July pleasure reading

I've just now started using Duke's library to check out books for pleasure reading. I have (no joke) 15 books checked out right now, but they're all for research purposes. Last week I put a request in for a book and I was able to pick it up on Thursday. It's called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert. She's the author of Eat, Pray, Love, which I read earlier this year. This book wasn't like her first book; it was autobiographical, but not in the same sense as EPL. In EPL she's just gotten divorced and decides to take a year to travel to learn more about who she is, and at the end of her year of travels she meets a new man and falls in love. In the years between EPL and Committed they had agreed never to get married, but because he is not an American citizen they're not able to live together in the US. He's eventually denied entry into the US and they're forced to get married so he's able to enter the country again. It takes about 10 months for everything to get straightened out, so they pass this time sort of roaming Southeast Asia, waiting for his fiance visa to be granted.



This book was pretty interesting just because she spent most of the book describing more the history of marriage than stories about her own life. She did write about how on their travels she would speak with local people and learn more about how marriage is perceived around the world to help her try to figure out why she's so wary of the whole institution. It did actually give me a lot to think about with regards to my own marriage, and I think it's good to reflect periodically.

One of the best things that she talks about in the book is the way that she describes how marriages fail when you begin to look outside of your relationship for things you should be looking for inside your relationship, when you find yourself confiding in other friends things that you used to share with only your spouse (here she references work by Shirley P. Glass). I think this is sneaky and I can see how it would happen easily. While Keegan is the only person that I share everything with, sometimes I miss when I had a several close friends that I felt I could talk to about anything. There's nothing I can't talk about with Keegan so I have no need to confide with a friend about anything, but I still think it is nice to confide in friends about at least a small number of the things you also confide in your spouse. I think there's something almost stressful about making your spouse your ONLY friend -- plus, sadly, there may come a time when your spouse is no longer around. I know with the prospect of Keegan working in another office I'm a little intimidated about what would happen if I had an emergency and I really needed someone to be there for me. I love the folks in my lab, but I don't really get the feeling that if my car broke down, I had to go to the doctor/hospital, or a close relative died that I would be able to rely on them for anything. Maybe this is a cynical view, but although we hang out together sometimes, I'm not sure if there is a line between being friends and being coworkers. Then again, I'll spend five years of my life surrounded by these people, and I'm not sure you can spend that long with anyone and not end up their friend :-)

There was a quote in her book that I found interesting; when she asked her friend why she wanted to get married and she said that a wedding "will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever". Isn't this sort of the wrong reason to get married? I think that is true with all people who get married though, at least to some extent, they let the whole world know that they are loved enough to be loved forever by one person. But isn't that a bit selfish/prideful? Should it really matter to us if "everyone" knows that we are loved?

She also dedicated a section of the book to looking at the relationship between infatuation and love. She writes, "Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job". This is so true, just looking back on my previous relationships that were sort of whirlwind in nature -- it's easy to get wrapped up in the superficial things and then sort of gloss over the rather dark details of a person.

It was also interesting to see her perspective on how religion/Christianity shaped marriage, essentially that Christianity initially tried to stomp out marriage but that in more modern times the faithful have taken the view that Christianity is the only pathway to a loving and stable marriage. She has some citations for that claim and I found this highly interesting as well. Another interesting topic she brought up was something called the "subversive" family, in that a family unit is something that no government can control. Try as they may, a government cannot monitor what is said/done in the home and the conversations that go on between family members/couples behind closed doors cannot be censured or controlled in any way. I think this was also related to her point/citations about religion, that although many religious institutions seek to control private life there's really nothing they can do to control an independent family.

All-in-all an interesting read. Since I read it in 3 days, I might re-read it before I turn it in, just to go over the finer details again :-)