Love as an Act of Inference

My bedtime reading these days is a novel by Emily Listfield, Waiting to Surface. I'm only a few chapters into it so far, but it's making me wonder how well we can ever really know the people we love. The book's premise is that the husband of the protagonist, Sarah, disappears without a trace at a moment when they are estranged from each other and on a fast track to divorce.

While she's trying to digest the initial, nauseating news of her husband Todd's disappearance, Sarah reflects on something that resonated with me even though I'm pretty confident I'll never go through a comparable experience. (Listfield apparently based the book on her own real-life experience - a fact I'm trying hard to repress because it so horrifies me.)

People offer up fragments of themselves to friends, spouses, lovers, leaving each person to create the remaining whole according to what they have in hand, forensic scientists all. But no two pieces are precisely alike, some barely have any resemblance at all. Love, it seems, and understanding, are largely acts of inference.

(Emily Listfield, Waiting to Surface, p. 37)

Since I don't watch CSI but I did spend enough time in archives to warp my personality, the only metaphor that doesn't work for me in this passage is the "forensic scientist" bit. I'm picturing instead the archaeologist, holding shards of a life. Or even more pertinently, the historian, skimming through reams of documents that time's ravages have rendered fragile and frustratingly incomplete. The history of emotions is especially hard to reconstruct; in my dissertation research, for instance, I typically had to rely on doctors' accounts of how women reacted to giving birth, sometimes reading the doctors' descriptions against the grain.

We assume that the people we know are a whole lot transparent than that. Yes, people lie. But that's not what Sarah/Listfield is saying. She's insisting that it's in the very nature of relationships that we cannot fathom the other in his or her fullness.

In this novel, this unknowability and ambiguity lays the ground for (apparent) tragedy. Even in the absence of high drama, however, I think that our fragmentary understanding helps explain how a partner can demand a divorce, or have an affair, or suddenly declare themselves unhappy with the couple's division of labor - or maybe all of the above - and their partner may be blindsided.

Yet I suspect that recognizing love as an act of inference explains more than just the death of love. It may also hold the promise of greater happiness? Might it also be a call for humility toward our partners, which could liberate us (by, for instance, erasing the expectation that we'll always automatically be on the same page)? Might it open the possibility of continually discovering new and wonderful aspects in them? Might it suggest that terminal boredom in a marriage or other long-term relationship just means we've closed our eyes to how our partners are fundamentally unknowable?

I don't know the answer to those questions, but they remind me of Esther Perel's prescriptions for keeping a marriage erotically alive in her book, Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence. Much of her message is to cultivate a healthy distance and mystery. What Listfield suggests is that this mystery is always there, always present. Our task is to recognize it and celebrate it.

Perfect crocuses (which have withered since I took this picture behind my house). Relate this to the post as you will.

The Politics of Attraction

Bouncing off a hysterically funny post by Aunt B about the penis of one of Tennessee's douchiest state legislators, I've been thinking about how political convictions serve as a filter for who and what we find attractive. The legislator in question, Stacey Campfield, definitely fails to pass Aunt B's filter - and mine, too, now that I've seen his smarmy blog photo. The dude is not ugly - he's got the smooth, glossy looks of a former fraternity president - but geez, does he look self-satisfied. Smug is so not sexy. Especially coming from a sexist Republican.

Aunt B went on a rant inspired by Campfield's telling another legislator that if he had sex with her, he wouldn't want to pay for her children. The bottom line is that Aunt B doesn't want to think about this tool's tool:

So, here we are, forced to think about Campfield having sex. And I’m going to be honest, my first thought was that no conservative Christian woman are going to have sex with Campfield because they don’t have sex with men they aren’t married to and no libertarians are going to have sex with Campfield without him using a condom and them being on some form of birth control and no liberal woman who knows him is going to be able to have sex with him since his antics cause arid tightening in Democrats, so Campfield talking about potential kids he might or might not have is a little beside the point.

(Read the rest here.)

I just love that phrase "arid tightening."

I suppose political anti-sexiness feels different for guys - neither arid nor tight - but a similar phenomenon definitely exists for men, too. One day after last fall's election, possibly courting trouble, I asked my husband if he thought Sarah Palin was sexy. He said, well, she was pretty enough on the surface, but as soon as she opened her mouth? Both her politics and her (lack of) intelligence totally undid her looks. (My husband is clever, as you can see, but he was also perfectly sincere.)

Obviously not everyone feels that way. Lots of guys were ready to vote for Palin based solely on her sex appeal. Most of them appeared to be fellas in their 60s and 70s who'd never have a prayer with her - or at least, those were the ones willing to admit it on the Daily Show.

So here's my true confession: I once dated a guy who wasn't just a Republican, he was a minor player in California's College Republicans. Hey, I was a college freshman when I met him - not even old enough to vote - and he was a senior, so I figured he knew what he was doing. This was back in the early 1980s when moderate Republicans still existed. He was one of that dying breed, His politics tilted leftward of many present-day Democrats, even if he was also kind of an asshole. The assholery was mostly independent of his politics. In my defense I can only say that he was a pretty good kisser.

Maybe that experience also cured me of dating Republicans (and I use the term "dating" very euphemistically, since my friends and I didn't really date). As far as I know, I never got involved with another Republican again.

Oh, I know there are lots of long-term relationships - apparently happy ones - that cross party lines. During my adventures in canvassing last fall, I marveled at those households where husband and wife planned to cancel out each others' votes. In one case, they'd been doing it for 50 years. This couple was so warm and welcoming, they would have fed me cookies and iced tea if I'd been allowed to accept goodies. They were equally warm toward each other. Their political convictions seemed like a thing completely apart from their marriage.

But here's the thing. For me, my politics are my values. My values are my politics. There's no firewall between them. I'm not talking about rigid political correctness, just a deep basic commitment to the equal worth of all humans and the notion that "justice is what love looks like in public" (to quote Cornel West yet again). I can't imagine dating, much less building a life, with someone who didn't share those principles and all their ramifications. Anything else strikes me as, well, aridly tight.

Round and Round: Virtuous and Vicious Circles in Relationships

Image from Flicker use POSITiv, used under a Creative Commons license.

Earlier today, figleaf got me thinking about what it takes to keep a long-term relationship happy and not just bumbling along on life support. He wrote:

Relationship Tip #1: Caring *deeply* isn't the same as caring *perfectly.*

Much relationship [stress?] derives from confusing the two. One can wind up feeling more love, and feeling loved, when one understands the difference.

This can be a huge source of either conflict or generosity in a relationship. (And not just romantic ones.)

(The rest of his post is here.)

This made me reflect on the dynamics that kick in when people stop feeling the love. While I may sound like I'm being an old curmudgeon, taking a basically upbeat piece of advice and twisting it into its unhappy negative, what I really want to think about is how a moribund relationship can be turned around again. I’ll apologize in advance for being awfully abstract; it’s because I’m thinking about other people’s relationships, not just my own, and also because even when it comes to my own concrete experiences, they aren’t mine alone. Either way, I don't want to suggest I'm referring to anyone in particular, living or dead, human or feline, since this post isn’t about airing dirty laundry. (Though I’m sure it would be more juicy that way: I could create a bunch of fake people and give them pseudonyms, pretending that I'm writing for Cosmo instead of Kittywampus, and then we could proceed to discuss erotic uses for hair scrunchies).

I completely agree that in a basically happy, sound relationship, partners give each other the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think many grownups expect perfection. When one person goofs up – as will inevitably happen from time to time – the other partner cuts them some slack. Patience and good will beget more of the same in a kind of virtuous circle. I’d go so far as to say that this virtuous circle is a hallmark of a good relationship.

