I found myself very affected by this piece by Sanra Tsing Loh in the Atlantic – on her divorce. It’s not pleasant reading, but its very unpleasantness begs the question: if we are becoming this self-centered, complicated, prissy, and intelligent, how can anyone want to be married to us?
Most curious to me is the sense that male and female roles are really switching, and women are the ones who are being unfaithful and initiating divorces. Her reaction to the sensitive man – “male kitchen bitches” is her term – is utter contempt.
That said, it’s clear that females are dissatisfied—more and more, divorce seems to be initiated by women. If marriage is the Old World and what lies beyond is the New World, it’s the apparently stable men (comfortable alone in their postfeminist den with their Cook’s Illustrated and their porn) who are Old Worlders, and the Girls’ Night Out, questionnaire-completing women who are the questing New Worlders. They most embody what Tocqueville described as America’s “restless temper,” or l’inquiétude du caractère. (Interestingly, according to EnlightenNext magazine, some northern European women are reportedly eschewing their progressive northern European male counterparts and dating Muslims, who are more like “real men.”)
It’s not the stuff of late-70s-early-80s sentimental emotionalism, the sort of music I listen to. The sense I have is that for the most part, we don’t mean that much to each other, and are fundamentally replaceable. Why would a culture of disposability and seeking after new experiences produce people of any other sort?
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