Last week’s New York Times Modern Love column, by Jessica Bennett, executive editor of Tumblr, hit me right in the gut. The story was this: she and her boyfriend got engaged before she was quite ready, she called off the engagement almost immediately, though they stayed together. As the years went by she became an advocate for not getting hitched in the first place (she authored Newsweek’s 2010 cover story “The Case Against Marriage.”) And then her relationship broke up, and she reconsidered.
While I fully suggest reading the whole, and lovely, piece, here are some outtakes, which I think many of us will nod our heads over:
The story:
And yet the moment I saw that ring, I was terrified. I saw dirty dishes and suburbia, not lace-covered wedding gowns. Rather than thinking about the family we’d someday have, I saw the career I had hardly started as suddenly out of reach. The independence I had barely gained felt stifled. I couldn’t breathe.
I begged him to forgive me. I cried and pleaded. I promised I’d never leave him, and I meant it.
He was devastated, but he loved me too much to let go. So we came back to New York, to our tiny apartment, and tried to move on. We held each other — that night, and every night after. I cried and stroked his hair. I said I was sorry. I told him I loved him. We slowly moved forward.
There were plenty of times over the next six years that I wished I had said yes. We could have had a long engagement, I told myself. In a few years, I would have been ready.
But as time went on, as our couple friends broke up, as those who were the first to marry became the first to get divorced, I was glad we hadn’t done it.
We were happy living as partners, without the pressure of “till death do us part.” We were free of all the expectations of matrimonial bliss that make so many couples fall apart.
Her original conclusion:
A few data searches, some interviews and a pitch to an editor later, we were issuing a manifesto of our own. “I Don’t,” we would proclaim a few months later in a 2010 cover line in Newsweek: “The Case Against Marriage.”
Our argument took romance out of the equation. As we explained it, Americans were already waiting longer to marry, and fewer than ever believed in the “sanctity” of marriage. As urban working women in our 20s, we no longer needed marriage to survive — at least not financially. We weren’t religious, so we didn’t believe that unmarried cohabitation or even child-rearing was an issue.
But we were also cynical. As children of the divorce generation, we had watched cheating scandals proliferate in the news. We had given up on fairy tales, and we didn’t know how anybody could see the institution of marriage as anything but a farce. It was “broken,” one sociologist told me. So, what was the point?
The Finale:
When we got back to New York, he packed up his stuff, quit his job, paid a final month’s rent and moved back to his hometown, 2,000 miles away.
In the end, we had no shared bank account or property. We didn’t have to go through a trial separation or mandatory counseling. We had spent seven years living in a 600-square-foot New York City apartment, inseparable and intertwined. Yet in the end, the relationship ended in one night. No discussion required.
As I tried to make sense of it all, I had a glimpse into why that sheet of paper had been so important to him. Sure, it may well be a jaded tradition, an antiquated ritual. But it’s also a contract.
When he was packing his stuff, I remembered a conversation my Newsweek co-author had had with her mother about our article. “I’ll tell you why you need marriage,” she told her. “Because it makes it harder for the other person to leave.”
At the time, we snickered at her words. Legally requiring someone to stick around? It was desperate, pathetic.
But would it have worked? I’ll never know. What I have learned is this: While “happily ever after” may indeed be a farce, there’s something to be said for uttering “I do.”
Reading this article brought up complicated feelings for me. First, as Jessica Bennett nails in her eloquent change of heart, we don’t all need to be married. Marriage is far from a perfect institution, and it’s not right for every couple. The pressure for every couple to get married, and for marriage to validate all our relationships is, of course, absurd. Relationships are made valid by love and commitment, not by a ceremony, or a piece of paper that not everyone is legally allowed to get.
But it also brought me around to the question of our age group’s relationship with marriage. Continue reading BackTalk: Why Do We Marry?