But this spirit of generous forbearance sometimes goes missing even though both people care deeply about each other. When that happens – in my experience, anyway – a lot of the gap between the depth (or even the fact) of one person’s caring, and what the other person actually perceives, comes down to communication. When a person repeatedly sends mixed signals over a sustained period of time, or just assumes that their partner knows they’re loved, it tends to obscure the caring, no matter how real or deep. Mixed messages can communicate indifference, coldness, lack of appreciation, or put-downs – even though affection isn’t dead. Sometimes both parties are equally involved in the communication breakdown; sometimes it's mainly one partner who checks out, leaving the other to wonder what happened. Either way, over the long run a recipient of mixed messages will likely stop defaulting to the assumption that their partner really does care.

At that point, the benefit of the doubt is hard to maintain, and if one partner feels that the other has withdrawn, they may reflexively do the same to protect themselves from further hurt. And this sets in motion the vicious cousin of the virtuous circle. In place of generosity come hurt, anger, alienation, and quarreling about seeming trivialities, often simmering at a low level and only occasionally boiling over. Can’t we all think of couples who’ve been frozen into this zombie-like state for years upon years – people who are actually pretty well matched and could be happy again if only they could find ways to recapture that basic sense of good will?

I’m not suggesting that generosity must be earned, or that it’s a tentative gift that can and should be withdrawn capriciously. I’m saying it can erode over time when communication is cavalier or downright hurtful, or when partners feel taken for granted.

Turning a vicious circle back to a virtuous one does usually require confrontation in order to get back to that place of generosity. And that may involve outright conflict, especially when one partner sees a problem and the other is satisfied with the status quo (or dissatisfied but unable to imagine anything better). I’ve seen that it can be turned around, but it’s hard and it only works if both people, eventually, are willing to talk about what went awry in the first place and work toward avoiding the problem in the future.

Without a willingness to confront those mixed signals – not with conflict as an end in itself, but as the first step toward reclaiming a spirit of generosity – I wonder if my own marriage might have ended up in the ranks of the undead. Instead, it’s in a mostly happy place. Given my druthers, I’d live a life free of conflict, because nothing stresses me more; nothing makes me unhappier, in the short run. Maybe that’s why it took me 40 years to figure out that avoiding conflict would make me even unhappier in the long run. But having finally begun to understand that picking one’s battles doesn’t mean avoiding them entirely, I’m now skeptical of the idea that there’s a disconnect or dichotomy between “conflict” and “generosity.”

But if confrontation stops at the conflict stage, that too is a vicious circle. I think that sometimes, the simple act of both partners clarifying their intentions, stating their intentions out loud instead of assuming that they’re evident to the other – simply saying “yes, I still love you and can’t imagine life without you” – can be the next step in the process. Somehow, one has to move through conflict and toward a real rapprochement. Substituting careful for casual communication is a pretty good start. Maybe that’s screamingly obvious, but if so, it’s much easier to say it than to live it.

And then eventually, there has to be the sort of forgiveness and mutual understanding that lets history become history. That, too, is hard, but it's not impossible, and if you can actually get there, it's so, so worth it. The thing is, forgiveness can't be rushed or short-circuited. Dwelling on the past isn't especially helpful. However - and maybe it's just my bias as a historian - I think that learning from past mistakes in hopes of not repeating them is the only way to keep the virtuous circle spiraling happily skyward.

Foolishness about Smart People and Dating

Smart kitteh from I Can Has Cheezburger?

Are smart people romantically impaired? If you believe Alex Benzer's new HuffPost piece, "Why the Smartest People Have the Toughest Time Dating," you'd think that anyone who went to an Ivy League or equivalent college was doomed to watch their genes go extinct. His basic argument is that smart people invest too much time and energy into achievement with the result that their dating and mating skills are at best vestigial, at worst nonexistent.**

I think he's full of crap. I went to two of the schools he mentions. I'll leave grad school out of this, because that's a whole 'nother kettle of fish; the demands of an academic career skew the picture. But going back to my undergrad years at Stanford, virtually everyone I know is partnered. Very, very few people I know from my college years are divorced. (I can actually only think of two examples - a couple from band who were young, neurotic, and doomed from the start, and who filed upon returning from their honeymoon - and a former housemate who was always a free spirit.) I'm willing to use my college friends' low divorce rate as a proxy for happiness in love; it's at least as scientific as Benzer's method, which is to provide no real evidence at all, only assertions about what "smart people" are like.

Now, it's possible that my friends and I killed enough brain cells to collectively reduce our IQs by 30 points, opening the way to luck in love. Maybe being in California for my undergrad years, in the mid-1980s when admissions weren't yet so cutthroat, made my experience radically different from Benzer's time at Harvard. I'm willing to grant that Harvard may be more dysfunctional than my alma maters just by virtue of its mystique, so possibly Benzer's points apply to that much smaller pool. But funny thing: I know a few Harvard grads, too, and they're no more likely than my college friends to be single or unhappily partnered. Besides, someone has to be spawning all of those legacy admissions!

So I think Benzer is just plain wrong. But parts of his argument hold just enough truth to get under my skin, and so I can't resist dissecting it piece by piece, even though it might be, uh, smarter to just ignore, ignore. (His main points are in bold and taken verbatim from his own list.)

1. Smart people spent more time on achievements than on relationships when growing up.

This is one argument that resonated with me. I wasn't achievement-oriented, per se, and I was totally clueless about the college admissions game. But I didn't spend my whole adolescence pining after boys. Most of my energy went into music because I loved it and it often gave me an excuse to skip boring, slow-paced academic classes. And so I spent most of my teenage years with my lips attached to a French horn or my fingers glued to a piano keyboard. Although that didn't stop me from being interested in boys, it did keep some crucial body parts happily busy. Sublimation is not a bad thing when you're a 15-year-old girl; it can keep you from diving deep into sex before you're emotionally ready.

But here's the thing. Just because I wasn't cultivating intense romances doesn't mean I was neglecting relationships. I had plenty of friends, boys and girls alike. Most of them were not precocious daters, either; they played in band and/or they were part of what a high school friend dubbed the "smart and chaste crowd." (That sounds more prissy than it really was; we'd had a few drinks when she said it.) While many of us weren't world-class flirts, we definitely did learn social skills. Who says sex has to be thrown into the mix at a young age in order to learn to relate to a future partner?

It's true that there wasn't much of a dating scene in college. As one friend of mine said, "No one dates at Stanford. We just sleep together." We pioneered the "hookup culture," I suppose, for good or ill. People were busy (as Benzer rightly observes), the campus was isolated from the town by large swaths of land, and most of us didn't have cars. Oddly enough, people did find romantic partners, even without much formal dating and without the elaborate bar culture that dominates social life at the university where I now teach.

2. Smart people feel that they're entitled to love because of their achievements.

This is rank bullshit. I saw plenty of entitlement during my undergrad years. I'd say 99% of it was economic. I knew a handful of rich kids who thought they were above the rules (and a few of them got busted - unsurprisingly - for plagiarism). Maybe a few of them felt entitled to love, since they already believed that Daddy's money could buy anything. More prevalent were kids who weren't rich but figured their cleverness and work ethic predestined them for wealth. It was the height of the Reagan era, after all.

But entitled to love? My college friends were just as unsure about that as any other group of people I've known. If anything, because the dating scene was so rudimentary, most of us wondered how we'd ever find love. We spent many late nights eating ramen and commiserating about our lack of prospects. Almost no one ended up single in the long run, but my friends and I couldn't envision that back in 1983.

3. You don't feel like a fully-realized sexual being, and therefore don't act like one.

Here's where Benzer gets downright retrograde. Just see what it takes to be sexual!

Now you could be absolutely stunning (in which case you're both smart AND pretty and everyone hates you except for me -- call me, like, immediately), but your identity is still bound up in being The Smart One. So maybe you dress frumpy and don't pay a lot of attention to your appearance. Or never bothered to cultivate your sensuality as a woman. Or your sexual aggression as a male.

Attracting a partner is all about the dance of polarity. Energy flows between positive and negative electrodes, anode and cathode, magnetic north and south. Unless you actually convey femininity as a woman or masculinity as a man, you're not going to attract a suitable companion of the opposite sex.

