Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  The story of the wine-colored coat with the real fur collar has always made me cry. And if I were to tell you that this story has not shaped forever my feelings about marriage, or that it has not forged within me a small, quiet sorrow about what the matrimonial institution can take away from good women, I would be lying to you.

  But I would also be lying to you--or at least withholding critical information--if I did not reveal this unexpected coda to the story: A few months before Felipe and I were sentenced to marry by the Homeland Security Department, I went out to Minnesota to visit my grandmother. I sat down with her while she worked on a quilting square, and she told me stories. Then I asked her a question I'd never asked before: "What was the happiest time of your life?"

  In my heart, I believed I already knew the answer. It was back in the early 1930s, when she was living with Mrs. Parker, walking around in a slim yellow dress and a barbershop hairdo and a tailor-fitted wine-colored coat. That had to be the answer, right? But here's the trouble with grandmothers. With all that they give away to others, they still insist on maintaining their own opinions about their own lives. Because what Grandma Maude actually said was "The happiest time in my life were those first few years of marriage to your grandfather, when we were living together on the Olson family farm."

  Let me remind you: They had nothing. Maude was a virtual house slave to three grown men (gruff Swedish farmers, no less, who were usually irritated with each other) and she was forced to cram her babies and their sodden cloth diapers into one cold and badly lit room. She became progressively sicker and weaker with each pregnancy. The Depression raged outside their door. Her father-in-law refused to run plumbing into the house. And so on, and so on . . .

  "Grandma," I said, taking her arthritic hands in mine, "how could that have been the happiest time of your life?"

  "It was," she said. "I was happy because I had a family of my own. I had a husband. I had children. I had never dared to dream that I would be allowed to have any of those things in my life."

  As much as her words surprised me, I believed her. But just because I believed her did not mean that I understood her. I did not, in fact, begin to understand my grandmother's reply about her life's greatest happiness until the night, months later, that I ate dinner in Laos with Keo and Noi. Sitting there on the dirt floor, watching Noi shift uncomfortably around her pregnant belly, I had naturally begun to formulate all sorts of assumptions about her life as well. I pitied Noi for the difficulties she faced by marrying so young, and I worried about how she would raise her baby in a home already overtaken by a herd of bullfrogs. But when Keo boasted to us about how clever his young wife was (what with all those big ideas about greenhouses!) and when I saw the joy pass over the face of this young woman (a woman so shy that she had barely met our eyes the entire night), I suddenly encountered my grandmother. I suddenly knew my grandmother, as reflected in Noi, in a way I had never known her before. I knew how my grandmother must have looked as a young wife and mother: proud, vital, appreciated. Why was Maude so happy in 1936? She was happy for the same reason that Noi was happy in 2006--because she knew that she was indispensable to somebody else's life. She was happy because she had a partner, and because they were building something together, and because she believed deeply in what they were building, and because it amazed her to be included in such an undertaking.

  I shall not insult either my grandmother or Noi by insinuating that they really ought to have aimed for something higher in their lives (something more closely approximating, perhaps, my aspirations and my ideals). I also refuse to say that a desire to be at the center of their husbands' lives reflected or reflects pathology in these women. I will grant that both Noi and my grandmother know their own happiness, and I bow respectfully before their experiences. What they got, it seems, is precisely what they had always wanted.

  So that's settled.

  Or is it?

  Because--just to confuse the issue even more--I must relay what my grandmother said to me at the end of our conversation that day back in Minnesota. She knew that I had recently fallen in love with this man named Felipe, and she'd heard that things were getting serious between us. Maude is not an intrusive woman (unlike her granddaughter), but we had been speaking intimately, so perhaps that's why she felt free to ask me directly, "What are your plans with this man?"

  I told her that I wasn't sure, other than that I wanted to stay with him because he was kind and supportive and loving and because he made me happy.

  "But will you . . . ?" She trailed off.

  I didn't finish the sentence for her. I knew what she was digging for, but at that point in my life I still had no intention of ever getting married again, so I said nothing, hoping the moment would pass.

  After a bit of silence, she tried again. "Are the two of you planning to have . . . ?"

  Again, I didn't supply the answer. I wasn't trying to be rude or coy. It's just that I knew I was not going to be having any babies, and I really didn't want to disappoint her.

  But then this nearly century-old woman shocked me. My grandmother threw up her hands and said, "Oh, I might as well ask you outright! Now that you've met this nice man, you aren't going to get married and have children and stop writing books, are you?"

  So how do I square this?

  What am I to conclude when my grandmother says that the happiest decision of her life was giving up everything for her husband and children but then says--in the very next breath--that she doesn't want me making the same choice? I'm not really sure how to reconcile this, except to believe that somehow both these statements are true and authentic, even as they seem to utterly contradict one another. I believe that a woman who has lived as long as my grandmother should be allowed some contradictions and mysteries. Like most of us, this woman contains multitudes. Besides, when it comes to the subject of women and marriage, easy conclusions are difficult to come by, and enigmas litter the road in every direction.

