Of all the show's couples, the one I truly fell in love with is glowering Hugo (my type) and party girl Jamie (er, my twenties). Their entire courtship — the fuckfests, the fighting, the breakups, the booze, the drugs, the makeup sex — are all pit stops to the inevitable altar. They know they're doomed; Hugo even tells Jamie he felt like he was "detoxing" after yet another breakup. Still, the first season ends with their quickie ceremony, the camera capturing their stunned expression. For me, watching this episode was like reliving those years in high def, with an alternate ending.
A couple months ago Lori Gottlieb wrote a much-forwarded article called "Marry Him!" in The Atlantic. It was subtitled, "The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough." Gottlieb is a single mother of a sperm-donor child. Her theory: baby first while there's time, love of my life later. In classic Carrie Bradshaw-esque rhetoric Gottlieb asks: Is it better to be alone, or to settle? The answer, according to her: settle.
That's right. Don't worry about passion or intense connection. Don't nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling "Bravo!" in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go . . . Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.
It's a funny, forthcoming essay, but I wish Gottlieb had elaborated on her evident fearlessness instead of tossing crappy advice over her shoulder to younger women. Settle. Go for good enough, she tells them, failing to mention that settling requires the awful ability to lie to yourself, which, in my experience takes a lot of work (and drinking) to pull off. I couldn't do it, though I tried, bending every hapless boyfriend I dragged home into the shape of Mr. Right.
Am I seriously considering spending the rest of my life with this guy, or do I know in the back of my mind that this will end, but that at least I will have been married?
For me, it's been awhile since the aunties asked that perennial question: why are you not married? I still don't have a good answer. But I do know that the better question is: how did I manage to avoid it? Smarts had nothing to do with it. I was certainly stupid enough. I had the potential to run fast down that aisle, like Jamie and Hugo, before sober second thoughts settled in, before I started to question my motives: Do I actually love this guy, or is he a prize I have won? Am I marrying him to say I got picked? Because this is what people do? So I won't be pitied or scorned? Am I seriously considering spending the rest of my life with this guy, or do I know in the back of my mind that this will end, but that at least I will have been married?
Bertrand Russell wrote, "Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown . . . the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes." Today, most couples I know have turned their backs on God and religion. In fact, the last time they saw the inside of a church was probably the day they got married. But when you have no religion, no god, no spiritual practice to turn to for comfort, it's easy to turn your relationship into your altar, to give it the power to heal you, transform you and save you. That's why most relationships crack under pressure, I think — they're not built to fix us. We're supposed to fix them. If Russell is right that religion is the last place to go to if you're looking for God, then perhaps marriage is the last place to go to if you're looking for love. n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Gabriele is the author of Tempting Faith DiNapoli. Her second novel, The Almost Archer Sisters, will be published in the fall 2008. She lives in Toronto.
