I’m Only Me When I’m With You, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

February 25, 2012 Martha Thomases 9 Comments

Over the past week, circumstances have conspired to remind me how much I love my husband.  (That sounds very romantic, but, trust me, you don’t want to have a week like this.)  Last Friday, the New York Times ran a front page story about the increase in the number of out-of-wedlock children born to women under 30, especially to white women.

It’s a heart-breaking article.  Not because so-called “illegitimacy” is a disgrace, but because of what it says about the state of our collective psyche.  These women (and the men who father their children) see no reason to get married.  

Unlike families before most women worked at paying gigs, women no longer need marriage to be fiscally stable.  I always thought that was particularly offensive, as if my life could be bought by any man with a paycheck.  These days, alas, paychecks aren’t so dependable.  

Unlike families before the most recent sexual revolution in the 1960s (we can quibble about dates, but let’s not), there is no longer an expectation that newlyweds will be virgins on their wedding night.  As the article points out, that wasn’t true before – a third of brides were pregnant – but society, like Rick Santorum today, demanded that sex only take place within a marriage.  If you wanted to get laid, you wed.

Without having sex or money to use as coercion, marriages fail.  The Religious Right is very upset about this.  They have their rules about what constitutes marriage, and they get very upset when someone questions these rules.  

This is the one that gets me the most:  “Love is killed by self-sufficiency.”

That hasn’t been true in my life, but I suspect a lot of the women described in the Times story believe it.  They have to be self-sufficient, because one can’t survive in the modern world without some education, a job, and a sense of self.  Told they have to make a choice between living an honest life or getting married, they live their lives.  (I’m sure this sounds pedantically obvious to any queer people reading this.)  Marriage is something they can have when they deserve it.  In the meantime, they have their kids now.

In my experience, this is a fake choice.  My marriage isn’t about sex or money (although those elements make it both easier and more entertaining).  It’s not about mirroring a relationship with God, which, given the sex part, I find kind of a creepy concept.  If that’s what you want and/or need, go for it.  At the end of the day (and I mean that literally, not in the jargon way), I want to come home to the person with whom I have my favorite conversations.  This is a person who understands how a love letter becomes a political rant, and that every political rant is a love letter.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, admits that part of the reason she got married was so her dishes would match.