I read an article this morning that was originally published in the Atlantic. Sandra Tsing Loh is leaving her marriage of 20 years. She writes about marriage as an institution and cultural practice, and why and how people get and stay married now, when our life span is 77 instead of 47.
I think I can imagine what married for twenty years would feel like, at least I know what it would need to feel like in order for it to exist in my life, but I can see from the statistics that perhaps I’m not likely to know. What I mean is, all those people get married thinking that its going to work out for them, specifically in spite of the odds. I suggest that many of the marriages that fail do so because one of the people broke the basic agreement, not because the people had time to fall out of love per se. From onlinelawyersource, the following are the subcategories of “irreconcilable differences”, which you probably know is the most cited reason for divorce in the US “adultery, cruelty, abandonment, incurable insanity, felony conviction or incarceration, addiction to drugs or alcohol, and a consistent period of separation between a husband and wife.”
In some of these cases it should be fairly obvious that one party, or both, simply chose the wrong person to marry. My friend calls this “having a bad picker.” In others, an otherwise maybe-right person broke the agreement. Oops, I got arrested for embezzlement. Oops, I dropped my penis in the girl who works at the sprint store (for the record, the author of this article actually dropped her vagina on someone, but she didn’t say who. From the sound of her article, women are incresingly voicing that they are not satisfied sexually in their twenty year relationships and with increasing frequency are doing something about it).
I’ve always said that getting married is like taking someone’s hand at the edge of a sheer cliff, clutching the magic feather, glanicing at each other one last time and stepping off. If the other person doesn’t jump, or they stop believing, the bottom drops out.
Not that I would know.
One interesting, but not surprising bit, is that Americans are more religious than European countries, like France and Sweden, and we both marry and divorce more.
Thankfully, I’ve been spared the religious bit. One less thing to unlearn.
The estimate she gave is that 90% of Americans marry…but surely she must mean of those who can marry? It bugs me a lot when people use bent-up statistics or don’t provide a context. They leave out the qualifiers that make the statistic less impressive.
“[Helen] Fisher, a women’s cult figure and an anthropologist, has long argued that falling in love — and falling out of love — is part of our evolutionary biology and that humans are programmed not for lifelong monogamy, but for serial monogamy. (In stretches of four years, to be exact, approximately the time it takes to get one kid safely through infancy.)
I’ve noticed a particular pattern to the duration of my own successive relationships, and I think other people do, too. One guy I met said with him it was either six months or two years. I guess it took him that long to figure out if he liked somebody or at least try to clean them up, then to figure out a place and time to break up with her–can’t do it right before or after her birthday, and so on. If he went past the six months, he could handle two years. If you can do two years, but not four, what are the relvent correlations of developmental psychology.
What happens then? I’ll get to that in a minute. My question for now though, is: Who is it that’s making it to four years and can I pick their brain for a minute? I do know some people who have been together a long time, but not very many who are like me. I think a lot. I want a smart guy who asks a lot of questions about the meaning of it all, and who gathers information and thinks a lot too. People like that don’t seem to find marriage easy. I do not want to be with a guy who watches nascar/football/bass fishing and grills and waxes the boat. Wait–bass fishing might not be that bad, and I like grilling and boats, but not particularly bass boats. Sometimes I even watch a football game, so why is it so hard to meet someone and find a groove in which you both can peacefully thrive?
I don’t know about you, but I grudgingly admit that I start alternately screeching and sulking about weddings around the two year mark, hence, I guess,
I make a terrible hunter. I can’t sneak for shit. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve successfully scared the crap out of someone. I can’t tell a crazy lie to watch someone be astonished and keep a straight face, ie, telling someone that a tree has fallen on their car or acting like you haven’t heard that Michael Jackson is dead. I also have terrible aim. No one who knows me well ducks when they see me rearing back to throw something at them. Thus, I guess my man-trapping maneuvers are all fucked up.
Either that, or there is something else to it. Maybe the kind of person I am picks the kind of guy who doesn’t do that. Read on, dear reader. The following lengthy excerpt is another lens through which to view human interaction. It has been said a hundred different ways, as measured by different elements of the the human psychology.
““Why Him? Why Her?” explains the hormonal forces that trigger humans to be romantically attracted to some people and not to others (a phenomenon also documented in the animal world). Fisher posits that each of us gets dosed in the womb with different levels of hormones that impel us toward one of four basic personality types:
The Explorer — the libidinous, creative adventurer who acts “on the spur of the moment.” Operative neurochemical: dopamine.
The Builder — the much calmer person who has “traditional values.” The Builder also “would rather have loyal friends than interesting friends,” enjoys routines, and places a high priority on taking care of his or her possessions. Operative neurotransmitter: serotonin.
The Director — the “analytical and logical” thinker who enjoys a good argument. The Director wants to discover all the features of his or her new camera or computer. Operative hormone: testosterone.
The Negotiator — the touchy-feely communicator who imagines “both wonderful and horrible things happening” to him- or herself. Operative hormone: estrogen, then oxytocin.
Fisher reviewed personality data from 39,913 members of Chemistry.com. Explorers made up 26 percent of the sample, Builders 28.6 percent, Directors 16.3 percent, Negotiators 29.1 percent. While Explorers tend to be attracted to Explorers, and Builders tend to be attracted to Builders, Directors are attracted to Negotiators, and vice versa.”
“Fisher suspects “most of the world’s 50-year marriages are made by Builders who marry other Builders.” I’d describe myself as a negotiator with a strong current of explorer running through, and I am attracted to directors and explorers, if we’re going to frame it that way. Not a shred of builder in the bunch.
A Rutgers study found that only 38% of married Americans describe themselves as happy.
The first round of marrying for most people begins after college, in the early career portion of people’s lives. People who are trying to be married at 32 began those relationships at 25, 27, 29. They kids are little. The real problems haven’t surfaced yet. Many of them will be single again when they’re in their early forties. They won’t be better at marriage the second time around. Is this what I am waiting for? Of course not! But is this what there actually is? Does what I think I want exist, that is, a deep, interesting, passionate, meaningful relationship with a man I trust, respect, and adore and who trusts, respects, and adores me and keeps going on and on like that until one of us dies? And if it does, is it too much to ask or expect, considering all the mistakes I’ve already made? Isn’t there someone further up in the line who’s a little better cut out for this than me?
Are we the person we are, or the one we want to be? It would seem that we are certainly not always the person we want to be, and we seem to keep being the person that we are, over and over again. Maybe I should spend my time on other things, rather than whiling away the hours daydreaming an antiquated fantasy that is not suited to my genetic reality or disposition and predilections. Might get more accomplished. I could start building wells or something. Ecovoluntourism, graduate school, and alchemy may be more worthwhile pursuits.
I get all that, but doesn’t a wedding sound like fun? And no one likes dating. No one.
