"A lady's imagination is very rapid, it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment" - Jane Austen.
I suppose it goes without saying that no self-respecting feminist of this or any age wishes to live down to a Jane Austen summation of the 'fair sex' and yet I must admit to having done so. In a big way.
The word marriage has always terrified me, more than the institution itself, it is all the fringes of the fairytale attached with the concept that always disturbed me. There is a certain elusive 'un-attainability' to matrimony that is never really achieved even after all the papers have been signed, the 'I do's' uttered and the proverbial aprin donned. Couples are never really complete, no matter how much they affect the illusion of being so. There is always something to reach for, until there isn't and that is perhaps an even more terrifying prospect. For me, personally, the word always carried with it the myth, the mirage, the miracle...all followed by the manifestation of the mind-numbingly and soul-crushingly mundane.
There is much more to it, I am discovering. Having gotten hitched at what most would call 'break-neck speed', in many ways I am still reeling from the ride. Often, my partner and I spend hours marvelling over how we only met last December, got engaged three weeks later, married in February and now I am here. Here, in a new country; among new people; seated on new furniture; eating from new dishes; typing on a new computer and wondering if I am still the old me. That's one thing about marriage that I have observed, if you happen to be the woman leaving home and everything you know for the 'fairytale' then you are surrounded by the 'new'. So much so that one longs for the familiarity of all the frustrations that made one take the leap in the first place. I grant you the paradox.
Moving beyond the fairy tale beginning of meeting someone in a foreign country; on a bus; during a journalism conference; spending a week together; being proposed to and finding oneself unable to refuse despite all former logic that compelled a somewhat 'default' state of singledom, there is now the rather taxing and unexpectedly rewarding exercise of cohabitation. For those who know me, this state is as far from my natural habitat as possible. It is alien for me to share ...anything, really, with the occasional exception of DVDs, shoes or clothes. Sharing a life, a bed, a bathroom, a closet, a kitchen, a TV, a thought and a feeling is by no means a natural inclination and yet somehow, the days pass and one achieves new 'natural' states. It often makes me wonder if I am still the same person, if my mind is still my own or if I have inadvertently swapped it for a stepford bride caricature who bakes and cooks and cleans and folds underwear. Underwear that don't even belong to her, mind you! The sheer grounding of gender roles in marriage often grates my nerves and the 'singular' in me blanches at some of the things I now find myself 'volunteering' to do. It itches and it irks, all until I see my partner mopping the floors at my side, cooking at my side, folding laundry at my side and waking up in the middle of the night to make me Chinese food because I mumble something about having a craving during my sleep. Suddenly, then its okay to be less ...singular.
And yet, I am singular. I always have been. It is ingrained in how I think and how I view the world. I have always prided myself for 'not' fitting in; not buying the brand everyone needs to feel worthy of ...whatever it is brands bring; for not needing to be popular or indeed, even liked. I have relished the freedom that comes with dispensing of that very base need for approval. I used to view marriage as that damned Occam's razor matrimonial option that only ever oscillated between either being somebody or being with somebody but sometimes the simplest answers aren't really the best ones. Especially when concerning relationships. One can do both, although, granted it isn't easy to embrace differences and suddenly accept that everything one does now requires a sounding board. That one can no longer navigate each whim to its illogical conclusion and that every decision, every tabletop purchase, every grocery item and every life decision now needs validation from someone other than 'just me'. There is that ugly word 'compromise' that keeps cropping up and it leaves a distinctly un-feminist taste in ones mouth every time it does. Which is ridiculous, considering the taste of compromise is mostly just bitter and not everything bitter has to be linked with feminism, at least not as a rule.
Then again it IS un-feminist too. I always took great care to separate the rhetoric about choice with some basic rules that feminism did initially aspire to achieve before it forayed into its present dark alley of dada-ist and gaga-ist absurdities. Yes, feminism is about choice but one needs to be honest about the fact that it is also about making certain types of choices, whether or not we like to admit it. Putting a burgeoning career on hold for love is by no means a 'feminist' choice and I would refrain from calling it one. Neither is putting off a PhD for several years because one wants to start a family first. These are choices and women must be free to make them, but no, they are not feminist choices. It would be childish of me to try and take the course many women do of trying to defend their choices by labelling them as feminist just to feel better about themselves. It is counterproductive and it confuses the discourse, and frankly, feminism is a confused enough discourse to begin with! I suppose what it boils down to is accepting ones choices for what they are and still taking pride in the face that one made them.
