everyone “works” grimly on their relationships, and post-feminist
husbands happily cook saffron-infused porcini risotto but rarely
practice seduction on their wives? Or is it tabloid country: The land
of Jon minus Kate, and governors who vanish to “hike the Appalachian
Trail” — not to mention gossip-column fixtures like Britney Spears
(rumored last week to be contemplating her third marriage in six years)
and the mistress-parading Mel Gibson?
First of all, there is no one I want giving me romantic advice LESS than this man. Leave aside that he looks like a young Wilford Brimley, leave aside the creepy idea that either you cheat on your wife or you cook, the dude seems to fundamentally believe we need him to tell us how to be. Which is an epidemic Republican disease, but there you are.
I hate this about writing about relationships, the assumption that you’re categories, roles, that you fit into boxes and once you’re in, you’re in for life. You’re either passionate or “post-feminist,” which seems to be Douthat’s way of saying gay, with the cooking with saffron and all. Is everybody in his world that self-conscious, eager to find a social movement on which to blame their behavior? I honestly do not get this: if you do not want to cook for your wife, don’t do it. If you don’t like saffron, I know of no one, not even the most doctrinaire feminist, who would force you to eat it.
Yes, yes, metaphor, but that’s exactly my point. I don’t think we have to make some kind of choice between cheating and having a series of ugly public divorces and shaving our heads and hitting the paparazzi with baseball bats, or having a sexless marriage that you deride in public as being about “companionship.” As if having a nice friend is the worst thing in the world, as if that’s something about a billion people wouldn’t want. These aren’t the choices: instability + passion or companionship – sex. And perpetuating that idea just gives license to men and women conditioned to think that stalking, controlling and over-dramatizing mean that love is real. SeeTwilight, every romantic comedy ever made, and half the novels on the planet.
I so hate relationship trend stories, across the ideological spectrum. I want everybody to have what they want. Women, men, nobody, everybody, whatever. I want to live in a world where everyone can make the choices that suit them best, and I want to work to make that world a reality.
Ross Douthat, apparently, either wants you to cheat to prove you’re a Real Man with Passion, or shut up and eat your saffron like a good little wuss.
A.