Part of the issue is this: when all of your personal energy is concentrated in the head, it never gets a chance to trickle down to the heart, or, god forbid, the groin. By virtue of being born of the union of male and female, yang and yin, you are a sexual being. Deal with it. Now do what you need to do to perpetuate the race already. Use what mama amoeba gave you.

For starters, if you're not 100% heterosexual, you're apparently SOL and Benzer can't help you. Sorry, kthx bai.

If you're straight, then you're just not trying hard enough to live up to gender stereotypes. Smart girls let themselves go! A boy will never notice you if you wear sweats to class! And smart boys aren't aggressive enough! (How this squares with a sense of sexual entitlement remains a mystery.)

In other words, smart girls had better look hot. Smart boys had better act butch.

We just need to retreat into rigid, clichéd gender roles, in Benzer's scheme, and romantic fulfillment will be ours. There's no place for female sexual initiative in this vision. Nor does he imagine men can be sensual. Heaven forbid you've got any yang mixed with your yin - or vice versa.

I can't help but think that Benzer's ideas have some kinship to that silly pseudo-survey last spring that claimed smart girls have lousy sex. On the surface, he appears to be an equal-opportunity critic of men and women, since he says men need to adjust their habits, too. Dig a little deeper, though, and his views on sexuality are equally sexist. There's nothing new at all about telling women to act more feminine and men to be more aggressive.

4. You're exceptionally talented at getting in the way of your own romantic success.

Sure. Smart people routinely overthink things. That's not limited to love.

But Benzer claims we overthink love and lust to such an extreme that we've tuned out the most basic biological wisdom:

To put it plainly, you are programmed to reproduce. Now quit thinking you're smarter than the 3 billion base pairs in your genome and 4 billion years of evolution. Actually, just stop thinking altogether. Let the program do its work.

Evidence, please?

Or is this just a backdoor way of invoking the most cartoonish principles ev psych - man hunter, woman hunted? (Nostalgia for yin/yang gender stereotypes) + (vague appeals to evolution) = (pop ev psych)!

I'm always skeptical when someone tells me to stop thinking.

5. By virtue (or vice) of being smart, you eliminate most of the planet's inhabitants as a dating prospect.

Benzer exhorts us to "loosen up" - to stop expecting to pair off with a partner who's comparably smart. The penalty for not doing so? Celibacy - or exile to Germany's fashion capital!

Do a very thorough search all over the planet and be prepared to move to Duesseldorf.

I didn't actually move to Duesseldorf. Berlin was more fun (especially for a frump: Duesseldorf is way too stylish). It's also where I conveniently met my husband while using a truly revolutionary technique for man-hunting: doing the things that already made me happy. (I met him while standing in line for symphony tickets, but that's another story.)

Benzer has a legitimate point: If you're smart and want intelligence in a partner, you do narrow your potential pool. Sometimes dramatically. It's important to be aware of the trade-offs entailed by high expectations.

What Benzer doesn't mention: Yes, holding out for someone who's a kindred spirit may mean many youthful Saturday nights spent hanging out platonically with pals. In the long run, though, being picky and knowing what you want just might increase the chances of finding a happy match. My Saturday nights are usually still just spent hanging out, now with my husband. Seventeen years after chatting him up in the ticket line, I'm nowhere close to bored with our conversation. Of course that's not due to his intelligence alone - he's kind and funny and a bunch of other good stuff - but I can't imagine being nearly as beguiled if he weren't bright enough to still surprise and challenge and delight me.

**Benzer conflates "smart" with "people who attend 'elite' schools" and I recognize how problematic this is. I had two real dates while at Stanford, and one of them was with a guy who was so dull it hurt. Conversely, oodles of brilliant people go to less fancy-pants schools or drop out altogether. (I married a high-school dropout who eventually earned a Ph.D.) Obviously, there are lots of other forms of intelligence that don't depend on being bookish, as well. So even though this post discusses academically bright high achievers who went to Ivy-ish schools, I don't for a minute think that Benzer is right when it comes to that much larger universe of smart folks, either.

In Love and Romance, Sickness and Health

All right, I'll admit it: I like getting flowers every once in a while. I don't believe they should be mandatory for a particular day, and I think the commercialization of Valentine's Day is about as sexy as the commercialization of Christmas. It's just capitalism revving its internal motor.

But still. I got flowers today and I adore them. Their backstory is pretty cool. My husband bought a raffle ticket from one of the administrative assistants in his department. He just figured he was donating $5 to one of the poorly-funded schools that borders our own relatively fortunate district. Instead, he won a dozen roses in a vase.


These are the lucky roses. (The keen eye will note the Ants in the Pants game in the background, which tells a whole 'nother story about my life.)

I love the idea of winning anything. It makes me feel lucky in general. I am totally reading this as a good omen for my whole life.

And yet, these roses pale next to to the real gift I got this Valentine's Day. My husband was supposed to spend most of the week at a conference in Germany. He didn't go. He stayed home with me instead. When he could have been reconnecting with old friends and basking in scholarly acclaim, he drove me up to Cleveland and held my hand and promised we'd get me healthy again. He didn't think twice about his decision.

That line about "in sickness and in health"? This is part of what bell hooks is getting at, I think, when she writes that romance is a fickle and a shaky foundation for a life, while love is solid but demands that we consciously choose it over and again. (I realize I keep harping on this idea of hers, maybe because its ramifications are more complicated than they first appear.)

I've been on both sides now, the sickness and the health. Both exact a higher cost than most of us imagine when we utter a vow in the flush of youth. If we're wise - or at least lucky - we keep choosing love anyway.

I see no reason to swear off romance: the butterflies, the flirtation, the vase full of red roses. Love ought to be fun, too, after all. But when the petals shrivel and fall, it's love that remains - with its constant demand to choose - challenging and sustaining us.

In Praise of Love and Limited Government

Why aren't we talking about the denial of same-sex marriage as a form of unwarranted governmental intrusion into people's private love lives? If the state is going to sponsor the institution of marriage in the first place, why on earth should it be allowed to discriminate? I do not understand why the Equal Protection Clause (14th Amendment) doesn't prohibit this discrimination. I'm still waiting for someone to explain it to me.

I may be a radical pinko ailurophilic feminist, but doggone it, here's a place for limited government. It seems like my political ilk ought to be able to make common cause with conservatives and libertarians on this issue.

And what could be more intrusive than forcibly divorcing people who've already lawfully wedded? All those couples in California who married in that golden summer and fall of marriage equality? I saw this at Shakesville and wept:



(Video by the Courage Campaign; go here to sign their petition in favor of same-sex marriage rights in California.)

In her commentary at Shakesville, Melissa McEwan remarked that she'd once lived in fear of her husband running afoul of the INS, and so she had an inkling of how it feels for the state to hold veto power over one's love affairs. Her story resonated with me. I've written about how INS officials and even customs inspectors have held my marriage briefly hostage at the U.S. border - just for giggles.

Of course, those were only transient incidents. I've enjoyed heteronormative privilege my whole life. I would've had a helluva time importing my furrin husband if he'd been my furrin girlfriend instead. While the Sungold-as-lesbian part of that scenario is hypothetical, the quandary is not. Grad school friends of mine had all sort of legal hassles, just because they were same-sex but, um, heteronational, so to speak.

Oh, and I didn't know until now who was spearheading the campaign for mass forced divorce in California. Doesn't it just figure! Our friend Ken Starr, hollowing out our privacy rights since 1998! And don't assume being hetero-anything will protect you from his wrath ...

The Song-and-Dance around Prop 8

From Funny or Die via Salon's War Room, here's the musical mockery that Prop 8 supporters so richly deserve.

From Funny or Die

I've never really thought of Jack Black as a god, but he does make a marvelous Jesus. And don't overlook Maya Rudolph and Margaret Cho among the gay-friendly earthlings. Also, I realize this is in atrocious taste, but the credits list a "Wife #1" and "Wife #2" for the anti-gay ringleader.

