Read Online Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Elizabeth Gilbert
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eve of my second marriage, that I, too, ask for an awful lot. Of course I do. It's the emblem of our times. I have been allowed to expect great things in life. I have been permitted to expect far more out of the experience of love and living than most other women in history were ever permitted to ask. When it comes to questions of intimacy, I want many things from my man, and I want them all simultaneously. It reminds me of a story my sister once told me, about an Englishwoman who visited the United States in the winter of 1919 and who, scandalized, reported back home in a letter that there were people in this curious country of America who actually lived with the expectation that every part of their bodies should be warm at the same time! My afternoon spent discussing marriage with the Hmong made me wonder if I, in matters of the heart, had also become such a person--a woman who believed that my lover should magically be able to keep every part of my emotional being warm at the same time.
We Americans often say that marriage is "hard work." I'm not sure the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work--I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements--but how does marriage become hard work? Here's how: Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband--more than anything else--is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency," or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be inspired by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey!
But this is exactly what I myself have expected in the past from love (inspiration, soaring bliss) and this is what I was now preparing to expect all over again with Felipe--that we should somehow be answerable for every aspect of each other's joy and happiness. That our very job description as spouses was to be each other's everything.
So I had always assumed, anyhow.
And so I might have gone on blithely assuming, except that my encounter with the Hmong had knocked me off course in one critical regard: For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that perhaps I was asking too much of love. Or, at least, perhaps I was asking too much of marriage. Perhaps I was loading a far heavier cargo of expectation onto the creaky old boat of matrimony than that strange vessel had ever been built to accommodate in the first place.
CHAPTER THREE
Marriage and History
THE FIRST BOND OF SOCIETY IS MARRIAGE.
--Cicero
What is marriage supposed to be, then, if not a delivery device of ultimate bliss?
This question was infinitely difficult for me to answer, because marriage--as a historical entity anyhow--has a tendency to resist our efforts to define it in any simple terms. Marriage, it seems, does not like to sit still long enough for anyone to capture its portrait very clearly. Marriage shifts. It changes over the centuries the way that Irish weather changes: constantly, surprisingly, swiftly. It's not even a safe bet to define marriage in the most reductively simple terms as a sacred union between one man and one woman. First of all, marriage has not always been considered "sacred," not even within the Christian tradition. And for most of human history, to be honest, marriage has usually been seen as a union between one man and several women.
Sometimes, though, marriage has been seen as a union between one woman and several men (as in southern India, where one bride might be shared by several brothers). Marriage has also, at times, been recognized as a union between two men (as in ancient Rome, where
We Americans often say that marriage is "hard work." I'm not sure the Hmong would understand this notion. Life is hard work, of course, and work is very hard work--I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements--but how does marriage become hard work? Here's how: Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. A recent survey of young American women found that what women are seeking these days in a husband--more than anything else--is a man who will "inspire" them, which is, by any measure, a tall order. As a point of comparison, young women of the same age, surveyed back in the 1920s, were more likely to choose a partner based on qualities such as "decency," or "honesty," or his ability to provide for a family. But that's not enough anymore. Now we want to be inspired by our spouses! Daily! Step to it, honey!
But this is exactly what I myself have expected in the past from love (inspiration, soaring bliss) and this is what I was now preparing to expect all over again with Felipe--that we should somehow be answerable for every aspect of each other's joy and happiness. That our very job description as spouses was to be each other's everything.
So I had always assumed, anyhow.
And so I might have gone on blithely assuming, except that my encounter with the Hmong had knocked me off course in one critical regard: For the first time in my life, it occurred to me that perhaps I was asking too much of love. Or, at least, perhaps I was asking too much of marriage. Perhaps I was loading a far heavier cargo of expectation onto the creaky old boat of matrimony than that strange vessel had ever been built to accommodate in the first place.
CHAPTER THREE
Marriage and History
THE FIRST BOND OF SOCIETY IS MARRIAGE.
--Cicero
What is marriage supposed to be, then, if not a delivery device of ultimate bliss?
This question was infinitely difficult for me to answer, because marriage--as a historical entity anyhow--has a tendency to resist our efforts to define it in any simple terms. Marriage, it seems, does not like to sit still long enough for anyone to capture its portrait very clearly. Marriage shifts. It changes over the centuries the way that Irish weather changes: constantly, surprisingly, swiftly. It's not even a safe bet to define marriage in the most reductively simple terms as a sacred union between one man and one woman. First of all, marriage has not always been considered "sacred," not even within the Christian tradition. And for most of human history, to be honest, marriage has usually been seen as a union between one man and several women.
Sometimes, though, marriage has been seen as a union between one woman and several men (as in southern India, where one bride might be shared by several brothers). Marriage has also, at times, been recognized as a union between two men (as in ancient Rome, where
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