in which our heroine takes a brief break form her homework to rant about marriage

[fairy_wench]

Not that your spunky and charming heroine is married, but the subject of marriage is one she's put a great deal of thought into for various reasons over the years.

Comments

[soul_journey]

So yeah. I hated this article. It made me grind my teeth. I want to be a mother one day, sure. When I'm ready, and with those that i want to be my children's father(s

[maxxtx]

*thwacks you on the butt*

HAHA! Too late!

[goblinqueenie]

I have no words for that article. I'm trying (you seem to have summed up anything I could have said better and without all the expletives that are currently running through my head) and I'm failing.

I've complained long and often about being the crazy cat lady alone with the her knitting and keeping the TV on for noise, but I was the lonely crazy cat lady partly by choice. Because I refused to date douchenozzles, people stupider than me or anyone who needed serious fixing up. And I really don't see how that's a bad thing.

There's putting up with quirks and minor annoyances but really isn't that as far as settling should go? I've settled because I have to put up with the main decorating theme being a genre of art I like to call 'pictures of airplanes', and I sometimes have to go to the opera alone, not because I've found someone with which to run a household like a business and have cold rational sex once a month because it's what people do.

And I don't even want to get married. There are much more interesting diversions,

[dabblersupreme]

i have some pretty serious issues with marriage, too. my parents split after 20-something happy years (plus a few bad ones at the end). so it's largely because dan and i have withstood the test of time ALREADY that getting married seemed worth the hassle of planning this big-ass event that had to coordinate a million stupid details.

while i do agree with some points the author makes (against being picky about relatively petty things in a mate) and i think that the whole fairytale idea of romance is the downfall of many people, the main idea behind the article is indeed disturbing.

[fairy_wench]

Oh, don't even get me started on the screwed up view of romance that I think most women labour under, that's a much longer rant for another day. But there's a difference between holding out for some movie star to walk off the screen and sweep you off your feet into a life of glamour and romance and saying that you have to love someone and not be settling to marry them. And I think most women fall too far on one end or the other.

I do think that you were smart to make sure you and Dan could live happily together for as long as you did before marrying. If I had room to list out every couple that I thought was smart and reasonable about marriage and committment, you two would definitely be on the list!

[dabblersupreme]

no worries, i wasn't looking for recognition. i was just pointing out that some people are like me: jaded about marriage but will still undertake it.

[chicklitter]

That might be one of the most disturbing things I've read in a long time. Seriously. It's basically like the author's saying you should legally bind yourself to a roommate, and that's it. Where's the love? Where's the passion? Call me crazy, but when I do decide to get married and have children, providing I don't adopt I want the making of those children to be fun and enjoyable, not some "duty" I'm performing to fulfill some latent maternal instinct.

I agree that you should accept a person's flaws, and not let the little things get to you--like you said, marriage is a compromise. But settling for someone you have virtually nothing in common with? I don't think so. That's just ridiculous.

*applause* You wrote a way better diatribe than I could have

[schizospider]

but I can't be the only 20-something woman in America that places other priorities above marriage and children

Hey, there's at least two of us.

I couldn't read even to the end of the picnic anecdote. She's damn right that there's been a backlash against first-wave feminism, but now the pendulum's swinging to the other extreme. A lot of women are getting back to that 1950s husband-and-two-point-five-kids thing being the one and only thing to strive for, and some of them can get pretty uppity if you try to suggest that you could live otherwise.

Not that I read the whole article, but based on your excerpts, the whole thing sounds far more Machiavellian than Stepford. To me, it sounds more like she's supporting women deceiving people into a loveless marriage just so they can attain this strange ideal (apparently, Mr. Right is a fantasy, but being seen as a perfect family isn't?).

Actually, I think your diatribe would have been just as good, and probably funnier

[fairy_wench]

the whole thing sounds far more Machiavellian than Stepford

I think you're absolutely right, and it's extremely upsetting. No wonder women are seen as conniving marriage-obssessed harpies, with articles like this basically telling us that if we aren't we're unsuccessful.

I think it's interesting that the fantasy ideal of the perfect family is set up in such direct opposition to the fantasy ideal of the perfect mate. Shouldn't one sort of follow naturally from the other, and the other support and nurture the one? Am I just crazy to think that, if it's what you want, you can have a man who loves you and a baby? Or will the world simply implode into an event horizon of WTF?! if women insist on certain happinesses?