"Avoid Marriage," Advises Atlantic Writer
The Atlantic magazine has peddled its share of misguided matrimania and scolding of singles - both mothers and others - but not this month. Just look at this tease for a story by Sandra Tsing Loh: "The author is ending her marriage. Isn't it time you did the same?"
Skipping straight to the conclusion, here is Loh's final piece of advice:
"avoid marriage - or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something so demonstrably fleeting as love."
Let us all pause for a moment of silence, the better to hear the sounds of the tectonic plates of contemporary American culture shifting beneath our feet.
True, the tease may have been a bit tongue-in-cheek, and Loh may at times be having a wisp of fun with her readers, but there is a serious message in the pages of this essay, and it is not the party line. Loh is floating the idea that maybe we should all just get over our love affair with marriage.
Loh embraces the traditionalists' view that divorce hurts, then turns it upside down. The moral of the story, she suggests, is not the old, boring, bedraggled one: Get married and stay that way -- no divorcing! Instead, she says, just skip the marriage.
So what do the data say? Is she right that people who stay single are better off than those who marry and then divorce? That's a point I addressed in a previous Psychology Today post, "Is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?" and of course in Singled Out.
I don't equate being married with being loved; my view of love is far broader and less hackneyed. So the question I actually do address is this: Who is happier, physically healthier, psychologically stronger, less lonely, more likely to live longer, and more engaged with neighbors, friends, and family - people who got married and then got unmarried, or people who stayed single? The answer, in just about every study I've ever reviewed, is people who have stayed single. Those who have studied individual lives over time (examples are here and here) have often found that crossing the threshold from singlehood into marriage is of little lasting consequence for health or well-being; it is the transition out of marriage that can be problematic, at least at first.
I'm not saying, though, that you should not get married if that's what you want to do. You may have your reasons. Those reasons, though, should not include the misperception that if only you marry, you will live happily ever after.
Unless you've managed to tune out the cultural altercations over marriage, you know the objection that will be raised next: But what about the children? Impressively, Loh resists the conventional wisdom even on that score, noting that "a single-parent household is almost as good" as having two biological parents. (And because she got so much right, I'll ignore the snippet of singlism in her article that made me cringe.)
The data on single-parent households are on Loh's side. As I've noted here and in Singled Out, there are even ways in which children from single-parent households do better than children of married parents. I'm not arguing that you should create a single-parent household for the good of your children, but let's also not pretend that the children of single parents are doomed.
It is possible, you know, to value two-parent families without denigrating other family forms. It is even possible to acknowledge the potential positive power of the experience of growing up in a single-parent home, without denying the good that can come with having two (or even more) adults at home. And maybe, at last, there is some cultural space for such claims.
Consider, for instance, what Melissa Harris-Lacewell (whom you may have seen on the Rachel Maddow Show) has said about Barack Obama in her thoughtful essay in the Nation:
Had his father been present he might have had less adolescent angst, but then again that angst was part of what sent him into a world of books from which he emerged a formidable intellectual. Part of Barack Obama's greatness is his fatherlessness.
Her conclusion: "We can assert the value of fathers and still create government and community structures that more fully support families of all kinds."
My conclusion? Hurry up, please. It's time.
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Thank you for this blog Bella. Marriage can be used as a path towards more personal wholeness. As a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher for over 20 years, I’ve seen again and again that marriages or close intimate relationships are opportunities for personal development that build towards incredible intimacy. We choose partners who are the best and worst of our mother and father. When I say this in session, often people will balk at that statement. But after a few minutes pursuit I have never seen it not to be true. Therefore, we can take the challenge on and build towards a rich full life. I invite the readers to look at their past relationships and find the connections to the places inside that need to be processed and healed.
Here’s to a fulfilled life,
Dr. Jennifer Howard
http://www
I think you need to consider the source. I live in the LA media market and I hear Sandra Tsing Loh's commentary all the time. At first I enjoyed it. Then I started noticing that she seemed really self-involved. Then she went through a long period where she was trying to find a good school for her kids (important and frustrating, I know) and became an advocate for public schools--but only PARENTS of school children.
