June 21st 2010

Marriage: The Ultimate Act of Subversion?

A colleague of mine recently attended a wedding of two friends. It took place in a park, in the rain. The bride fretted.

“If the wedding isn’t perfect,” she said, “people will say, ‘Well, they were too young to get married.'”

A non-sequitur but please understand: The bride was 22, the groom, only a couple of years older. In the bride’s view, her friends, her parents, maybe even a nosy neighbor, would use any excuse to question her decision.

The fact is, many of us do look at couples who tie the knot before they’re--what, 26? 28? 30?--and think either 1) they’re super religious, 2) she must be pregnant, or 3) poor dears, they must not know any better.

We forget that the desire to marry doesn’t bow easily to those who would deny it. One only has to look at the persistence of gay couples to unite legally to understand how much it can mean.

Of course, there’s reason to be skeptical of what is now considered early marriage. Researchers tell us that those who wait until 25 or older to wed have a much better chance of staying married.

These couples tend to have at least bachelor’s degrees and be more financially secure. They’ve enjoyed (or not) other intimate relationships and learned something about the kind of partner they can (or can’t) live with.

And their case has been argued well recently by writers who married later themselves. Examples: Shannon Fox and Celeste Liversidge, who wrote the recent Last One Down the Aisle Wins; Hannah Seligson, author of A Little Bit Married; and Dr. Christine Whelan, who penned Marry Smart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to True Love. 

There’s something missing from these authors’ intellectual positions however, which is why I was happy to find Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, to add to my bookshelf. It’s less about the head and more about the heart. Our young couple would like it.

Gilbert, a divorce survivor who wrote the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, met and fell in love with a Brazilian 17 years her senior. She had no desire to marry him. But, due to unusual circumstances involving U.S. immigration policy, she had to if she wanted to live with him in the United States.

Committed is her attempt to come to terms with taking her vows yet again. The most compelling part of the book is the next-to-last chapter, “Marriage and Subversion,” in which she argues persuasively that all non-arranged marriages are, and have always been, “automatic acts of subversion.”

Governments and churches have sought forever to define whether and when two people should wed. So have ideologues of all persuasions (presumably including those of us who look askance at young marriages).

Why? According to Gilbert, because we want the individuals to be loyal to us and our ideas, to act in the ways we determine are best for them.

“If you choose to honor your wife or husband or lover above the collective, you have somehow failed and betrayed the movement, and you shall be denounced as selfish, backwards, or even treasonous,” Gilbert writes.

Recalling couples throughout history who have risked the wrath of others to wed, she writes, “A lot of people, it turns out, want intimacy with one special person. And since there is no such thing as intimacy without privacy, people tend to push back very hard against anybody or anything that interferes with the simple desire to be left alone with a loved one.”

Presumably, my colleague’s friend could have found intimacy simply by living with her boyfriend--a choice, I suspect, many in her “collective” would have sanctioned. But she and her husband-to-be pushed back against the prevailing wisdom of their generation and, whatever I, like their friends, may think about their decision, that took guts. I hope they prove us wrong.