The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

My Funny Valentine

It seems we are having two discussions here: writing about a rotten marriage, and having one. I agree with Hanna, I don’t know how you write a piece that begins, “I contemplate divorce every day” and not end up writing the sequel, “How I Chose My Divorce Lawyer.” Hanna, you quote Ellen Tien’s assertion, “Beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage—Everymarriage—runs the silent chyron of divorce," and wonder if those of us whose running chyron is saying “I am so lucky I am married to this man” are deluded. I agree with you, Hanna, that Tien is deluded to think there are no happy marriages, and that it demonstrates a rather narrow worldview not to understand there are many couples, who even in their worst moments, have never contemplated divorce. On the other hand, how (and why) do you write about your happy marriage? It would feel like one of those gloating Christmas letters. I grew up with a terror of marriage. My parents’ was comprehensively awful. The only thing that seemed to keep them together for 20 years was that it took them that long to finish shredding each other. I didn’t get married until I was 38, and the miracle of my life is that we have been happy for the 14 years since. But maybe this is due to the fact that early on, while watching A Few Good Men, we decided we needed a motto for our marriage and took Jack Nicholson’s line: “You can’t handle the truth!”