"Settling" and feminism (7)

Okay, there is enough to say here I'll come to a point and come back to this next Monday.

Dana Goldstein does acknowledge that Lori Gottlieb gets something right, "It's lonely to be single and it's wonderful to have a partner." That's true. But even more than that, your life will be better if you can get married and stay married. That's not an issue for public policy. It's an issue for personal policy and it's one that shouldn't need explaining. Most people have no trouble figuring it out and want to get married.

I think the deep point Lori Gottlieb (almost) makes—and the reason why the article and book have caused a certain touchiness— is that you can fail. You can fail.

If you have seen Annie Hall you may remember the scene where Alvy says that he thinks the relationship he and Annie have is like a dead shark. It stopped moving forward so it failed. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, people in failing relationships used to tell others that "we just grew apart". These are evasion strategies. Even the expressions "failed relationship" or "failed marriage" are evasions.

Relationships and marriages don't fail, the people in them do. When a couple breaks up, there are only three possibilities.

1. It's his fault.
2. It's her fault.
3. They are both at fault.

It's not that difficult to meet someone and begin a serious relationship leading to marriage. Millions upon millions of people do it. So, if I want to get married* and I reach my thirties without doing so that says something very important about me; it says that I am on track to fail. (Relevant disclosure, I did reach 30 without managing it and realized that I needed to change in fundamental ways if I wanted to succeed.) And, look out but here I go, if a woman really wants to marry and she reaches her thirties without doing so then she is on track to fail.

I know, many will want to hate me for saying that and they can go right ahead and do so if that is what they want. But that is what virtue means: it means that being born a man or born a woman comes with an obligation to strive to be good at being a man or a woman. Lori Gottlieb is right to think there is a definite window of opportunity for these things. It's not impossible to succeed after that window closes but it is very, very difficult. If you think you're headed that way, you want to sit down and do some serious self-examination and you want to do it now.


* It is, of course, true that some people don't want to get married and this doesn't apply to them. They don't fail. There are also people who decide they don't want to get married and later decide they were wrong. They fail.