by Meghan Daum
When I arrived at the synagogue on the evening of the event, ten minutes before the start time, there was exactly one person in the audience. He was maybe fortyish, skinny and pale and crowned with a yarmulke that was attached to his balding head with painful-looking pins. He was surrounded by no fewer than seventy-four empty chairs. At the back of the room was a table with Chips Ahoy cookies and a large-capacity coffee percolator.
I thought to myself that perhaps the thing would be canceled if no one else showed up. Years ago, on a book tour, I’d arrived at a bookstore in Saint Paul, Minnesota, to find that exactly one person had come to my reading. It seemed that David Sedaris was doing a reading and book signing at the university that very same night, thereby tapping every single literary-minded person in the region and effectively making my reading the equivalent of a barely known sitcom competing with the number-one-rated show airing at the same time on another network. The person who had come turned out to be a big fan. She was a very young woman living on her parents’ farm in rural Minnesota and she’d driven an hour to see me. It was obvious that the only decent thing to do was to take her to see David Sedaris. So we got ourselves over to the university, where Sedaris’s talk was so packed we had to watch him on a Jumbotron.
Just as I was wondering if the Marriage Project would still pay me if we canceled the show and offered to take our sole audience member to the alternate cultural event of his choice (which he would surely refuse, thereby freeing me to go home), more attendees began trickling in. There was an elderly couple and a young, twenty-something couple and a gaggle of women-of-a-certain-age whose slightly provocative attire (a leopard-print blouse here, a sequined top there) suggested this might be some kind of girls’ night out. At least half the women in the audience, which was now numbering into the low double digits, wore wigs or some other kind of head covering. At least a quarter of the entire audience, presumably members of the singles’ group, looked like they might be pushing fifty. There were patchy mustaches and ill-fitting electric-blue sweaters that could only have been purchased at T.J. Maxx by septuagenarian mothers holding out hope that their future daughter-in-law was just a J-Date away.
I took my place at the table next to the bestselling author and the rabbi introduced us. The Marriage Project director went to the podium and reported his findings on “rates of marriage satisfaction.” He also talked about how television programs like Sex and the City glorified the single life in ultimately damaging ways. Next came the second report author, who said that most people mistakenly believe that physical attraction is the first thing to look for in a partner, when in fact research has shown that the happiest marriages are those in which sexual chemistry arises only after basic compatibility is established. The audience was attentive, if not rapt. By the time I approached the podium, I felt confident that I’d win the evening, even though the bestselling writer was speaking last. I thanked the Marriage Project guys for inviting me and the rabbi for hosting us. Then I fired up my ignition.
I started out by saying that I was glad to see that a conversation about a “trend” was finally addressing the ways in which that trend affected the nonelite classes as well as the wine-sipping, New York Times Style-section-reading demographic that usually provides the fodder for grand pronouncements about social phenomena. I talked about how there was truth in the assertion that “Middle Americans” were often putting the baby before the bridal shower—or skipping marriage altogether—but that the reasons were likely more rooted in economics than in a desire to emulate the characters on Sex and the City. I talked about how the demise of manufacturing jobs has meant many working-class and lower-class women are the breadwinners in their families and therefore lack the financial incentive to commit to a male partner. I then shifted course slightly and spoke about the way five- and six-figure price tags on weddings and the fetishization of gift registries and lavish honeymoons and bridal paraphernalia had made marriage seem less like the ultimate life choice than the ultimate lifestyle. I suggested that if our chief cultural images of marriage are dominated by consumer fantasies, not least of all setting up a household filled with magazine-ready decor and “grown-up furniture,” it should be no shock that less-affluent people are skipping that step altogether.
“In other words,” I said, “if we’re going to talk about socioeconomic divides in marriage trends, we’d do well to think about the materialism that’s endemic to our contemporary concept of marriage. When the average wedding in America costs thirty thousand dollars and there are entire cable channels that seemingly place a higher premium on finding the right dress than finding the right partner, why should we be surprised that the less affluent are seeing it as less than essential?”
I was kicking major ass, clearly. What a lively social critique! What a potent cocktail of insight and indignation (with a light garnish of sanctimony)! Though the audience registered no more expression than it had during the first two speakers, which is to say practically none, I told myself that it was probably out of politeness. Maybe Orthodox Jews were more like New England WASPs than was commonly imagined. Maybe they were thoroughly engaged and amused but too uptight or inadequately plied with gin to actually laugh or appear interested.
I forged ahead. I picked some bones with some of the Marriage Project’s research findings, much of which seemed to me to have a classic causation-versus-correlation problem. I suggested that even if it was true that unmarried people in their twenties are more likely to be depressed, drink excessively, and report lower levels of satisfaction than their married counterparts, how do we know this is because they’re not married? Maybe they’re not married because they’re depressed. Or maybe the kinds of people who are apt to delay marriage are also the kinds apt to be depressed—or just more likely to talk about being depressed. Maybe they’re more likely to occupy social spheres where people go to therapy and pick apart their psyches or go to parties and drink more than they would if they stayed home.