When I found the man I knew I wanted to marry I decided to forego, perhaps, the biggest career opportunity that had ever come my way...a stint at the New York Times as part of the Daniel Pearl Fellowship. The latter required that I return to Pakistan and work there for a year and that would have meant risking my relationship. It was not a feminist choice and yet it was a woman's choice, made by a commitaphobe who always said that she would only ever get married if she found someone who made her want to get married. She did and it came down to finally taking that chance which has been every bit worth it. The decision, however, has made me reconsider many of my 'rules' about what I used to want for myself. While I still agree that marriage is an inherently patriarchal institution, I also recognise now that most of marriage is what you make it. So I am choosing to work out of that set up from within...it sounds convoluted - I know. And yet, all it takes is a partner willing to work with you.
Lately I have discovered that much of marriage involves the 'appearance of being happy'. So much rests on having the right furniture, the right bathroom rug and the right crockery. Because heaven help us if we serve dinner to strangers in boring, plain coloured china and they end up thinking we are not the 'perfect couple'. As if there is such a thing! The myth about perfection is debilitating because, while in truth something that doesn't exist cannot really hurt you, in essence it can unravel your entire premise. At the end of the day a woman will always want more than she has. For better and for worse. And she will also always aspire to perfection in this regard. I have come to believe it is the curse of our sex.
While my husband seems perfectly content watching a game of football, taking a walk down the marina and planning vacations; I always find myself fretting over job prospects, whether our house 'looks' clean enough for guests or whether I have the right clothes to match that adorable shoe. Protecting and preserving the prototype of a fairytale can be exhausting. Especially when one has no idea who invented the fairtytale and why and when it achieved such coveted sacred status. I mean, who really is to say what an ideal marriage looks like? Is it really the picket fence and three bedroom house complete with golden retriever playing in the yard or is it the confused and confusing mesh of peaks and valleys, fights and make ups, kisses and curses that fill all the crevices in to colour real people and real lives?
When is it socially acceptable for a newly-wed couple to shed the skin of a 'good looking' marriage to a real-looking marriage and be the prouder for it? I believe I have finally stopped my quest for achieving this supposed perfection. The initial exercise in sublimating the perfect meal, the perfect outfit, the perfect picture frame shots capturing the perfect blissful smiles simply became far too exhausting. My husband and I now spend our evenings watching Game of Thrones re-runs on television, chomping down on cookies and ice tea, while he tells me my eating habits will lead me to an early grave and I chide him for having the palette of an octogenarian with diabetes. I read with the bed site lamp on for hours after he's fallen asleep and he still wakes up at the crack of dawn to pray and then watch some 'Danish a.k.a light' news. We squabble over remote rights and how often to visit family and it is finally all 'real'.
And while I can by no means claim perfection, I can officially state that in an honest balancing of scales where independence means complete freedom to do whatever one wishes but do it alone and dependence - or the more politically correct 'interdependence' - means rearranging some life goals to make space for new ones or harder still, someone-else's goals -the latter wins. It wins in spades because you love someone enough for none of it to really be classified as a 'sacrifice'. It wins because there really is 'that much' to be said for having someone to hold your hand when you're walking down the street.
Marriages require a premise, and the initial phase involves looking happy because feeling it comes in episodes featuring valleys of misery and peaks of magic. This naturally forms a framework of subtleties often lost on the outside world and so 'looking the part' can sometimes take precedence over feeling it. All justified in the attempt of reassuring all those around us that ...yes, this really can be the Disney version of Anderson's fairytale and the Little Mermaid doesn't despair and die, she lands her prince and they live...wait for it, happily.
I suppose it goes without saying that no self-respecting feminist of this or any age wishes to live down to a Jane Austen summation of the 'fair sex' and yet I must admit to having done so. In a big way.