  To get anywhere close to unraveling this subject--women and marriage--we have to start with the cold, ugly fact that marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men. I did not invent this fact, and I don't like saying it, but it's a sad truth, backed up by study after study. By contrast, marriage as an institution has always been terrifically beneficial for men. If you are a man, say the actuarial charts, the smartest decision you can possibly make for yourself--assuming that you would like to lead a long, happy, healthy, prosperous existence--is to get married. Married men perform dazzlingly better in life than single men. Married men live longer than single men; married men accumulate more wealth than single men; married men excel at their careers above single men; married men are far less likely to die a violent death than single men; married men report themselves to be much happier than single men; and married men suffer less from alcoholism, drug addiction, and depression than do single men.

  "A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1813, but he was dead wrong, or at least with regard to male human happiness. There doesn't seem to be anything, statistically speaking, that a man does not gain by getting married.

  Dishearteningly, the reverse is not true. Modern married women do not fare better in life than their single counterparts. Married women in America do not live longer than single women; married women do not accumulate as much wealth as single women (you take a 7 percent pay cut, on average, just for getting hitched); married women do not thrive in their careers to the extent single women do; married women are significantly less healthy than single women; married women are more likely to suffer from depression than single women; and married women are more likely to die a violent death than single women--usually at the hands of a husband, which raises the grim reality that, statistically speaking, the most dangerous person in the average woman's life is her own man.

  All this adds up to what puzzled sociologists call the "Marriage Benefit Imbalance"--a tidy name for an almost freakish
ly doleful conclusion: that women generally lose in the exchange of marriage vows, while men win big.

  Now before we all lie down under our desks and weep--which is what this conclusion makes me want to do--I must assure everyone that the situation is getting better. As the years go by and more women become autonomous, the Marriage Benefit Imbalance diminishes, and there are some factors that can narrow this inequity considerably. The more education a married woman has, the more money she earns, the later in life she marries, the fewer children she bears, and the more help her husband offers with household chores, the better her quality of life in marriage will be. If there was ever a good moment in Western history, then, for a woman to become a wife, this would probably be it. If you are advising your daughter on her future, and you want her to be a happy adult someday, then you might want to encourage her to finish her schooling, delay marriage for as long as possible, earn her own living, limit the number of children she has, and find a man who doesn't mind cleaning the bathtub. Then your daughter may have a chance at leading a life that is nearly as healthy and wealthy and happy as her future husband's life will be.

  Nearly.

  Because even though the gap has narrowed, the Marriage Benefit Imbalance persists. Given that this is the case, we must pause here for a moment to consider the mystifying question of why--when marriage has been shown again and again to be disproportionately disadvantageous to them--so many women still long for it so deeply. You could argue that maybe women just haven't read the statistics, but I don't think the question is that simple. There's something else going on here about women and marriage--something deeper, something more emotional, something that a mere public service campaign (DO NOT GET MARRIED UNTIL YOU ARE AT LEAST THIRTY YEARS OLD AND ECONOMICALLY SOLVENT!!!) is unlikely to change or to shape.

  Puzzled by this paradox, I brought up the question by e-mail with some friends of mine back in the States--female friends whom I knew were longing to find husbands. Their deep craving for matrimony was something I had never personally experienced and therefore could never really understand, but now I wanted to see it through their eyes.

  "What's this all about?" I asked.

  I got some thoughtful answers, and some funny answers. One woman composed a long meditation on her desire to find a man who might become, as she elegantly put it, "the co-witness I have always longed for in life." Another friend said that she wanted to raise a family with somebody "if only to have babies. I want to finally use these giant breasts of mine for their intended purpose." But women can build partnerships and have babies these days outside of matrimony, so why the specific yearning for legal marriage?

  When I posed the question again, another single friend replied, "Wanting to get married, for me, is all about a desire to feel chosen." She went on to write that while the concept of building a life together with another adult was appealing, what really pulled at her heart was the desire for a wedding, a public event "that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever."

  Now, you could say that my friend had been brainwashed by the American mass media, which has been relentlessly selling her this fantasy of womanly perfection forever (the beautiful bride in the white gown, wearing a halo of flowers and lace, surrounded by solicitous ladies-in-waiting), but I don't entirely buy that explanation. My friend is an intelligent, well-read, thoughtful, and sane adult; I do not happen to believe that animated Disney features or afternoon soap operas have taught her to desire what she desires. I believe she arrived at these desires entirely on her own.