“Maybe people who put off getting married are more prone to a certain kind of chronic life dissatisfaction,” I said. “No one’s good enough, which maybe has something to do with why they’re alone. In other words, maybe being happy or unhappy might not have to do with being married as much as, simply, being the person we are.”
I took a drink of water. I was starting to get a little choked up. The audience still appeared unmoved but I felt confident I was just seconds away from delivering a major aha moment.
“Sure,” I said, “there are cultural forces out there that can cause people to walk away from fantastic relationships because, as the ‘Knot Yet’ report suggests, they don’t yet feel they have their ducks in a row. As the next speaker will probably tell you, it’s not even about the row of ducks but about shallow requirements that cause us to reject people for reasons that ultimately have no bearing on what kind of partners they’ll make. Sometimes it’s about thinking we haven’t yet become the person we want to be when we meet the right person. It’s about having some fantasy version of a perfect self and the perfect mate that self will attract. But sometimes it’s really much simpler and more boring than that. Sometimes it’s because we just haven’t met the right person yet. Sometimes it’s because that person comes along not during high school or college or during that summer lifeguarding job but during your thirties or even your forties or fifties.”
And, finally, my pièce de résistance:
“As fun as it is to look at graphs and pie charts and Venn diagrams showing why we make the decisions we do,” I said, “the fact is that the human heart is pretty pie chart resistant.”
It was such a good line I was almost embarrassed. I was embarrassed for the Marriage Project guys, with their PowerPoint and the weird way, despite sounding like therapists on a Christian call-in radio show, they stepped around any mention of their religious orientation. Mostly, though, I was embarrassed for the bestselling author. Skilled speaker though she was, there was no way in hell her remarks were going to compete with mine. She was
droll and appealing, but she was canned. She purported to be a truth teller but she was really a provocateur, a saleswoman, a brand. She may have sold more books than I ever had or would but the real truth teller here was me. If even just one member of the audience, perhaps a leopard-print-blouse-wearing member of the singles’ group, walked out of that synagogue thinking, Hey, my heart is not a pie chart, I’d consider it a job well done. Lip quivering in anticipation of my own profundity, I brought it on home.
“Choosing a partner wisely involves logic and rationality, of course, but it also involves that woefully unscientific method called ‘just knowing,’” I said. “And some people just know in their twenties and others don’t know until much later. And that is why ultimately this discussion, fascinating as it is in many ways, is, to me, only as useful as our ability to accept the randomness of life. To think not in terms of ‘I must marry by twenty or thirty or forty’ but ‘I must respect the life and the timeline I was given and live with authenticity as well as compassion and commitment.’”
The crowd sat there, jaws as slack as they’d been at the beginning. They applauded respectfully.
The bestselling author stepped up to the podium. “I feel like I’m going to cry,” she said. “That was so romantic.”
She then proceeded to bring the house down by reading from the introduction to her book. It was centered on an analogy for female pickiness she’d called the Husband Store. There were six floors in the Husband Store and you could only visit the place one time. The first floor offered men who had good jobs. If that wasn’t enough, women could proceed to the second floor, which carried men who had good jobs and loved kids. The goods grew increasingly fine (men who have good jobs, love kids, help equally with housework, give back rubs, et cetera) until the sixth floor, where women were told that there were no men on that floor and that the showroom existed only to show that women were impossible to please. “Thank you for shopping the Husband Store,” they were told.
The audience roared with laughter. They slapped their knees and leaned forward so as not to miss a word. They rocked back and forth in their seats, as though davening to the ghost of Henny Youngman. The single women smiled big, toothy, happy smiles. The extremely pale guy in the yarmulke nodded in recognition. Next to me, the “Knot Yet” authors chuckled in appreciation, seemingly unperturbed that the speaker was making no reference whatsoever to their report.
We had all taken so long with our remarks that there were only about five minutes left for the “debate” and questions from the audience. Most of the questions were for the bestselling author. What did she think of online dating? Did she recommend using a private matchmaker? An elderly man with a cane stood up and thanked her for her humor and perspective.
“Obviously, you’re the practical one and Meghan is the romantic one,” he said.
I had never once in my life been called romantic. At least not when it came to love. Unrealistic, yes. Maybe hopeful, myopic, “trying too hard to control the narrative” (there’s a typical Husband Store shopper trait for you). But romantic? I would probably sooner be called mushy or moony, which would never happen because I have never been these things (except for around dogs, which is an entirely separate issue). Delivering my talk, especially this talk, and then being called a romantic felt akin to showing up to the polls and voting for one political party and then returning to my car to find that someone had slapped on a bumper sticker advertising the other. I felt misunderstood to the point of feeling violated. The rabbi wrapped up the Q&A and reminded everyone that the bestselling author would be signing and selling books in the back.
As the audience filed out, the man with the cane approached me.