She lost me entirely when she excoriated her friends for being concerned about Sarah Palin shooting animals (or as she put it in her Valleyspeak, "the PO-lar bearrrrrs") *in addition to* public education. How dare they be concerned about animals who lived so far away instead of a "real" issue? (She also uses the word "hysterical" about eight times.)
http://www
So now her marriage has broken up, partly because she had an affair, which she admits. And that means *no one else should ever get married.*
I'm divorced and I've been reasonably happy being single for many years. I know the studies, and there is some truth to them. But I sure wouldn't take relationship advice from Sandra Tsing Loh.
Is this against "marriage" or against "long-term relationships"?
Honestly, I have seen plenty of friends and family who have divorced. I've also seen plenty of breakups of long-term relationships. They aren't really that much different. Assets have been commingled, custody arrangements need to be worked out for children, fights will ensue over who gets the condo or the car or the antique chest.
A marriage license is just a contract. "Marriage" is simply a long-term relationship with certain benefits from the state. Any argument against "marriage" also is an argument against having any long term relationships.
And perhaps that really is what the article intended - maybe it meant to argue that people should not have long term relationsh
To each his or her own. If you don't want to marry, then don't.
The concept of marraiage, as a whole, should never be considered a "one size fits all" institution. Some people should probably avoid marriage like the plague.The
"Some people should probably avoid marriage like the plague.The
"a marriage, even a childless marriage, is no easy job and those who aren't willing to bend and make personal sacrifice in this endevour, will inevitably break under it's weight in the long haul"
Interesting.
You say marriage shouldn't be "one size fits all", yet the only people you mention as not being appropriate for marriage are self-centered people. Do you think all unmarried people are that way because they are self-centered?
Seems to me like you're saying that not everyone need be married...
You also state that marriage requires someone who is willing to make a "personal sacrifice". Do you suppose that only successfully married people are willing to make sacrifices?
Good point. Although the people described by this poster certainly SHOULD avoid marriage, it's certainly not true that it is ONLY selfish people who are unsuited for marriage.
I agree that marriage and kids isn't for everyone. I really disagree that two parent households aren't better. I think when kids are involved, stability is the key. No, it's not going to necessarily ruin your life if your parents split up, but it's certainly not GOOD for the kid either. My parents stayed together but i had plenty of friends whose parents divorced when they were kids, and I remember how traumatic it was for them.
But neither marriage nor children are for everyone. I am happily married but don't really forsee myself having children. We plan to do foster care and maybe would adopt an older child through that route, but I'm not a big fan of kids. I don't see myself wanting to raise them from cradle to college.
And not wanting to sign up for a lifetime commitment is not the same as being selfish. For instance one of my intentionally single friends does more volunteer work than anyone else I know and is probably the nicest and least self involved people i've ever met.
As Mark Twain
Blogger: Skipping straight to the conclusion, here is Loh's final piece of advice: "avoid marriage - or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something so demonstrably fleeting as love."
===
Both Loh, and the blogger, have an axe to grind.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, per se - but let's not confuse biased opinions on any subject (including marriage) with fact.
For an interesting spin in the opposite direction, here's an article from today's NY Times:
http://www
What I find laughable as well as presumptuous is why anyone would put forth ANY agenda/advice for others to follow. Haven't we come to the point where we can trust people to make their own unique decisions, and live with the consequences?
I guess not all of us have - just like we haven't yet come to the point where we give homsexuals the same rights to marry as we give heterosexuals.
I know that there are happily married people having great sex-lives, enjoying their careers, and raising kids without any expectations of them fulfilling any unmet needs from the parents' childhoods. I know that there are fully self-actualized, married parents out there. I do.
I just haven't met any yet.
PETER LOFFREDO, LCSW
http://ful
They must be hanging out with all the fully self-actualized, single people out there.
I haven't met them, either.
Marriage is an institution. It was created and instituted as a societal entity to serve a purpose for the societal entity that created it. In fact, early on, love didn't even have anything to do with marriage.
Speaking from many years and thousands of therapy sessions with individuals, couples, families and children, a vast majority of people who get married do so because they are insecure about getting older and "being alone" or insecure about their financial well-being or insecure about how they'll be seen by others if they don't "succeed" at landing a spouse and having kids.
I have said often that the least qualified people to raise kids are their parents. We try and live through our kids. We hope that they will boost our sagging self-esteem by loving us unconditionally, and raise our outer esteem in the eyes of others by how well they play soccer or guitar. We imagine that by having kids, we'll never be alone.