  I also believe that this woman should not be condemned or judged for wanting what she wants. My friend is a person of great heart. Her enormous capacity for love has all too often been left unmatched and unreturned by the world. As such, she struggles with some very serious unfulfilled emotional yearnings and questions about her own value. That being the case, what better confirmation of her preciousness could she summon than a ceremony in a beautiful church, where she could be regarded by all in attendance as a princess, a virgin, an angel, a treasure beyond rubies? Who could fault her for wanting to know--just once--what that feels like?

  I hope she gets to experience that--with the right person, of course. Thankfully, my friend is mentally stable enough that she has not run out and hastily married some deeply inappropriate man in order to bring to life her wedding fantasies. But surely there are other women out there who have made that exchange--trading in their future well-being (and 7 percent of their incomes, and, let us not forget, a few years off their life expectancy) for one afternoon's irrefutably public proof of worth. And I must say it again: I will not ridicule such an urge. As someone who has herself always longed to be regarded as precious, and who has often done foolish things in order to test that regard, I get it. But I also get that we women in particular must work very hard to keep our fantasies as clearly and cleanly delineated from our realities as possible, and that sometimes it can take years of effort to reach such a point of sober discernment.

  I think of my friend Christine, who realized--on the eve of her fortieth birthday--that she had been postponing her real life forever, waiting for the validation of a wedding day before she could regard herself as an adult. Never having walked down an aisle in a white dress and a veil, she, too, had never felt chosen. For a couple of decades, then, she had just been going through the motions--working, exercising, eating, sleeping--but all the while secretly waiting. But as her fortieth birthday approached, and no man stepped forward to crown her as his princess, she came to realize that all this waiting was ridiculous. No, it was beyond ridiculous: It was an imprisonment. She was being held hostage by an idea she came to call the "Tyranny of the Bride," and she decided that she had to break that enchantment.

  So this is what she did: On the morning of her fortieth birthday, my friend Christine went down to the northern Pacific Ocean at dawn. It was a cold and overcast day. Nothing romantic about it. She brought with her a small wooden boat that she had built with her own hands. She filled the little boat with rose petals and rice--artifacts of a symbolic wedding. She walked out into the cold water, right up to her chest, and set that boat on fire. Then she let it go--releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation. Christine told me later that, as the sea took away the Tyranny of the Bride forever (still burning), she felt transcendent and mighty, as though she were physically carrying herself across some critical threshold. She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.

  So that's one way to do it.

  To be perfectly honest, though, this kind of brave and willful act of self-selection was never modeled for me within my own family's history. I never saw anything like Christine's boat as I was growing up. I never saw any woman actively marrying her own life. The women who have been most influential to me (mother, grandmothers, aunties) have all been married women in the most traditional sense, and all of them, I would have to submit, gave up a good deal of themselves in that exchange. I don't need to be told by any sociologist about something called the Marriage Benefit Imbalance; I have witnessed it firsthand since childhood.

  Moreover, I don't have to look very far to explain why that imbalance exists. In my family, at least, the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love. As the psychologist Carol Gilligan has written, "Women's sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women is to see themselves in a relationship of connection." This fierce instinct for entwinement has often caused the women in my family to make choices that are bad for them--to repeatedly give up their own health or their own time or their own best interests on behalf of what they perceive as the greater good--perhaps in order to consistently reinforce an imperative sense of specialness, of chosenness, of connection.

  I suspect this may
be the case in many other families, too. Please be assured that I know there are exceptions and anomalies. I myself have personally witnessed households where the husbands give up more than the wives, or do more child rearing and housekeeping than the wives, or take over more of the traditional feminine nurturing roles than the wives--but I can count those households on exactly one hand. (A hand that I now raise, by the way, to salute those men with enormous admiration and respect.) But the statistics of the last United States Census tell the real story: In 2000, there were about 5.3 million stay-at-home mothers in America, and only about 140,000 stay-at-home dads. That translates into a stay-at-home-dad rate of only about 2.6 percent of all stay-at-home parents. As of this writing, that survey is already a decade old, so let's hope the ratio is changing. But it can't change fast enough for my tastes. And such a rare creature--the father who mothers--has never been a character anywhere in the history of my family.

  I do not entirely understand why the women to whom I am related give over so much of themselves to the care of others, or why I've inherited such a big dose of that impulse myself--the impulse to always mend and tend, to weave elaborate nets of care for others, even sometimes to my own detriment. Is such behavior learned? Inherited? Expected? Biologically predetermined? Conventional wisdom gives us only two explanations for this female tendency toward self-sacrifice, and neither satisfies me. We are either told that women are genetically hardwired to be caretakers, or we are told that women have been duped by an unjustly patriarchal world into believing that they're genetically hardwired to be caretakers. These two opposing views mean that we are always either glorifying or pathologizing women's selflessness. Women who give up everything for others are seen as either paragons or suckers, saints or fools. I'm not crazy about either explanation, because I don't see the faces of my female relatives in any of those descriptions. I refuse to accept that the story of women isn't more nuanced than that.