Hungering for Intimacy, Settling for Crumbs

Polymer clay sculpture "Petit Plat" by Flickr user sk_, used under a Creative Commons license.

Via Blue Gal and figleaf, I just read Lauren Slater's essay in the Sunday New York Times on her almost total lack of interest in sex. I've known Slater's work for about 15 years now, and try as I might to avoid it, it holds a trainwreck fascination. Long, long before there was Emily Gould and Philip Weiss, we had Lauren Slater's literary excursions into the most private, painful aspects of her life. Like Gould, she has a flair for entertaining us while she bares her underbelly. She can sometimes be lyrical. I feel compassion for her struggle with depression.

But Slater's charms rarely include wisdom. She's too busy looking in the mirror for that. Her latest essay is no exception.

Slater describes herself as having almost no desire for sex. Of course we all have times when we lose our groove, but what Slater describes is a permanent state of affairs. This is not a matter of acceptance of asexuality as an orientation; this is a situation that’s deeply affecting her marriage. And Slater's essay is an extended justification of why she has no obligation to try to change it. As a personal choice, that's for her to work out with her husband. As an ethical program, it's seriously wrong.

While Slater's self-absorption is her own unique gift, the problem is not hers alone. An estimated 20% of married couples have sex ten or fewer times per year, which is what sexologists define as a "sexless marriage." Nor is this a matter of women going "frigid." Our culture tells us repeatedly that women are less interested in sex than men, that women only do it for love/affection/diamonds, that it's women who stop feeling juicy once married. In truth, men are nearly as likely to lose their mojo. This is a gendered issue mainly on the level of cultural attitudes, though those attitudes skew our perception of who's actually affected by loss of libido.

It's natural for people to go through occasional slumps. We're pregnant or breastfeeding. Kids deplete us. A career sucks all the energy out of one or both partners. That's not what Slater is describing. Nor is this a situation where partners' libidos are mildly mismatched - where, say, one wants it daily, the other once a week, but both basically do want it. Nearly all couples have to reach some compromise on frequency. That, too, is a normal and inevitable challenge in any long-term relationship.

What Slater portrays instead is a sexual relationship that has basically ceased because one partner doesn't want intimacy for months and years on end. Sometimes this can be due to physical causes - hormone levels, disease, etc. - but Slater has had enough of doctors and insists that her state is simply her normal. I can empathize with her need to protect one area of her life from being pathologized (she's already had to deal with cancer and depression). Still, by simply declaring her state "normal" - and doing so in the New York Times! - she's drawing a line in the sand and refusing to even try to revitalize her connection to her husband. Again, that's her personal choice, but when you publish it in the Times, even as a highly personal essay, it becomes a rationalization with broader cultural import.

It's one thing if a person declines to marry in the first place, realizing they just don't like sex. This, by the way, is one reason everyone has a stake in asexuality being recognized as a legitimate orientation. It could save a lot of heartbreak. Closeted asexuality is analogous to closeted homosexuality. No one wins when someone chooses marriage on false pretenses or in part to prove their sexual "normalcy." In both cases, the unsuspecting spouse can be deeply hurt, and the marriage is unlikely to survive. (Think "Brokeback Mountain" except entirely without the sex.)

Slater, however, understood her libidinal economy before she married her husband. She knew she couldn't stay sexually interested in a man for more than six months. She married her husband anyway. Whether he knew that about her or not (and the essay doesn't tell us), he's clearly not okay with the lack of sex.

Here's where Slater's self-justifications kick in. She writes that she's just wired in such a way that she can respond to a brand-new partner, but the thrill quickly fades and she'd rather play checkers. I'm not knocking checkers, but her partner could play that with anyone. There's only one game he's promised to play with her, and her alone.

The problem in valorizing asexuality within a previously sexual relationship is that it basically gives one partner license to say, "OK, we're done with sex now," and expect the other partner to be faithful and essentially celibate. If you're in a committed monogamous relationship, it's passive aggressive to expect your partner to quit caring about sex on cue. Unfortunately, unless the partner goes on anti-depressants, there's no spigot they can turn to switch off their sex drive.

If this situation turns permanent and the no-libido partner refuses discussion or compromise, it's a cruel trap for the partner. He or she has three options: 1) Resignation to a life without sex. 2) Cheating. 3) Or trying to negotiate an open relationship. The first option is very painful. The second is broadly regarded as immoral. As for the third? For all the blog chatter about polyamory, I can't see how that could constitute a real solution to a sexless marriage. What incentive does a sexually disinterested partner have to consent to an open relationship? Either they have no libido, period, and thus nothing to gain personally. Or opening the relationship reveals that they still have desire, all right, just none for their partner - which is liable to blow everything sky high. So the partner is left with no reasonable solutions. Oh, and let's not forget that the partner may not want to have sex with anyone other than the person they loved and desired enough to promise fidelity.

Slater opts for a version of openness that's yet another double bind. She tells her husband he can do other people, he just can’t care about them. He sensibly realizes that his heart doesn't work that way; if he has sex, he can't just treat his partner as a blow-up doll. (My phrase, not his. One problem with this essay is that we get very little sense of his feelings, other than that he's evidently aggrieved.)

In trying to empathize with his situation, I think the old food-sex analogy works pretty well, even if, like any analogy, it has its limits. We all know people who don't particularly care about food, who take little pleasure in eating, who wolf down whatever's placed in front of them. This is not pathological. It's normal variation. I'll gladly grant Slater that point.

However: Imagine your spouse skips most meals due to dieting or just a lack of enthusiasm for food. And then imagine he or she expects you to adopt the same eating habits, renouncing breakfast and dinner and subsisting on 600 calories a day for the rest of your life. Those meals you eat together may be pleasurable or rancorous; you probably won't physically starve; but you will in any event be seriously deprived. Oh, and remember: you don't get to eat out in this regimen - or if you do, you aren't supposed to converse with your dining partner (in the scenario Slater offers her husband) and afterward you'd better feel guilty.

And so the hungry partner is left with crumbs. Slater doesn't tell us how often she and her husband have sex, which is probably just as well. We already know more about Slater than I really needed to know. (I'm not gonna even touch her anecdote about claiming sexual trauma when she just wanted to stay a virgin a while longer! Go read the essay; it really is a trainwreck.) Slater hints that they still couple occasionally. I don't know how her husband perceives these encounters. But I'd sure feel like it was pity sex - especially if my partner had written that essay, and I'd read it.

Slater writes of her hopes that they’ll eventually emerge from their conflicts over sex and be a happy, harmonious couple again:

A gulf of loneliness enters the marriage; the rift it creates is terribly painful. My sincerest hope is that once we make it through these very stressful years, assuming we come out the other end, my husband and I will be able to reconnect.

But when would she expect that beautiful new era to dawn? When will those stressful years come to an end? When her husband is too physically infirm from old age to want it anymore?

The sad thing is that both partners suffer from the rift. She admits her own loneliness. Her husband's cannot be less than hers.

Again, this isn't just Slater's problem, and not just her husband's, though her version of it is particularly complicated. It's widespread. It plays a big role in the American divorce rate. Kids and extended families suffer along with the couples involved.

I don't have any easy solutions. I realize that physical, psychological, and relationship issues all can play a role when libido dies, and each couple faces a unique constellation. I also see that it's a couple's problem and not just an individual's.

Still, I hate to end a post in a hopeless key. Not to drive the food analogy into the ground (okay, I will anyway), but I really like what Dr. Ruth has to say about flagging desires:

Sex is the glue that holds a relationship together, so couples need to maintain their sex lives. Just because one or both partners don't really feel "in the mood" is no excuse to abandon hope. Be persistent.

The French have an expression, "L'appetit vient en mangeant," which means "your appetite comes as you eat." Even if a couple doesn't feel like making love, they should make an appointment, take their clothes off and climb into bed together. Most of the time this will be enough to get them started.