The word marriage has always terrified me, more than the institution itself, it is all the fringes of the fairytale attached with the concept that always disturbed me. There is a certain elusive 'un-attainability' to matrimony that is never really achieved even after all the papers have been signed, the 'I do's' uttered and the proverbial aprin donned. Couples are never really complete, no matter how much they affect the illusion of being so. There is always something to reach for, until there isn't and that is perhaps an even more terrifying prospect. For me, personally, the word always carried with it the myth, the mirage, the miracle...all followed by the manifestation of the mind-numbingly and soul-crushingly mundane.
There is much more to it, I am discovering. Having gotten hitched at what most would call 'break-neck speed', in many ways I am still reeling from the ride. Often, my partner and I spend hours marvelling over how we only met last December, got engaged three weeks later, married in February and now I am here. Here, in a new country; among new people; seated on new furniture; eating from new dishes; typing on a new computer and wondering if I am still the old me. That's one thing about marriage that I have observed, if you happen to be the woman leaving home and everything you know for the 'fairytale' then you are surrounded by the 'new'. So much so that one longs for the familiarity of all the frustrations that made one take the leap in the first place. I grant you the paradox.
Moving beyond the fairy tale beginning of meeting someone in a foreign country; on a bus; during a journalism conference; spending a week together; being proposed to and finding oneself unable to refuse despite all former logic that compelled a somewhat 'default' state of singledom, there is now the rather taxing and unexpectedly rewarding exercise of cohabitation. For those who know me, this state is as far from my natural habitat as possible. It is alien for me to share ...anything, really, with the occasional exception of DVDs, shoes or clothes. Sharing a life, a bed, a bathroom, a closet, a kitchen, a TV, a thought and a feeling is by no means a natural inclination and yet somehow, the days pass and one achieves new 'natural' states. It often makes me wonder if I am still the same person, if my mind is still my own or if I have inadvertently swapped it for a stepford bride caricature who bakes and cooks and cleans and folds underwear. Underwear that don't even belong to her, mind you! The sheer grounding of gender roles in marriage often grates my nerves and the 'singular' in me blanches at some of the things I now find myself 'volunteering' to do. It itches and it irks, all until I see my partner mopping the floors at my side, cooking at my side, folding laundry at my side and waking up in the middle of the night to make me Chinese food because I mumble something about having a craving during my sleep. Suddenly, then its okay to be less ...singular.
And yet, I am singular. I always have been. It is ingrained in how I think and how I view the world. I have always prided myself for 'not' fitting in; not buying the brand everyone needs to feel worthy of ...whatever it is brands bring; for not needing to be popular or indeed, even liked. I have relished the freedom that comes with dispensing of that very base need for approval. I used to view marriage as that damned Occam's razor matrimonial option that only ever oscillated between either being somebody or being with somebody but sometimes the simplest answers aren't really the best ones. Especially when concerning relationships. One can do both, although, granted it isn't easy to embrace differences and suddenly accept that everything one does now requires a sounding board. That one can no longer navigate each whim to its illogical conclusion and that every decision, every tabletop purchase, every grocery item and every life decision now needs validation from someone other than 'just me'. There is that ugly word 'compromise' that keeps cropping up and it leaves a distinctly un-feminist taste in ones mouth every time it does. Which is ridiculous, considering the taste of compromise is mostly just bitter and not everything bitter has to be linked with feminism, at least not as a rule.
Then again it IS un-feminist too. I always took great care to separate the rhetoric about choice with some basic rules that feminism did initially aspire to achieve before it forayed into its present dark alley of dada-ist and gaga-ist absurdities. Yes, feminism is about choice but one needs to be honest about the fact that it is also about making certain types of choices, whether or not we like to admit it. Putting a burgeoning career on hold for love is by no means a 'feminist' choice and I would refrain from calling it one. Neither is putting off a PhD for several years because one wants to start a family first. These are choices and women must be free to make them, but no, they are not feminist choices. It would be childish of me to try and take the course many women do of trying to defend their choices by labelling them as feminist just to feel better about themselves. It is counterproductive and it confuses the discourse, and frankly, feminism is a confused enough discourse to begin with! I suppose what it boils down to is accepting ones choices for what they are and still taking pride in the face that one made them.
