You Think Marriage Is Work, Try Dating
The Invisible Adjunct, taking a brief detour away from academic politics, takes a whack at a remarkably silly argument advanced by Laura Kipnis. I haven't read the Salon interview that IA is most directly going after (I find their Premium policy obnoxious), but this article would seem to be fairly representative, and there are some more bits quoted in this New Yorker review.
The essence of the whole thing is the sort of idiot literalism you expect from addled fundies who think Jesus was a white European who spoke English: Kipnis latches on to the truism that "a good marriage takes work," and goes nonlinear from there, railing against a world in which "the factory [has] become the default language of love." Adultery, by this logic, is a political statement, a rebellion to be celebrated.
This may be one of the most transcendently silly arguments I've ever seen. The Adjunct and various commenters have great fun poking holes in it-- I'm particularly fond of Kevin Walzer's comment ("Dry humping as a political act--now THERE's a novel theoretical position. "), which more or less captures the essence of my objection to Kipnis's position.
I can pretty well localize the instant in my life when I realized I didn't want to be single any more to a bachelor party weekend for a friend from college a few years back. It was started by an off-hand remark. I forget exactly what triggered it-- somebody cooking burgers, or fatty steaks-- but there was a sudden avalanche of "Name won't let me verb" comments, with people listing off the various habits forbidden by their then-Significant Others. And I realized that, well, there weren't really any verbs that Kate forbade.
Later the same weekend, we did the obligatory bar-hopping (single guys still had a slight majority), and I was struck by the further realization that I didn't ever want to do that again. Monogamy has its down side, but the Maxim lifestyle Kipnis glorifies pretty much sucks all the time. There are very few activities that I hate more than trying to Meet People in bars and clubs. I don't dance well, I dislike crowds (I take up a lot of space, and spend a lot of time getting jostled), and it's surprisingly difficult to make small talk in loud rooms with people who are eight or ten inches shorter than you are.
Most of all, though, I hated the pressure, the idea that every casual conversation was a medium-stakes gamble. Play your cards right, and you can get at least one night of sex, and possibly something more. Babble like an idiot, and you're stuck sleeping on the couch because you're sharing a room with a better gambler than yourself. To twist Kipnis's analogy, if marriage is like being on the job 24/7, dating is like a neverending job interview, and it's a rare job that's worse than the interview.
Put those two realizations together, and, well, it was clear that I had a pretty good thing going. And I realized that weekend that I didn't want to lose that. The whole proposal-engagement-wedding thing followed pretty directly from that weekend (so, in the unlikely event that you read this, thanks, Steve...).
Yeah, there are people out there for whom the labor is divided differently, who find picking people up less work than keeping them around-- some of them even lack sitcoms. And yeah, there are trade-offs to being involved in a relationship-- for example, since we've been married, Kate has shown a regrettable disinclination to let me blow vast sums of money on any damn fool thing I want.
But that's a small price to pay for never again needing to deal with the hassle of dating.
Posted at 8:50 PM | link | follow-ups |