But perhaps even worse than the above damage from dependency is that caused by the vice-grip of a bind that parents put children into by making them live in a 2-parent home where the passion has flattened out or died. This led Alexander Lowen to once say that "99% of all children are abused."
No wonder that so many great people came from single-parent homes. They only had half the burden and abuse to deal with.
Peter Loffredo
http://ful
Well, I spent my twenties wanting to be married, and not getting there, and I missed so much. I didn't put as much zeal into my own development and education as I should have. Then I did get married at 32, and I hated it! Hated the same thing every day, the boredom, and I accidentally married a controlling paranoid man, and it was a disaster. I've never looked back at marriage as an institution with anything but gladness that I'm out of it. My daughter has grown up just fine thank you as well.
See Pavel Somov, Ph.D.'s Profile
Readers interested in the marriage trend would likely find IRA & ABY movie of interest.
I do not think that the pertinent questions should focus on whether the married or those who are divorced, never married, widowed, or whatever have happier, longer, healthier lives.
Rather, shouldn't the question be, who has happier longer healthier lives - those who are open to love, who have been fortunate to enjoy loving relationships, who accept themselves and those around them and are treated the same way? Or those who have been betrayed, abandoned, mistreated, or abused far more than they've been loved, liked and/or cared for?
To frame this issue as being between the married and the unmarried is missing the point. Clearly, marriage works for many people, and not being married works for many, and being in a committed relationship, being single, being widowed and never remarrying because you still feel married, and so on and so on. The question isn't, does being married make people happy? The question is, what are the common factors across all kinds of life situations that indicate happiness for people?
I once knew an older couple who married for 10 year stretches. They were in their third decade of this when I met them. Every ten years, they would sort of officially evaluate their relationship, who they were, how they were together, what they wanted, etc. And then they would get remarried - for another ten years. It actually seemed to work very well for them- their emotionally commitment to one another was never in doubt- but this arrangement seemed to keep them from taking each other for granted, or from thinking that the other person would never change or want different things. I don't know that it would work for every couple, but I always thought it was interesting that it was so successful for them.
Cynics & libertines say, "Honeymoon now; marry later-much later.". Don't crack up if you shack-up for 1 night.
Marriage can be like the little girl with the curl. When it's good, it can be very good, but when it's bad, it's horrid. These days most people are way too shallow to form lasting relationships and that is vital for a marriage. No effort friendships and no effort marriages - it's the American way.
I really hope that God has better luck with the cockroaches than He's had with us.
...So the question I actually do address is this: Who is happier, physically healthier, psychologically stronger, less lonely, more likely to live longer, and more engaged with neighbors, friends, and family - people who got married and then got unmarried, or people who stayed single? The answer, in just about every study I've ever reviewed, is people who have stayed single...
Bella,
In order for the studis to present a whole picture, at least two other factors have to be concidered. First, you'd have to include those still married or re-married with the group of married then un-married. Otherwise you're only sampling a group who did not get what they bargained for and comparing them with a group that did. Also, you need to account for personality types, specifically the social needs for commitment and monogamy. A person with those needs who have them removed from his or her life will undoubtedly be less satisfied then a person without the same needs who is living without a permanant partner.
Yes, you are right. I do that in Chapter 2 of my book, "Singled Out." For this post, I was focusing on the groups particularly relevant to the arguments. I also use the analytic strategy you suggest in other posts of mine on my Living Single blog, esp those taking on the latest "findings.
http://www
--Bella
Thank you,
I just added your blog site to my internet favorites and I look forward to reading your articles.
It seems to me that the more we do for the sake of our own immediate happiness, the less happy we are. People shouldn't be getting married because they want to be happy, or because they've just always wanted to be married. I never even considered being a married man until I met the woman that would become my wife. Now we're in a great relationship where we're committed to becoming better people for ourselves, each other and hopefully one day, our children. My grandparents were married for 52 years before my Grandfater passed away, and they were always happy and full of life. Divorce rates are so high not only because people get married for the wrong reasons or to the wrong people, but our culture is so self serving and so demanding that happiness be immediate and require no effort. Using the same logic, I'd be really happy if I just sat inside and masturbated all day. Nobody's suggesting that we do that.
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