On marriage: Let’s call the whole thing off

http://www.msnbc.msn.com ^ | June 22, 2009 | By Sandra Tsing Loh

[Maelstorm]

Sadly, and to my horror, I am divorcing. This was a 20-year partnership. My husband is a good man, though he did travel 20 weeks a year for work. I am a 47-year-old woman whose commitment to monogamy, at the very end, came unglued. This turn of events was a surprise. I don’t generally even enjoy men; I had an entirely manageable life and planned to go to my grave taking with me, as I do most nights to my bed, a glass of merlot and a good book. Cataclysmically changed, I disclosed everything. We cried, we bewailed the fate of our children.

And yet at the end of the day — literally during a five o’clock counseling appointment, as the golden late-afternoon sunlight spilled over the wall of Balinese masks — when given the final choice by our longtime family therapist, who stands in as our shaman, mother, or priest, I realized … no. Heart-shattering as this moment was — a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history — I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband, which is what it would take in modern-therapy terms to knit our family’s domestic construct back together. In women’s-magazine parlance, I did not have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in my marriage. And as Laura Kipnis railed in “Against Love,” and as everyone knows, good relationships take work.

[tiki]

I guess narcissistic takes into account the words, selfish and self-centered but I would add lazy coward to the description.

[ExpatGator]

Tsing Loh sweet chariot....

[Maelstorm]

I hate to correct you but Rachel is not the author of this piece of drivel and even if she were her conclusions would not be something to generalize. I am all for woman having careers however I don’t believe a man or woman should confuse having a career with being a replacement for having a family and unfortunately that is what many seem to see careers as. I travel a lot with my work but I do it for one reason and that is for my family. I can be competitive as anyone but I do not delude myself in thinking that at the end of the day when my light grows dim that my career will be there to comfort me where as the moments I spent with my wife, children, and my grandchildren will be. They will go on. Some of the things I have built and designed will go on but they offer cold comfort on a father’s day spent alone.

It appears to me this woman married a weak man because she was afraid of a man capable of taking care of her and she ended up with one who could not even find the time to satisfy her in bed. I think it would be best if people didn’t constrain themselves to rigid time lines and ideas about what women should do and men should do. Just find someone who you can find allegiance and be reasonable rather than demanding of each other and build something together becoming more than you were as individuals through your children and the life you share. The hostility towards marriage is irrational. If anything deserves hostility it is the modern world that makes it harder to be a family and harder for men and women to truly love each other.

[Maelstorm]

Yeah and sometime that is the way it is. Yet I’m sure there is a litany of trivial things that she would not go without. That is what gets me. It isn’t that sometimes people are best served by being divorced, it is the cavalier attitude that is being encouraged. Some women and men suffer horrible indignity at the hands of their spouses but this woman seems to have simply become bored. What kind of reason is that to get divorced? This is just another example of the soft rot of our culture and our nation. This whole article is a piece of trash especially given the generalization of her boredom into a condemnation of the institution of marriage which is generally very successful and advantageous to those who do have good marriages. Where is the hope and faith or does that only apply to phony baloney politicians and their socialist goals.

[piytar]

“In this persons world, it seems the women have become men, and the men have become women.”

That has been the goal of the feminazis for a couple generations - and the continue to do this is schools - but apparently don’t like the inevitable results...

[packrat35]

Unfortunately, she apparently doesn’t have much character.

That’s called ugly inside.

[Hulka]

Can’t overlook the very real possibility that she embellished the story (about that friend and the boorish husband). Also, consulting pays well, depending upon the job, and who’s to say that the husband doesn’t make the most money, though during a month or so, he may be in a dry spell.

Just saying I take everything in the article to be 10% fact.

[Albion Wilde]

I figure he is lucky to be shut of her. I don’t see in this clip any consideration of the children.

Yep. I hope he gets custody. But it isn't likely. Poor kids.

[Albion Wilde]

If I were her husband I would travel 52 weeks a year.

And if Obama were her husband, he would travel 57 weeks a year.

[Albion Wilde]

She speaks of a 20 ‘partnership’ with less emotion than if she’d just had to replace an old car. Obama could have written this.I didn't know he wrote his own material.

[Albion Wilde]

I did not have the strength to “work on” falling in love again in my marriage

A lie. She just didn't want to.

This children's classic was missing from her home training:

I think I can, "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can..."

[Albion Wilde]

The hostility towards marriage is irrational. If anything deserves hostility it is the modern world that makes it harder to be a family and harder for men and women to truly love each other.

Bingo!

[y6162]

“Screw loose somewhere upstairs “

I hope she dies unloved, alone. Then she will realize how much of a failure she has been.

[Albion Wilde]

Preach it, Maelstorm! You are saving me a lot of keystrokes today. I almost hyperventilated while reading this article -- OMG, where to begin, since I can't smack her around? Plus, I exhausted myself earlier in the weekend with an "emotions-trump-principles" issue on another thread.

I did my graduate thesis in mid-life, studying the Constitutional law that has contributed to the destruction of marriage as a bedrock institution of American life. It wasn't hard to see where all this was leading -- we are circling the drain. One of the things I learned is that moral education is a luxury. Once, it existed in nearly every American home on the frontier, where often the only book was the Bible. Sadly, with all of today's material abundance and entitlement, JudeoChristian moral education is increasingly scarce.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

It's easy to piss away a marriage when everything is going well.

I wonder how she'll feel when the doctor discovers that breast cancer she's got?

[Dumb_Ox]

The abolition of marriage was a frequent Communist goal or ideal. How odd it is that the major questions in the debate are whether to abolish it by ludicrous redefinition, or just abolish it outright.

[xtinct]

cheaters are selfish people... they only tell the victim to make themselves feel better

[Maelstorm]

Thanks. :-) I just can’t understand how people even secular people can’t see how wrong headed the attacks on marriage is. I don’t expect everyone to have success at it but at least one can acknowledge that having a good marriage is an essential goal in order to produce a stable society. The whole thing will fall apart if the foundation of marriage is degraded too far. It causes the social cost to go up exponentially and eventually breaks the back of the ability of the government to act as the structural substitute for marriage. We are quickly reaching “peak government” for those who like to use such catch phrases. The one thing that is a blessing is that if the left succeed in what they are going to undermine marriage and personal responsibility they also most certainly doom themselves as well. The unfortunate and inevitable cost will be the deaths of billions before their time of starvation, pestilence, and war. Consequences are like a law of nature they will catch up eventually no matter how many times you roll them forward.