Dr. Ruth's advice isn't a substitute for wanting your partner to want you. I doubt that it's adequate to Slater's relatively extreme situation. It won't magically resolve long-term fears of intimacy, which Slater admits to having. She closes her essay with an extended metaphor about how she prefers granite to sex; she means to convey her plan to build a solid and beautiful home for her family, but the symbolism of cold stone gets away from her and loops back - whether she wants it or not - to her fear of too much closeness, too much vulnerability.

As Blue Gal said, it's not our place to try to fix Slater. (If we did, she'd be out a career. And we bloggers would have to find someone else to vent about.)

But we can set a banquet in our own lives. We can lay the table. We can do it often, not just on special occasion. We can invite our partners to feast. And when they do, we can be mindful that it's an honor and a blessing.

The Thing with Feathers

I know that we're all still supposed to be jubilant over the election. This is supposedly our honeymoon, these days between Obama's victory and his inauguration, before he's had a chance to start disappointing us in earnest. But elation hasn't been my mood; not at all. Maybe I'm just too tired from the endless campaign, but I've felt cautious, depleted, reflective, even a little melancholy. The November days are short and bleak, and the thing with feathers threatens to fly south for the winter.

Photo by Flickr user tanakawho, used under a Creative Commons license. No birds were harmed in its making.

And so I find myself mulling over this business of "hope" and what it's good for - what the "thing with feathers" might animate, beyond the sloganeering.

For one thing, I think hope is an effective antidote to fear. As such, it's crucial to real democracy. Of all the laws and policies born of fear during the past eight years - the Patriot Act, the Abu Ghraib interrogations, the Guantanamo Bay internments, the rampant wiretapping - I can't think of one that was wise (and many were plain unconstitutional). Fear turns off people's critical faculties and turns citizens into subjects.

Uncritical hope can be exploited by demagogues, too, but not so easily. Hope is not self-sustaining: Reality has a way of intruding on hope while tending to reinforce people's fears. Historically, dictatorships have rested far more on fear than on hope, and idealistic revolutions-gone-bad have always shifted from hope toward fear before spawning such atrocities as Stalinism or the Terror. Hope can move people to take to the streets, but fear is a far more potent motivator if you're out for blood.

But even in times of threat and crisis - especially then - hope can lead us back to our core values. Hope can guide us toward a foreign policy aimed at strength through alliances rather than intimidation and militarism. Hope can inspire an economic rescue plan aimed at restructuring our economy - moving our automotive industry away from gas guzzlers and our energy infrastructure toward renewables - instead of just panicking and giving AIG and Citibank whatever they want.

Hope itself is a renewable energy source. We're going to need that in the months and years ahead.

Hope is also a gift to our children. It's an example of how to live, a precondition for making the world better for them, a source of joy. It can help them cope with their nascent awareness of injustice and violence; it can nurture their empathy and protect them against cynicism. It's part of the very air I want them to imbibe. I just loved how Tim Wise captured this in a recent essay on Alternet:

[M]aybe it's just that being a father, I have to temper my contempt for this system and its managers with hope. After all, as a dad (for me at least), it's hard to look at my children every day and think, "Gee, it sucks that the world is so screwed up, and will probably end in a few years from resource exploitation...Oh well, I sure hope my daughters have a great day at school!"

Fatherhood hasn't made me any less radical in my analysis or desire to see change. In fact, if anything, it has made me more so. I am as angry now as I've ever been about injustice, because I can see how it affects these children I helped to create, and for whom I am now responsible. But anger and cynicism do not make good dance partners. Anger without hope, without a certain faith in the capacity of we the people to change our world is a sickness unto death.

(Read the whole essay, "Enough of 'Barbiturate' Left Cynicism," here.)

Paired with a sense of responsibility, hope is also a lot of work. (Maybe that, too, is why I feel so darn tired?) That's where Emily Dickinson got it wrong. She wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

I actually think hope demands our all. It's voracious. It will swallow us whole. And so technically, I guess, it won't "ask a crumb of me" since it doesn't settle for crumbs.

Hope is much like bell hooks' notion of love as she describes it in her essay, "Romance: Sweet Love." Unlike romance (which she equates with infatuation and putting up a false front), love requires a choice, hooks writes. Love demands that we commit to it over and over and over again, every day, for as long as we want it to endure. I think hope is like that too; anything easier isn't hope, it's mere romance and self-delusion.

In other words, hope is a whole lot like a longstanding marriage. It's not always easy to sustain. It requires a body-and-soul commitment. It demands our energy.

But like love and marriage, hope can give energy, too. And when that alchemy of hope occurs, that's when the thing with feathers takes wing. That's when its chirps meld into full-fledged song. That's when it keeps us warm.

Photo of a lovely befeathered kitty named Lynksys by Flickr user SuziJane, used under a Creative Commons license.

Hearts of Stone

This is just so wrong and terrible in so many different ways:

A 13-year-old girl who said she had been raped was stoned to death in Somalia after being accused of adultery by Islamic militants, a human rights group said.

Dozens of men stoned Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow to death Oct. 27 in a stadium packed with 1,000 spectators in the southern port city of Kismayo, Amnesty International and Somali media reported, citing witnesses. The Islamic militia in charge of Kismayo had accused her of adultery after she reported that three men had raped her, the rights group said.

(Source: Huffington Post)

Let's take apart this atrocity one piece at a time:

• The girl was thirteen.
• She was apparently already married, otherwise the charge would not have been adultery but fornication or similar.
• She was raped. At age thirteen.
• Her story was not believed. This accords with Shariah law, which automatically considers a man's word more credible than a woman's.
  
• She was sentenced to death.
• Authorities allowed the sentence to be carried out.
• The execution was performed in a particularly brutal way.
• Her death was cheered on by a crowd of 1000 spectators.

Of course, Somalia is a mess. There's no rule of law. Various factions are fighting each other.

Even so. If anyone is wondering why feminism hasn't withered away, here's one compelling reason.

And lest we're tempted to "Other" this atrocity and ascribe it to the "backwardness" of other nations and religions: Thirteen-year-olds are raped in the United States every day. Women's basic credibility was challenged in American rape trials until very recently. By this, I don't mean that the accused was (rightly) presumed innocent, but that the accuser was presumed to be a crazy vindictive lying slut until proven otherwise. Even today, victims of sexual assault too often find themselves having to defend their sexual histories in court.

Oh, and don't forget: Even though my country is not ruled by extremist militias, we've still allowed the rule of law to be hollowed out over the past seven years. We have plenty of our own, home-grown (Christian) fundamentalists who believe women deserve punishment for expressing their sexuality (preferably, in the form of a baby, though disease will do the trick, too). And among the rich and privileged countries, we stand alone in employing the death penalty.

Sex, Lies, and (Heterosexual) Marriage

From I Can Has Cheezburger?

Riffing off my last post: One of the crazy thing about straight people's monopoly on marriage is how often we make a hash of it. Exhibit A: Tara Parker-Pope's interesting article on infidelity in yesterday's New York Times:

The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage.

But detailed analysis of the data from 1991 to 2006, to be presented next month by Dr. Atkins at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando, show some surprising shifts. University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991.

The researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages. About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively.

Anyone still want to defend Prop 8 to me? Because I'm pretty sure that even Pat Robertson couldn't pin straight people's infidelity stats on gays and lesbians! (He might try, though.)

To my mind, the most puzzling finding that Parker-Pope reports is the discrepancy between men's and women's reported rates of infidelity:

It is not entirely clear if the historical gap between men and women is real or if women have just been more likely to lie about it.

“Is it that men are bragging about it and women are lying to everybody including themselves?” Dr. Fisher [Helen E. Fisher, research professor of anthropology at Rutgers] asked. “Men want to think women don’t cheat, and women want men to think they don’t cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.”

Dr. Fisher notes that infidelity is common across cultures, and that in hunting and gathering societies, there is no evidence that women are any less adulterous than men. The fidelity gap may be explained more by cultural pressures than any real difference in sex drives between men and women. Men with multiple partners typically are viewed as virile, while women are considered promiscuous. And historically, women have been isolated on farms or at home with children, giving them fewer opportunities to be unfaithful.

