The Martyr's Lament

This month's issue of The Atlantic has a "thought-provoking" (stab-yourself-in-the-eye-with-a-pencil-due-to-the-sheer-idiocy-of-the-argument kind of thought-provoking) article on the "outdated institution of marriage." (Side note: why must it always be referred to as an "institution?" - no wonder people are all for its demise. "Institution" sounds like somewhere youd send someone to be strapped to a bed and attended to by men in white lab coats, not something I'd actually wish to participate in.)

It starts by the author confessing to an extramarital affair. It then proceeds to detail her thoughts on how marriage is something best left to the 19th century agrarians where "it was considered to be a kind of trade union for a woman, her protection against the sexually wandering male."

People are entitled to their own opinions, though my brain is still sore from the verbal whiplash I endured as I bounced back and forth between her self-centered diatribe against stability, men in general and that venerable "institution": marriage.

The author, in the end, decides to get divorced, primarily because marriage takes (gasp) work - and while the author spends paragraphs assuring us she knows how to work (and is not afraid of it), alas, "Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance."

Wait a second. So the thing that should be most important above all in your life is being flung by the wayside like a used tissue because you are too tired after being a working mother to rekindle the romantic spark? Clearly she had some time to kindle some kind of romantic spark, given that she's just confessed (to the world, her therapist and her ex-husband) to having a brief extramarital affair.

She then laments: "My domestic evenings have typically revolved around five o’clock mac and cheese under bright lighting and then a slow melt into dishes and SpongeBob … because yet another of my marital failings was that I was never able to commit to a nanny"

I'm confused. So her life would have been better if she had a nanny? (No offense to nannys or those who hire them - I, after all, do my part to keep a sitter employed) But you can't conjure up a better evening than mac-n-cheese and SpongeBob? She goes on to complain about pondering these things in the middle of the night while dodging the elbows of her grade-school-aged girls.

Wait a minute.
She appears to be trying so hard to paint a picture of herself as a martyr that she is inadvertantly painting herself as rather inept at life in general (or so it seems). Not that there is anything wrong with mac-n-cheese (my own kid loves it) or SpongeBob (at least according to Himself) or snuggling with the kiddos, but I see a self-centered woman who overindulges her children because she's too tired (or something) to parent and tosses away her 20-year-marriage over a fling because it's more work than she can cram into her "woe-is-me" working mother schedule.

Here I feel, in some ways, qualified to comment. I'm a working mother. I work 40ish hours a week, in an office. It's hard. It's tiring. It's something I'd rather not do for the rest of my life. But that does NOT absolve me of my responsibilities as a wife, a parent and a citizen of planet Earth. Nor does the sacrifices that being a working mother/wife require earn me martyr status. I am not a single parent, underemployed, working multiple jobs or on public assistance. Neither was the author (until she chose single parenting over the "work" that rebuilding her marriage would take). And her selfish pursuit of excitement, lust and the easy way (over-indulging the children versus having an adult relationship with their father) certainly does not qualify as either sacrifice or martyr status.

I can only imagine the shock and awe that would result from Himself if I waltzed in the house day after day and said, "Oh I can only manage to cook dinner from a box and stick Woodstock in front of the TV, because I can't possibly be expected to do anything more for anyone - I am, after all, a working woman." Never mind the fact that Himself (and the author's husband) are both employed as well.

Which brings me to the next portion of the essay in which the author joins a friend to rail against her friend's spouse (who holds a job, cooks, chauffers the kiddos and generally dazzles all of their friends), because *gasp* he is too "stable."

In one sentance she lauds his goodness: "More accurately, [she is] reheating dinner; the dish is something wonderfully subtle yet complex, like a saffron-infused porcini risotto, that Ian made over the weekend and froze for us, in Tupperware neatly labeled with a Sharpie, because this is the sort of thoughtful thing he does." Several paragraphs later, she gleefully skewers him for his faults, while at the same time absolving her friend's faults because she "She sees herself as a failed mother, and is depressed and chronically overworked at her $120,000-a-year job (which she must cling to for the benefits because Ian freelances). At night, horny and sleepless, she paces the exquisite kitchen, gobbling mini Dove bars. The main breadwinner, Rachel is really the Traditional Dad, but instead of being handed her pipe and slippers at six, she appears to be marooned in a sexless remodeling project with a passive-aggressive Competitive Wife."

As I see it, women have created (by and large) their own monster. We have begged, pleaded, groveled, yelled and demanded to be treated not as mere equals to men but AS MEN. In the process, we emasculate men, demand that they take on everything we can't possibly handle as "poor working mothers," and then whine because they turn into "passive-aggressive Competitive Wi[ves]" - who are probably leaving their partners without intimacy because they are TOO DARN TIRED TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT after a day of working, whipping up healthy meals and shuttling the kids to and from everything. Sure, they should focus on the relationship too, but if we're too busy crying "martyr!" and shoving everything into their laps, we hardly have room to complain.

Now, to be clear, I'm all for equal division of labor ESPECIALLY because I work. I want a partner in parenting, in household tasks and in life - in addition to someone who is also a romantic partner. But I'm not going to get that if I insist on whining about how rough my life is to be the main breadwinner, so therefore I cannot possibly be asked to do anything else. Isn't that the whole 1950s "Man gets home, gets pipe and newspaper ignores family" scenario that we as women have been campaigning against for some 50 years, only with the gender roles reversed?"

I want to know what is wrong with the "stable men" she rails against in her article. What's so wrong with being stable? Stable doesn't have to mean boring, and if it does, maybe she'd best look at herself as she critizes everyone else ... look where it got her ... at least now she can play the "woe is me, SINGLE working mom" card.

The problem is, she seems to confuse Love with Lust - which even a scientist would tell you are two completely different things - from a cellular level right on through your marital vows. That is never more clear than in her last paragraph, in which she states:

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 as demonstrably fleeting as love.

That just leaves me speechless.