“I think you’re the first person to ever call me a romantic,” I told him.
“Well, you’re certainly not practical,” he said.
I paused for a moment. He had not said this unkindly.
“I guess I was talking about living authentically,” I said.
“But isn’t that the same as living romantically?”
* * *
Shortly before my mother left my father, right around their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, she told me one of the things that had kept her hanging on in recent years was her desire to emulate a General Electric commercial that showed an elderly couple in their darkened kitchen, dancing to the light of the open refrigerator. “I want someone who will dance with me in the refrigerator light,” she said. I noted that this was a very different statement than saying she wanted to be married to my father for another twenty-five years, given his aversion to both dancing and wasting power.
Still, it was hard to begrudge her this momentary dip into corporate-sponsored tear jerking. I, too, had a history of taking television ads a little too much to heart. Around that time I was consistently moved by an ad for New York Telephone. It opened with a young couple arguing in the doorway of their apartment, the man yelling, “I’m gone,” as he tugs on his blazer and dashes in a huff down the steps of their Manhattan brownstone. After a montage showing New Yorkers of all walks of life answering their ringing phones and brimming with ecstasy at the sounds of their loved ones’ voices on the other end, the ad circles back to the couple. The man is calling from a phone booth (this was back in the days of phone booths). “I’m sorry,” he says. “Come home,” the woman says. The harmonizing jingle singers (this was back in the days of jingle singers) belt out the song’s refrain one last time: “We’re all connected.”
Back when this ad was airing, I longed for the day that someone would love me enough to share a brownstone apartment from which he would storm out during an argument and call me later from a pay phone to apologize. This was my version of dancing in the refrigerator light. But just as my mother did the math and decided that another quarter century of unhappiness was not worth a three-minute waltz in the glow of a 40-watt bulb, I left New York when I needed to, even though it meant I’d probably never peer ruefully out of the bay windows as my man skulked off in a snit. Instead, I would argue with men in other places, such as hotel rooms at the Hilton Towers and apartments in Los Angeles and, more times than I’d be able to count, in moving cars in which I was either a nagging passenger or nagged-upon driver. My mother would go on to have refrigerators that stored no one’s perishables but her own. Her happiness with that arrangement would more than make up for any unfulfilled dreams spawned by General Electric.
Marriage is hard work at any age; that platitude is, sadly, as true as it is hackneyed. But now that I’m old enough to accumulate my own stack of holiday cards every year, some of them from the Jackie Harrises of the world, who were reckless enough to get married before the age of thirty but often seem to beam the brightest in their family photos (probably because they also had kids earlier and those kids are now sentient beings who will soon be capable of driving themselves to band practice), I’ve observed something that probably would have surprised my mother: The young are often harder workers—or at least better team players—in the quarry that is marriage. They do not, as I did, bring a mortgage and a mid-stage career and an assemblage of tastes and opinions and biases and assumptions formed over more than three decades. They bring only a toothbrush. Whatever else they need, they’ll acquire as a couple. Whatever kind of people they turn out to be, they’ll turn into under the heady influence of the other.
At least that’s my theory. It’s also the theory behind cornerstone marriage, the operative word being theory, since in practice there are infinite ways to wreck a marriage. I was struck, however, by the National Marriage Project’s finding that after a certain point, the correlation between delayed marriage and successful marriage for the well-educated diminishes with age. That is to say, educated couples who marry in their mid- to late twenties are happier than those who marry in their teens or early twenties. But those who wait until their mid to late thirties see diminishing returns on the benefits of postponement, not least of all because of overly individualistic mind-sets—“me-ness” versus “we-ness,
” you could call it—and what the researchers called “relational cynicism.”
As I drove home from the synagogue that night I felt as though I were inhaling a kind of vaporous, free-floating anxiety. My husband and I had been going through a strange patch. I won’t say rough patch, because we’d had those and this, mercifully, did not qualify. But we were sad in ways we couldn’t always admit to ourselves and needy in ways that were not always recognizable to the other. Our dog, who’d started out as my dog before my husband came along and pledged his devotion to us both, had recently died after months of slow, heartbreaking decline. Our house had been rendered intolerably silent in the dog’s absence and we’d attempted to soothe ourselves by rescuing a new dog that we would eventually come to love but that still felt like a friend’s pet we were merely looking after. We spent most nights watching a one-to-two-hour string of television, beginning with The Daily Show and The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, which we’d dubbed “the news,” and ending with whatever high-end cable drama had us in its thrall.
When I got home, my husband was sitting in the desk chair I’d given him for his birthday. He was playing Scrabble on the computer. The new dog was sleeping in the old dog’s bed. The rusty chandelier in the study, a poorly wired piece of quasi-chic shabbery I’d bought at a flea market, was flickering on and off. I’d hoped to make the room look like something in a crumbling French estate, but instead it was just a dim repository of books and files and random computer cords. The floor was always littered with shavings caused by an eternally jammed paper shredder. My husband asked how the debate went.