But today, married women are more likely to spend late hours at the office and travel on business. And even for women who stay home, cellphones, e-mail and instant messaging appear to be allowing them to form more intimate relationships, marriage therapists say. Dr. Frank Pittman, an Atlanta psychiatrist who specializes in family crisis and couples therapy, says he has noticed more women talking about affairs centered on “electronic” contact.

I vote for the theory that women have been more apt to lie about it. And here's why: All those married men have to be cheating with someone.

Who are these men's extramarital partners? Let's say that sex with prostitutes accounts for some of men's infidelity. Let's posit that some of it comes from affairs with single women. I'm skeptical that women in these two categories account for the entire 15 percentage point difference in the early nineties or the 13 point difference today. Logically, some of that difference must be due to their having married female partners who lied to the researchers.

Why would women be more likely to lie? It's not just that they're branded as promiscuous more readily than men. They've also traditionally been more economically dependent on their spouses, which means they had more to lose if word of an affair got out. This gave them a stronger incentive to cover their tracks - including on research questionnaires. Conversely, a woman who could support herself in a pinch might be more likely to reveal her secrets to a researcher. And there are more women in that position today than a generation ago.

Of course, economic power also correlates with likelihood to stray, period. Note that the anthropological data cited in the NYT suggest this, as well, since gathering is at least as crucial as hunting in susbsistence societies. For those of us here in the wealthy West, the narrowing of the gendered pay gap likely means that some of the increase in women's infidelity is real and not just a reflection of greater truth-telling.

The generational data lend further support to the hypothesis that more women than men have lied to the researchers. Young women trail young men in the infidelity sweepstakes by only five percentage points. The gap for the over-60 crowd is thirteen points. This discrepancy can be explained by women's relative chastity only if you assume that men of the older generation were much more likely than younger men to hire prostitutes or preferentially seek out affairs with single women. I can't see any reason why that would be true.

As Dr. Gregory House says: Everyone lies.

I'd add: Everyone lies about sex. Everyone lies even more about illicit sex. And "everyone" will tilt female as long as women still face greater social stigma and economic penalties than men who make similar sexual choices.

A Wedding Blessing

Blue Gal alerted me to today's blogswarm against California's Prop 8.

As you know, here in Ohio we have worries of our own. (Please oh please let us not be the state that throws the election to the Republicans again!) But I have lots of family and friends in California. For some of them, their current right to get married hangs in the balance.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago how the supporters of this proposition are making fools of themselves trying to stir up people's fears. So I won't go there again today.

Instead, I'll just say that the wedding I mentioned in that previous post - between two women who've been together thirty-five years - is going forward this weekend at my mom's church. She's working the wedding, so she'll be the person who deals with the florist and helps the brides find anything they need and cleans up afterward. (Hey, it's not all glamour.)

For years, some of her church's neighbors have demonized it - quite literally - for its support of the town's small gay community. One person dubbed it "the devil church" in the local newspaper's letters section. Hateful graffiti was aimed against it. I'm so pleased and proud that her congregation didn't cave in to intimidation. (I also totally don't get how people who claim to worship a God of love and forgiveness express it through rage and hate.)

While not everyone in her church is supportive of same-sex marriage, my mom feels tickled and honored to be playing a role as her congregation blesses a same-sex union for the first time ever. My mom is seventy-four. She wouldn't have gotten behind even the idea of this twenty years ago. Now she's thrilled for the brides. How did she evolve? Mostly just by getting to know actual gays and lesbians and becoming friends with them.

If Prop 8 passes, this will be both the first and the last same-sex wedding performed in her church. If Prop 8 goes down, it will be the most wonderful honeymoon present possible. As I said, they've been together 35 years. They don't need crystal or china. Just this: Your no vote on Prop 8 (if you live in California) or your reminder to friends who live out there (if you don't).

Some People Are Just Jealous 'Cause No Princess Will Have Them

Seriously, are Pepperdine University professors worried that no girl will be interested in them if she can get hot princess-on-princess action instead? Ewww!



I have only one nice thing to say about this hateful ad for Proposition 8 in California (the one that would ban same-sex marriage): I am so amazed, and heartened, that my mom is the person who alerted me to it. Indignantly. While informing me that she's happy to be the wedding helper at her church as it conducts its first-ever same-sex ceremony.

The two brides have been together for 35 years, and they're rushing to marry - for the second time, following a Canadian ceremony - before California voters have a chance to shut down the option. Yes, they're sort of past the princess stage. It's still the most romantic story I've heard in ages.

More Musings on the Edwards Affair

The night before last, in a fit of curiosity, I cross-posted my essay Surviving Cancer, Surviving Affairs on Salon's new blogging/social-networking platform, Open Salon. I've been a long-time Salon reader, so I was curious to test-drive this new feature. My post somehow caught the eye of Salon's editor-in-chief, Joan Walsh, who quoted a lengthy excerpt in her column.

All of which was kind of cool, but since the excerpt didn't include the part where I said "that doesn't mean it was right" for John Edwards to cheat on his wife, a lot of letter-writers who responded to Joan Walsh's column felt that she and I were making excuses for him.

So I'll just say it one more time, with feeling: He done her wrong. John did not have Elizabeth's blessing to go outside the marriage. Her statements make clear that she was deeply, deeply hurt.

At the same time, I'm still frustrated by the dominant but simplistic trope of "what kind of a monster cheats on a sick spouse?" For those who've never experienced cancer or other serious illness, it may be hard to imagine how illness and its aftermath can mess with people's heads and hearts. Otherwise decent people can make hurtful decisions when they're not thinking or feeling straight. This goes for patients and caretakers alike.

Moreover, sexual infidelity is only one possible form that failure and betrayal can take. I have not slept with anyone other than my husband since I married him, 14 years ago to this day. I believe he can truthfully say the same. And yet, we've both failed each other in a variety of ways, as long-term partners inevitably will. Most of these failures occurred in the aftermath of illness. By now, we're back in a pretty good place, but it took work. It took us recommitting to each other again and again.

In that light, John Edwards' behavior looks wrong but not incomprehensible. It's harder to see him as Evil, though we may still see him as weak. He's not inhuman. He's just human.

And if we acknowledge that, then we have to inject a little humility into the three-ring-circus of judgmentalism. We have to let his family and his higher power judge his private misdeeds.

As for his public misdeeds, I purposely didn't address them in my original post. I chose to "write what I know" because I thought I could shed a different light than most of the commentary I'd read, and because I wanted to engage a conversation on relationships and serious illness. That doesn't mean I believe the political questions are trivial. On the contrary! I just thought others were covering the political side much more thoroughly.

As more facts and questions have come to light, though, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that l'affair Edwards might dog the Democratic Party through the rest of this election cycle. So, for the record, here is how I think it genuinely affects the public interest.

First, there's the question of whether the affair began before Rielle Hunter was hired. Some sources suggest this was the case. If so, then Edwards can fairly be accused of misappropriating campaign funds in hiring her.

Second, we know that Hunter has received millions of dollars, ostensibly to help rebuild her life after harassment by the tabloids. To me, this goes a tad beyond the call of kindness. (We should all have such generous friends in our lives!) Again, if any of this money came from political contributions, whoever is responsible needs to be held accountable.

Third, it was unquestionably reckless for Edwards to run for president with a major skeleton in his closet. In an ideal world, voters could distinguish between private behavior and public competence. But in America, they don't. And so the philandering politician lies. And then he gets caught. And then half of America is shocked at his sexual activities, while the other, purportedly more liberal half, cries: "It's not the sex! It's the lying!" - never mind that the lies were about entirely private (albeit foolish) behavior. Yeah, it's politically immature of us. But that's how things work in America, and Edwards knows this; he's too savvy a politician to claim naivete. He knew full well that if his affair became public, his chances at the presidency would be toast. And so he not only wronged Elizabeth, he also deceived his supporters and put the future of his party at risk. Imagine if he were the presumptive candidate right now!

