It seems to me, at least from talking with my friends, and from my own observations, that today's 20-somethings have it harder than ever in the dating and relationship world. I was talking with a female co-worker of mine today about her dabbles in the dating realm. It sounded like she was having a rough time, which didn't make sense to me because she is a lovely and smart girl. She's just looking for a cute-normal hard working guy, who wants to care for her. Should be easy enough to find right?
It's not though, and maybe it never was. But is seems more complicated now than ever. We have apps like Tinder muddling things even further by suggesting what in reality are terrible matches. But when girls and boys are too busy on their phones to look around and see what is right in front of them, strange results will ensue. Girls will forget their ability to judge character, which is almost fundamental to them. Boys will distrust girls as they become less sure about what they are looking for. This causes girls to become skeptical of boys. All of a sudden the whole thing is a mess. Noone trusts anyone else. As the unspoken rules guiding dating become evermore entrenched and ingrained in expectation, the situation becomes even more tangled. Sadly, I don't see things getting much better. Both the male and female sub cultures are growing further apart. It's damn near a miracle anyone can find a soul-mate in this love economy.
Fortunately, or maybe not, I am a contrarian. I was born to march to the beat of my own drum. To put things less euphemistically, this pretty much means I firmly believe in doing whatever the hell I think is right, even if its crazy. This allowed me to avoid this culture, as much as a cultured person can. I did the crazy thing and married the first girl I made love to. I trusted her, and she trusted me. To be fair to those my age, it is easier to do this at age 18 than in the mid 20's. It would be harder now, mostly because I'm more cautious. But this caution just might be toxic. I think this caution, this skepticism, is the root of the problem I described above. This skepticism,this fear of commitment, is what has driven the evolution of the male and female counter-cultures.
Now, I want to try to connect these seemingly disparate subjects, of me being married and my experiences, with my perspective on modern dating in your 20's.
Being married is hard. Everyone know that (right??).... Maybe, or maybe not.
I was listening to NPR this morning and they were talking with a young author of a book called "Landline". It is the story of a couple who falls apart, and then how (in the mind of the female protagonist) they reconnect. They fall apart after a few years of marriage, a few dry, chafy years. It wasn't what they expected. Then, they reconnect over by talking over a landline, like they did when they were much younger and newly in love. There was none of the delay or modulation of a cell phone. Just the faithful truth of an analog receiver and speaker. Anyway, the important part of the story is not the phone, or the imaginariness or not of the resolution. It is really a story about marriage, and how it falls apart and can get put back together. It is a story about the richness of "analog" connection. A story of success coming through trial in marriage. It is, at its core, a sort of modernist love story. It is not the traditional romantic story. It is a real one, full of the real struggles that occur. And man are they hard. These struggles, and our ignorance of them before they hit are evidenced by the high divorce rate. But they are there, whether we ignore them at first or not. And in every marriage I know of, they come. The author, in her interview, said that marriage really isn't promising to love one another forever, but committing to change next to each other. I find this to be a wise and true analysis. So my point is, we are being lied to in the media and maybe even by our parents about marriage. It is hard. It is the fucking hardest thing you'll ever do. Harder than a marathon, or a triathlon, or med school, or even golf. I daresay I'm a better golfer than husband. It is so hard, you'll want to give up. That will happen, and if it doesn't, you're either a saint, or very lucky. Probably though, your just lying to yourself. I think its high time we start telling the truth about things, and maybe this is my attempt to do so. To share what I have learned.
So how does this relate, marriage being hard, and men and women are on different pages about dating. I believe the connection is expectation. Specifically, expectation which is wrong. This whole confarction (yes I made that up), is about people expecting the worst from the get go. And why should we blame them, for if they were to expect the promised idea of a "great marriage". They would fail too. No wonder people are distraught with marriage. The whole fucking classic concept is a lie. Or maybe that is the modern one... Fuck it. Maybe back a long time ago, they had it partly right, not the forced marriage part. But that marriage was a commitment, it isn't always a feeling, in fact, maybe it never is. It probably wasn't for them lol. We get the benefit of choosing, if we do choose marriage, who we commit to change beside. And we do have that feeling at first, which maybe makes it harder when it goes away. But the whole situation is complicated by the fact that that is not the expectation. We sugar-coat what it means to be married. Perhaps somebody thought this would entice people to be married, but this is ruining the whole idea of marriage. Marriage is carnal, beautiful, unique, incredibly difficult, rewarding, and fun. Somehow, when we tell our children about it, we leave out all the bad parts. They are left out of most stories. Even in more rogue stories, like 50 shades of grey, she finds "love" in the end. Mind you this love makes me want to throw up out of every orifice. Out of vulgarity but mostly out or outright falsity. Maybe I just haven't found that sort of passion, but neither have most people I know....It is a lie. Not the passion for another, but the nature of it. It doesn't ever stay that intuitive.
Yet we let these stories and their implications diffuse in our society and misguide our fellow 20-somethings. Understandably, they are dismayed. The girls don't know what they want. The boys grasp at this moving target, but miss with an even great error. And then WTF. That leaves us AFU. But I for one, want to change this. I believe in the profound power of people to connect, in REAL painful, beautiful ways. It is the mess that makes it beautiful. If every bite of your peanut butter sandwich was the same, that would just be weird. It is variable, and wild, but you resolve to eat it. All of it, except for the small part you give to your dog....
Disclaimer: I am not that good of a husband, I express myself better on paper than with my mouth. But it's still not that good.
Disclaimer 2: This is just my opinion. It doesn't really mean a whole lot in the end, but if someone likes it, then it was worth me writing. I enjoyed writing it anyway.
all the best!
Fo realz. Commitment is weird and hard, but moreover it's improbable - that two people both want the same sort of thing at the same time and are willing/capable to do the work, plus all the other "compatibility" stuff, is hard to find. That's why it's so celebrated. It's such an unlikely (and often, unfortunately doomed) undertaking that we often don't even have in mind a picture of what all getting "there" looks like. Counter to how our parents and culture haven't (or don't want to) told us about all the beige mundane parts of forging bonds, the heigtened visibility of the romantic story weighs down on and confuses both men and women. We get disappointed at what? The fact it isn't easy? Sure, it's no fun to be pessimistic about how fleeting that feeling can be, though it's less embittering. I'd rather be the bronze medalist happy with my lot than a be silver or gold one, being confused as to what I'm supposed to feel. But, like you said, those feelings can be recaptured and new feeling can branch from it into new territory. P.S., the same is true for we gays as well.
ReplyDelete