Further thoughts on marriageI finished Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking last night, which Jules lent to me.
It is a treasure trove of human emotions. I could relate to many -- for example, Joan's sensation in the early years of marriage of "having trouble thinking of [herself] as a wife."
I had no idea how to be a wife.
In those first years I would pin daisies in my hair, trying for a "bride" effect.
Later I had matching gingham skirts made for me and Quintana, trying for "young mother."
My memory of those years is that both John and I were improvising, flying blind.
I guess most couples feel this way about being married. Nowadays, many of us think of marriage as the next step to being in love with someone. But I don't think love is terribly important. I think arranged marriages, for example, work because the partners focus on improvising, not "loving", necessarily.
3 comments:
there are many reasons i suppose. me the ever blinkered (but very cynical, ahem) romantic still wants love. but these days even that is not enough.
wargh. what a thought on an early saturday morning.
Oh my god, you're up at 8:30 on a Saturday? :)
By the way, I'm not against blinkered romantics. I think they (we?) are rather sweet. Actually, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say regarding love and marriage. I guess what I'm trying to say is that making a marriage work and making love work are two mutually exclusive things. But we (society) tend to think of them as exchangeable.
I think in reality it's something more like this: if you marry in order to "make love work" chances are you might fail. But if you love in order to "make marriage work" you surely will succeed.
Am I making any sense? Because it's Saturday here too.
eeyeh dizery i wouldnt know. at the mo i am up to my eyeballs explaining to a man why i don't want a relationship; i just want a friendship. put aside the lack of attraction on MY part, at this mo, i just can only cope with platonic friendships. so to figure out what makes a marriage a marriage...
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