Fourth, I'm suspicious about why Rielle Hunter is refusing to allow a paternity test to be conducted. Could it be that she's being paid off on the condition that she continues to refuse testing? This would allow John Edwards to act innocent - he's agreed to be tested - without putting him at any risk.

All of these unanswered questions are at least a distraction from Obama's campaign efforts. At worst, they may become a drag on the Democratic party, including the down-ticket races. I assume Edwards went public now in hopes of averting a big blow-up closer to November 4, but if he has failed to come clean - or worse, appears to be harboring more secrets - his grand confession will have been for naught.

And then there's one other thing that's bugging me, which is in a totally different register. Why does so much of the commentary revolve around the question of "why men cheat"? Sure, very, very few female politicians have been caught out in sex scandals. But garden variety affairs normally require two partners, and very often both are married. The statistics on infidelity are not terribly reliable, but on average they seem to show about a ten percentage-point gap between married men and married women. So why do we cling to this narrative of faithless men getting it on with desperate/victimized/conniving single gals?

I guess that loops back to my original frustration with the simplistic stories we Americans want to tell ourselves about that complex and mysterious thing, marriage.

Surviving Cancer, Surviving Affairs

So I wasn't entirely shocked at John Edwards' admission that he'd had an affair in 2006. Mostly, I was relieved that Elizabeth Edwards wasn't standing by his side. Maybe everyone learned from the sad spectacle of Silda Spitzer that the straying mate only looks worse when the spouse appears beside him while he makes his confession.

While most of the non-tabloid media attention has focused on how Edwards' disclosure might affect the presidential race, I've been obsessing instead on the connections between cancer, survivorship, sexuality, and relationships.

Now, I don't know anything about the Edwards' marriage. I believe that all marriages are deep mysteries - often enough to the partners themselves, and certainly to the outside world. I do know something about surviving cancer, however, and the still-taboo topic of how it can affect a marriage or other committed relationship.

The facts, as we know them, are that John Edwards had an affair in 2006 with a video producer for his campaign, Rielle Hunter. He has specifically said it occurred at a time when Elizabeth's cancer was in remission. It ended well before she was diagnosed with a recurrence in March of 2007. Indeed, he confessed to her back in 2006 and asked her for her forgiveness. She decided to stay in the marriage.

What follows is informed speculation. It's based on a mixture of my own experiences as a spouse of a two-time cancer survivor (a term my husband and I both dislike, because it falsely implies the experience is finite) and those of other couples who've dealt with cancer. In the interest of everyone's privacy, I've blurred some of my experiences with those of others.

For most couples going through cancer, the diagnosis and immediate treatment are a time of solidarity. The healthy partner supports and cares for his or her partner during chemo or radiation or recovery from surgery - or some combination of the above. The sick partner rallies to the extent physically possible and is grateful for support from every quarter, but especially from the caretaking spouse. You each marvel at the others' strength, and you're grateful that you have each other. (I realize a few spouses totally freak out, but I'm pretty confident that most react by drawing on their better angels.)

Then, abruptly, treatment ends. And you have to figure out how to rebuild your lives, and how to be a "normal" couple again. Nobody warns you about this. There's no roadmap. You might not even realize you're still on a major journey until you're already lost deep in the woods. No wonder lots of people's relationships founder.

Here are some of the ways the survivor can react. He or she can pretend everything is okay, which is right in line with the cultural script, but is bound to fail. He or she might fall into deep depression. Or act positively manic. Or be paralyzed with anxiety. Or try to make up for lost time by acting like a teenager. Or dwell obsessively on every bodily twinge. Or go on a fitness kick. Or any combination of the above, plus a whole kaleidescope of other possible reactions.

Through all of this, the overwhelming cultural message is very simple: You should be deeply grateful to be alive.

The post-treatment process of coping and rebuilding and grieving is more complicated, of course, if treatment has affected the person's sexuality. That's perhaps obvious for breast or uterine or prostate cancers. But chemotherapy often has medium-to-long-term effects on hormone levels and libido. Surgery and scars can lead to feelings of unattractiveness. I've heard anecdotally of prostate cancer survivors who became so depressed about their sexual losses that they took their own lives. So much for survivorship.

What's more, any form of cancer can result in profound alienation from one's own body. If your cells have risen up against you, how can you trust your own flesh? How can you revel in it again? And if you do find a way back to pleasure, will you still include your partner in it?

(That last question goes back to a woman I knew who'd had surgery for breast cancer, then got reconstructive surgery several years later. She was thrilled with her new shape. Soon thereafter she divorced her husband of 20 years. I don't know exactly what happened between them - they'd also spent years living in a trailer while building a house with their own hands - but clearly her "new" body played some role as a catalyst.)

The "healthy" partner, too, has to readjust, though he or she may not even realize this. Speaking for myself, I was so invested in the idea that I couldn't burden my husband with mundane frustrations that I bottled up a lot of resentments, and I had to learn again that he was strong enough to be an equal partner - that I didn't have to "protect" him constantly. I'm pretty sure there are lots of variations on these themes, too.

Both partners may be just sick to death of sickness. And that's the first thing my husband said when I mentioned John Edwards' confession. He said, maybe Edwards had an affair because he just wanted things to be normal again. Maybe he was tired of cancer and treatment.

My first thought was that maybe one or both of them just couldn't see a way to reconnect erotically after breast cancer. Speaking only for myself again, when I had a scare with an unclear mammogram - one that took months to clear up - I felt profoundly alienated from my body as a source of pleasure. And I didn't even have cancer, just a bad case of paranoia!

Maybe having an affair when your spouse has just faced down mortality is a way of affirming your own survival. Maybe it's a form of denial about your partner's mortality, and your own. This might be just an extension of the stereotypical mid-life crisis - but cranked up to eleven.

And maybe, with the pressures of raising two young kids and running for president (which I'd bet are only one notch tougher than raising two young kids and teaching at a university!) the Edwards just hadn't yet figured out how to be a couple together again.

In the end, why John Edwards strayed will remain a mystery to everyone outside his family, and that's only right. They deserve their privacy. A marriage should remain a mystery to everyone outside it.

And yet, while he publicly said he had an affair because he'd grown selfish while campaigning, I think his motivations must be more complex. No one comes through cancer treatment unscathed. Not the patient, and not his or her partner.

With this in mind, I don't think you have to approve of his actions to acknowledge that both he and Elizabeth were under tremendous pressure, and that his affair might be at least partly a reaction to their cancer crisis. That doesn't mean it was right. It's even possible he's just a horndog on the Bill Clinton model - though my gut feeling is that he's not.

I just think there's way more room here for compassion than for judgment.

Finally, I think this news may illuminate why Elizabeth Edwards decided to stay on the campaign trail after her recurrence was diagnosed, and why she seemed to arrive at her decision so quickly. As the AP reports:

In a statement last night, Elizabeth Edwards said that after a "long and painful process" she decided to stand by her husband. Mrs. Edwards called the affair a "terrible mistake" but said the healing process was "oddly made somewhat easier" after her diagnosis of a reoccurrence of breast cancer in March 2007.

First, it sounds to me very much as though the new diagnosis put the Edwards back into the "let's fight this beast together" mode. And secondly, Elizabeth had already decided to stick with John after he'd disappointed her. Cancer, at least, is impersonal in its cruelty. Having forgiven her husband for his deliberate actions, Elizabeth had already cast her lot with him. I can totally understand why she wouldn't let cruel but impersonal fate affect her loyalty.

Sungold, the 1930s Housewife? Oh-oh!

I found this quiz via Sally at Jump off the Bridge (who scored even lower than I - should I be ashamed of myself?). I can't vouch for its authenticity but the gist of it definitely hits the right tone. (Guys, you don't get off scot-free. There's a version for husbands, too.)

