If you focus on what you can do for you, you might still get lucky and find a match that makes for a long and happy marriage, or you might not. Doesn't matter - you already decided that life was first about "you" and only secondarily about "us," and presumably you've got your brilliant career to satisfy your needs. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as you don't try to drag someone else along with you who really wanted the investment in marriage to be paramount. But don't settle - by which I mean, don't suppose you can be all about you, but still deserve a "good enough" mate. "Good enough" is a lot more about whether you're both long term investors in the marriage, than it is about the precise qualities of the other half.
- IowaBeauty
February 24, 2010 at 7:59am
Now that patriarchy and the family are no longer the enemy, intelligent and independent woman can have a choice. Furthermore, marriage turns out to be much better for your long-term health and happiness.
- LawrenceGulotta
February 24, 2010 at 9:49am
Franklin asks a fair question and the answer is that marriage intrinsically is no better or worse than living alone. Each style has its advantages. I've been married to the same woman for 35 years and each of us would tell you that marriage can be limiting, inconvenient and tedious at times. We'd also tell you it can be exciting, productive and comforting in ways not easily attained by singles. It's a choice. What Gottlieb seems to be raising is an issue for those who are attracted to the benefits of marriage but delay choosing a mate. In this review (I haven't read the book) it appears that a major error is thinking of a husband as an object. (It takes out the trash and provides a supplemental paycheck.) If you cannot conceive of a marriage as a partnership between two actual human beings, each of whom gladly contributes to the happiness and growth of the other, then yours is bound to fail. Based on my own very limited experience, I believe that those who delay marriage until their late thirties or beyond miss the shared development experience of young adults that provide a sustaining bond through the later, more difficult time that everyone experiences, whether single or as part of a couple.
- emccded
February 24, 2010 at 10:54am
Iowabeauty - you are something, what a great and wise response.
- WandreyCer
February 24, 2010 at 11:08am
I think I get where Ruth may be coming from. Sometimes gender expectations (be a wifey and mommy or else) are such a straight-jacket, anything is better than that airless feeling that of claustrophobia (which she does mention) grates and frightens even if you mostly love your gender roles. Sometimes we're too angry to live too. I took this piece as a form of rebellion.
- WandreyCer
February 24, 2010 at 11:12am
oops, my apologies - that second sentence should read as follows: Sometimes gender expectations (be a wifey and mommy or else) are such a straight-jacket, anything is better than that airless feeling of claustrophobia (which she does mention) that grates and frightens even if you mostly love your gender roles.
- WandreyCer
February 24, 2010 at 11:14am
iowa, great posting. emccded, I agree that men are not objects, men are pigs (I am a man). The moment women accept this as an essential part of our nature, they can adjust their sights accordingly. long term I don't know about, but my wife and I have 3 young sons aged 7 and below, between work and child care, etc. we don't see much of each other, but Franklin seems to miss the whole point of that when she wrote: But I would venture that rarely seeing your husband isn’t what most women envision when they think about marriage. Envision, from the perspective of a starry eyed teen or young woman? When people envision marriage and family, they generally don't envision the times when all 3 children have GI infections and are vomiting and pooping all over the place (with one being such a drama queen they just can't make it to the bucket so they vomit all over the coach or bed or what have you) while one or both parents are suffering from the same bug. And this is typical life, there is almost always something going bad somewhere not even kid or wife or even career related (I spent all of yesterday's free time removing an evil malware called Paladin anti-virus from my kids computer, which I have no idea how it got there). If I weren't married, I would have none of these problems. But our marriage is as strong as it ever was. This is what marriage and family is, a daily beating by what life throws at you, but the times when you are not getting the hell kicked out of you, it is so much sweeter then if you never got in the ring at all.
- blackton
February 24, 2010 at 11:39am
Yes, Gottlieb seems to be operating under considerable conceputal inanity. Perhaps to begin to understand how not just inadequate but downright devasating a marriage to Mr. or Ms. "Good Enough" can be, she should rent "Revolutionary Road" (she couldn't have already seen that powerful and disturbing film -- or know the novel -- and still have written her book). I am thinking in particular of the scene in which Kate Winslet's April, trying to express to her husband Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) just how devoid she is of any feeling at all for him, says something to the effect of, "You're just a boy who made me laugh at a party a long time ago." Here, Mr. Good Enough -- Frank provides for his wife and family, is willing to be polite, civil and even jovial, and, at least as played by DiCaprio, is easy enough on the eyes -- is, to April, not just disappointing and demoralizing, but absolutely lethal and cancerous, and precisely because he is so relentlessly willing to be "just good enough." Any college Shakespeare student can appreciate that Romeo and Juliet have to die because the pain caused by the barriers to their passion pales in comparison to the prospect of seeing them grow old together as a married couple (like their parents). This is precisely the challenge of modern marriage: somehow maintaining the passion that ignited the relationship in the first place, and with the person you're married to (sorry, Tiger Woods, but nice try). See, e.g., Stanley Cavell, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Good God! Didn't Gottlieb see, or read, or live, or think about anything before writing her book, not even the saga of Tiger Woods?
- jdbgjd
February 24, 2010 at 2:16pm
"But it’s not “settling” to marry a guy who is intelligent, funny, appreciative, and so on, if you connect with him intellectually and emotionally—as many of these women, even Gottlieb herself, say they did with their boyfriends" I agree 100%. Therefore, I believe Gottlieb is either a fraud, totally clueless about relationships, divorced from the real world or age 13. Yes, a lot of women from the feminist and post-feminist era became so dismissive of men in general that they latched on to some impossible ideal who could never be real. Getting over this is not an issue of 'settling' as much as an issue of being honest with and knowing yourself. By calling maturity in how you judge people 'settling', Gottlieb upholds a view of herself as near-perfect. No woner she regrets things.
- CAMtwo
February 24, 2010 at 8:11pm
I saw the NYT Book Review of Gottlieb's book a couple of weeks ago and thought about it for a while. I have noticed over the last few years at my Children's Schools that the Teachers have all dumped their husbands around age 45. Divorced women heading into their golden years. Why? Because they can. it's interesting that 45 years after Title VII of the Civil Rights Legislation women are earning enough to maintain their own independent households. Prior to 1970 an unmarried women would lead a very sparse life. I read story here as an economic success story that women can decide if they want a man in their life or not. But I think that emotionally and culturally women are missing the men in their lives. They really need someone to yell at, hug and kiss and ignore. Someone who needs them.
- CRS9TNR
February 24, 2010 at 8:40pm
Jane Austen dealt with these themes. And in the cloistered social and class contexts out of which she wrote of marriage as: economic bargain, expansion of family empire, social placement and attaining sinecure, she could still portray an ideal of marriage grounded on love as the coming togther of mature, well matched and complemetary sensibilities. Flaubert's vision is so mordant that he makes Austen’s idea of marriage based on love, or any idea of marriage based on love, an impossibility. In him there seems only sentimental vacuity, base exploitation of it, or the sheer hum drum of matches based on calculated need, where personal compromise, sacrifice and self suppression in exchange for financial security and stability are marriage's grounds. From an oppressive and and almost totalitarian provincial conventionality and the sentimental, unrealizable, romantic dream of its escape, comes the inevitable tragedy that befalls Emma Bovary and her husband too in his unreal and perverse idealization of her. What I find missing in the discussion here is, what I would argue, love, as complementary difference, as a necessary condition of, as someone put it, being married well. Marriage So different, this man And this woman: A stream flowing In a field. -- William Carlos Williams
- basman
February 25, 2010 at 12:58am