When I found the man I knew I wanted to marry I decided to forego, perhaps, the biggest career opportunity that had ever come my way...a stint at the New York Times as part of the Daniel Pearl Fellowship. The latter required that I return to Pakistan and work there for a year and that would have meant risking my relationship. It was not a feminist choice and yet it was a woman's choice, made by a commitaphobe who always said that she would only ever get married if she found someone who made her want to get married. She did and it came down to finally taking that chance which has been every bit worth it. The decision, however, has made me reconsider many of my 'rules' about what I used to want for myself. While I still agree that marriage is an inherently patriarchal institution, I also recognise now that most of marriage is what you make it. So I am choosing to work out of that set up from within...it sounds convoluted - I know. And yet, all it takes is a partner willing to work with you.
Lately I have discovered that much of marriage involves the 'appearance of being happy'. So much rests on having the right furniture, the right bathroom rug and the right crockery. Because heaven help us if we serve dinner to strangers in boring, plain coloured china and they end up thinking we are not the 'perfect couple'. As if there is such a thing! The myth about perfection is debilitating because, while in truth something that doesn't exist cannot really hurt you, in essence it can unravel your entire premise. At the end of the day a woman will always want more than she has. For better and for worse. And she will also always aspire to perfection in this regard. I have come to believe it is the curse of our sex.
While my husband seems perfectly content watching a game of football, taking a walk down the marina and planning vacations; I always find myself fretting over job prospects, whether our house 'looks' clean enough for guests or whether I have the right clothes to match that adorable shoe. Protecting and preserving the prototype of a fairytale can be exhausting. Especially when one has no idea who invented the fairtytale and why and when it achieved such coveted sacred status. I mean, who really is to say what an ideal marriage looks like? Is it really the picket fence and three bedroom house complete with golden retriever playing in the yard or is it the confused and confusing mesh of peaks and valleys, fights and make ups, kisses and curses that fill all the crevices in to colour real people and real lives?
When is it socially acceptable for a newly-wed couple to shed the skin of a 'good looking' marriage to a real-looking marriage and be the prouder for it? I believe I have finally stopped my quest for achieving this supposed perfection. The initial exercise in sublimating the perfect meal, the perfect outfit, the perfect picture frame shots capturing the perfect blissful smiles simply became far too exhausting. My husband and I now spend our evenings watching Game of Thrones re-runs on television, chomping down on cookies and ice tea, while he tells me my eating habits will lead me to an early grave and I chide him for having the palette of an octogenarian with diabetes. I read with the bed site lamp on for hours after he's fallen asleep and he still wakes up at the crack of dawn to pray and then watch some 'Danish a.k.a light' news. We squabble over remote rights and how often to visit family and it is finally all 'real'.
And while I can by no means claim perfection, I can officially state that in an honest balancing of scales where independence means complete freedom to do whatever one wishes but do it alone and dependence - or the more politically correct 'interdependence' - means rearranging some life goals to make space for new ones or harder still, someone-else's goals -the latter wins. It wins in spades because you love someone enough for none of it to really be classified as a 'sacrifice'. It wins because there really is 'that much' to be said for having someone to hold your hand when you're walking down the street.
Marriages require a premise, and the initial phase involves looking happy because feeling it comes in episodes featuring valleys of misery and peaks of magic. This naturally forms a framework of subtleties often lost on the outside world and so 'looking the part' can sometimes take precedence over feeling it. All justified in the attempt of reassuring all those around us that ...yes, this really can be the Disney version of Anderson's fairytale and the Little Mermaid doesn't despair and die, she lands her prince and they live...wait for it, happily.
Thank you for this post! Having gotten recently engaged myself, I could appreciate the perspective it offered :)
ReplyDeleteWhat you said about Feminism and choice, that is so dead on! I have been trying to say just that for a long time!
Hey, thanks. There is honestly no real way of describing how marriage changes everything, except perhaps to emphasize the fact that it really does change 'everything'. That can really go either way, it depends on where one chooses to take it. I wish you all the happiness possible!
ReplyDelete