Monogamy: Putting the After in Happily Ever After
Owen Williams
Issue date: 3/5/10 Section: Outside the Bubble
It's easy to reminisce about the cookie-cutter images of days past, when suburban white picket fences abounded and it was still considered taboo to get a divorce. As the divorce rate climbs above 50%, these memories fade further into the background while shows like Desperate Housewives not only destigmatize affairs, but more or less make it seem glamorous to bang the postman. But the attitudes toward and experiences of monogamy really haven't changed much at all. It's the way monogamy is sold to us that's different.
Monogamous relationships have always set up contradictory desires. As far back as history can track, humans have craved the intimacy of a long involvement, but also strived to keep that sense of individual self. We like the security of routine, but we hate it when things get predictable. We love that we can know someone completely, and have that same person know us just as intimately. We often sacrifice that comfort, though, for the thrill of something different: liking someone new and feeling them liking you back is surely the best feeling in the entire world, and one you eventually give up when and if you find The One.
Monogamy is order after the chaos of dating: it's a structure to keep us sane. It can work, and when it is working, it's massively fulfilling-something spiritual even if you're not religious. Combining yourself to such an extent with someone else is an extraordinary thing, and very different to the intoxicating yet superficial first flush of infatuation we feel when we're at the start of something new.
Let's take film representations of affairs as an example. The initial marriage is often not an unhappy one-typically there is one unsuspecting and adoring spouse, and another with itchy feet. They've settled into a routine, and that monotony makes the prospect of an affair undeniably enticing. But the affairs are rarely love, despite the common and overdramatic claims of the two cheaters. It's an infatuation. The tragedy of the situation isn't that the affair can't end in love, but that love itself is revealed to be so tawdry in its details. It's easy to fall in love with someone; it's much more difficult to keep that love alive long enough to actually be together.
The point isn't that the new love is better than the other, but that it presents something different in a never-ending sea of sameness. When the affair ends, often the married couple returns to a life that was fine, if only a little stagnant. This storyline rings true in a modern setting as much as it would in 1950s Pleasantville. But when the couple doesn't want to return to their marriage, they find themselves in a situation that would differ markedly today than it did back in the fifties.
"In today's world, shows like Desperate Housewives haven't just destigmatized affairs, they've more or less made it glamorous to bang the postman."
A woman trying to divorce her husband half a century ago would have been faced with extreme difficulty, both during the legal process and while having to work to build a new life alone. We assume that the weight of morality kept couples together in more religious societies, but it may have been just plain not knowing what you'd do with yourself if you got a divorce. Well, that, and facing the condemnation of your church group and fellow neighbors.
In today's drastically less church-attending and more liberal times, divorces and infidelities are more common and it's perfectly un-weird to be single. But instead of the church, we now have a gargantuan media machine to judge us or influence us. We have a new holy house selling us the idea that marriage is the be-all, end-all of existence-or at least it's selling us weddings.
We are sold many ideas through persuasive advertising imagery in this day and age. Take this notion of "food porn"-if it looks pretty, people want to eat it. Well, this concept can certainly cross the aisle because "wedding porn" is endemic, and helps explain why a lot of marriages take place when they are clearly doomed from the start.
It isn't new. Pop culture has always sold as the wedding as a marvelous thing. But the sheer volume of outlets for this message-TVs, cinema screens, magazines-is louder now than at any time in history. Take as an example 27 Dresses, The Proposal, Made of Honor, Bride Wars, not to mention the countless reality shows whose end goal is a wedding or the bridal magazines that litter the newsstands. In film and televeision, the plot is getting us to the altar and the climax is the big finale.
The trouble with this structure, though, is that in real life, this "happy ending" is actually the start of two lives together. We're sold the lie that true love is always like that first blast of unadulterated happy, and we buy it again and again. With this idea fed to us through the near-constant IV stream of television, it's no wonder people get to the other side of a wedding and go into shock.
This is the rest of my life?!
Maybe the difference between 1945 and 2010 is that we took divorce more seriously in the past. The current generation is used to instant gratification; we believe that it's okay to dump something the second it goes out of style, and with Steve Jobs producing a new iProduct every five seconds, can you blame us?
Or maybe it's that in the past people took the idea of monogamy seriously and now, in the present, we don't feel the need or desire to think past the big party.
 Media Credit: Google Images |
Monogamy is order after the chaos of dating: it's a structure to keep us sane. It can work, and when it is working, it's massively fulfilling-something spiritual even if you're not religious. Combining yourself to such an extent with someone else is an extraordinary thing, and very different to the intoxicating yet superficial first flush of infatuation we feel when we're at the start of something new.
Let's take film representations of affairs as an example. The initial marriage is often not an unhappy one-typically there is one unsuspecting and adoring spouse, and another with itchy feet. They've settled into a routine, and that monotony makes the prospect of an affair undeniably enticing. But the affairs are rarely love, despite the common and overdramatic claims of the two cheaters. It's an infatuation. The tragedy of the situation isn't that the affair can't end in love, but that love itself is revealed to be so tawdry in its details. It's easy to fall in love with someone; it's much more difficult to keep that love alive long enough to actually be together.
The point isn't that the new love is better than the other, but that it presents something different in a never-ending sea of sameness. When the affair ends, often the married couple returns to a life that was fine, if only a little stagnant. This storyline rings true in a modern setting as much as it would in 1950s Pleasantville. But when the couple doesn't want to return to their marriage, they find themselves in a situation that would differ markedly today than it did back in the fifties.
"In today's world, shows like Desperate Housewives haven't just destigmatized affairs, they've more or less made it glamorous to bang the postman."
A woman trying to divorce her husband half a century ago would have been faced with extreme difficulty, both during the legal process and while having to work to build a new life alone. We assume that the weight of morality kept couples together in more religious societies, but it may have been just plain not knowing what you'd do with yourself if you got a divorce. Well, that, and facing the condemnation of your church group and fellow neighbors.
In today's drastically less church-attending and more liberal times, divorces and infidelities are more common and it's perfectly un-weird to be single. But instead of the church, we now have a gargantuan media machine to judge us or influence us. We have a new holy house selling us the idea that marriage is the be-all, end-all of existence-or at least it's selling us weddings.
We are sold many ideas through persuasive advertising imagery in this day and age. Take this notion of "food porn"-if it looks pretty, people want to eat it. Well, this concept can certainly cross the aisle because "wedding porn" is endemic, and helps explain why a lot of marriages take place when they are clearly doomed from the start.
It isn't new. Pop culture has always sold as the wedding as a marvelous thing. But the sheer volume of outlets for this message-TVs, cinema screens, magazines-is louder now than at any time in history. Take as an example 27 Dresses, The Proposal, Made of Honor, Bride Wars, not to mention the countless reality shows whose end goal is a wedding or the bridal magazines that litter the newsstands. In film and televeision, the plot is getting us to the altar and the climax is the big finale.
 Media Credit: Google Images |
This is the rest of my life?!
Maybe the difference between 1945 and 2010 is that we took divorce more seriously in the past. The current generation is used to instant gratification; we believe that it's okay to dump something the second it goes out of style, and with Steve Jobs producing a new iProduct every five seconds, can you blame us?
Or maybe it's that in the past people took the idea of monogamy seriously and now, in the present, we don't feel the need or desire to think past the big party.
Be the first to comment on this story