31 As a 1930s wife, I am Poor Take the test!

Here are a few of my many failings as a 1930s Hausfrau:

• Doesn't want to get up to prepare breakfast. (But does it anyway, churlishly, which I think docked me another point, too, along with not being properly dressed for the occasion.)
• Eats onions, radishes, or garlic before a date or going to bed. (C'mon! Onion and garlic are two basic food groups.)
• Fails to sew on buttons or darn socks regularly. (I do the occasional button. But - darn it! - that's all.)
• Gives husband shampoo or manicure. (No, but come to think of it, the shampoo idea could be fun ...)
• Neat housekeeper--tidy and clean. (I do just enough to keep the health department at bay.)
• Puts her cold feet on husband at night to warm them. (Who else am I supposed to warm them on?)
• Saves punishment of children for father at night. (I'm not quite sure what the right answer is here ... but I think the 1930s housewife was supposed to defer to the father's authority. My kids would've long forgotten their offense by then.)
• Squeezes tooth paste at the top. (And wouldn't want to marry anyone anal enough to call that a dealbreaker.)
• Tells risque or vulgar stories. (Worse yet, occasionally posts them on the Internet.)
• Wears red nail polish. (On my toenails, which must count as doubly improper.)

I'm pretty sure I got good wifey points for these:

• Can play a musical instrument, as piano, violin, etc. (I love my piano.)
• Good seamstress--can make her own clothes or the children's clothes. (Not that I have, lately, but in theory I could. I also have been working on curtains for the kids' rooms for about the past two year and plan to finish them just in time for the kids to hit puberty.)
• Reacts with pleasure and delight to marital congress. (Delight is a nice word for it. But! I suspect that too much delight might collide with the "feminine" and "dainty" standard.)
• Seams in hose often crooked. (I don't wear hose, ergo I couldn't fall down on this score.)

Mostly, the bar is set pretty low for the gentlemen (though apparently onion and garlic are equal-opportunity failings):

• A chronic ailer or patent medicine addict.
• Angry if newspaper is disarranged.
• Belches without apology or blows nose at table.
• Leaves car for wife on days she may need it.

And then there are a few lovely holdovers from the 1920s invention of mutual marital pleasure:

• Ardent lover--sees that wife has orgasm in marital congress.
  
• Gives wife real movie kisses not dutiful "peck" on the cheek.
• Has date with wife at least once per week.

If you take the quiz, do share your score in comments (or link back to your blog)!

Marriage, Equal Protection, and the Limits of "Tolerance"

The purpose of this post is mostly to do what my students did yesterday in class: to give a loud cheer for the California Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex unions can't be treated as legally second class. Yay!!

I was just about as heartened by the students' reaction as by the ruling itself. Through discussions with them, I know that a good 80% of them don't have a problem with gay marriage. When opposition drops that low - in Ohio, for goodness sake, no bastion of liberalism - it's a hopeful sign for the future. They will outlive the older generations who still think the sun ought to revolve around the earth.

The rest of my students still have issues with homosexuality, ranging between aesthetic disgust and religious qualms - but they're aware enough of their minority status that they're slow to voice their feelings, and I notice a change in this even over the past five years. That 10 to 20% probably felt alienated by the cheering. They'll have to get used to it. Homophobia is moribund. It's already a social embarrassment in their generation, much like overt racism is in mine. And they know it.

But if you push hard, you still discover limits to "tolerance" even in the ostensibly pro-inclusion supermajority. For instance, some students still say that they don't understand why gay people (and here they really mean gay men) "have to flaunt it." As if a once-a-year gay pride event with men in nothing but lederhosen weren't totally offset by the heterosexual spectacle on the streets and in the bars of this college town every weekend - and remember, the weekend starts on Thursday night, and on Wednesday in fine weather. The women's clothes barely keep them from getting arrested - and the displays of heterosexuality are, well, blatant! Shocking! You see boys and girls together and golly, they flaunt it!

Another gripe a few of my straight students expressed was "why do 'they' have to be so angry at heterosexuals - aren't they doing the same thing as the anti-gay people?" Well, sure, it's exactly the same - if the gay haters feel they can't hold hands in public or be open about their sexuality at work or adopt children or walk down the street without fear. Even otherwise well-meaning young people may still have a hard time seeing how oppression creates asymmetries that make anger mean something totally different among oppressed people.

Despite the limits of "tolerance," I still think the California ruling shows how far this sea change has come and how irresistible it will be in the future. It's of course wonderful news for the couples who will now have a real choice about how to organize their lives. It's also a delicious irony in that six of the seven judges on the court are Republican appointees. More power to them for embracing the law and fairness rather than caving to political pressure.

While I'm no legal expert, two things popped out at me from Glenn Greenwald's analysis that portend well for the future. First, the court specifically left open the possibility that California could comply with its state constitution by essentially establishing civil unions for all couples, gay and straight, and leaving "marriage" to the churches. This is a solution that I've favored for years, having seen how successful it's been in European countries. First, the distinction draws a clear, bright line between church and state, which benefits both in the end. Second, with that distinction already in place, European governments have had a fairly easy time implementing same-sex unions. Of course, they don't have organized wingnut opposition - groups like the Concerned Women of America strike them as almost a joke - though some of them, like Spain, did face the Catholic Church. But keeping church marriage distinct allows religions to have their own sphere of influence without dictating public policy.

Second, while the court emphasized that its ruling was based on the state constitution and not on the federal one, its rationale - equal protection under the law - illumniates the path that I think this country will ultimately have to take, whether we keep marriage under state control or redefine it as civil unions for all. The Fourteenth Amendment can and should be interpreted to protect everyone, no matter who they love. Obviously, our current SCOTUS tilts too far right to even consider this; it's no longer the same crew who gave us Lawrence v. Texas. But "equal protection" ought to mean exactly that, and this ought to be glaringly obvious to all of us, legal experts or not.

Dr. Rüppel clematis from my garden.

Grief, Interrupted

I'm not sure I know how to write about this. It's the kind of event where we inevitably seek meaning, and where the meaning just as surely eludes us.

Last week my former sister-in-law had a massive stroke. She is 43 years old. (I just caught myself writing that in the past tense, even though she's still alive.) Initially, the prognosis was horrible. The doctors were sure she would never walk or talk again. They thought she might be unable to hear.

She'd been very health conscious until she and my brother split up two and a half years ago. After that, she was depressed, so I don't know if she continued exercising as regularly as before. In any event, she was fitter than most people her age and certainly not overweight. She had no glaring risk factors except possibly the recurrent migraines she'd suffered for years.

Here's where the story, and my feelings, get more complicated. I haven't talked to her since they separated. I was never terribly close to her, just fond in the way people sometimes are when they've got little in common except for a shared loved one.

The divorce was about as ugly as they come, especially for a couple with no children. This was her stated reason for leaving my brother: He still didn't want kids, but she changed her mind about them once she hit 40. Within weeks of leaving him, she changed her mind about the divorce, too. She eventually begged my brother to take her back. He'd been too deeply hurt, and he adamantly refused. She responded by dragging out the proceedings and driving attorney costs toward infinity. He took out a restraining order after the night she and her mother tried to break into his house. Another night, someone broke into his truck, leaving the stereo but stealing the one item – his piano-tuning toolbox – whose worth only an insider could know. We never found out who did that, but the family couldn't help speculating.

And now, in the wake of all that spitefulness, just weeks after the final divorce decree was finally, mercifully signed, she ought to be able to start making a new life for herself. Maybe that's one reason why grief has ambushed me. Another obvious reason is her youth. She's just a year younger than me. This sort of disability is an outrage of nature when it happens to an 80-year-old. In a person her age, it's unfathomably cruel.

And then I imagine what it must be like, trapped in a body unable to move, unable to communicate. While the doctors are now cautiously hoping for more progress than they originally indicated, it's still unclear if she'll recover her ability to speak. She can definitely hear. All of this must be impossibly hard – and all the more so if you're simmering in bitter recent memories.

Even her mother – who helped make my brother's life miserable in many ways other than the break-in attempt – has my compassion. Whatever her failings (which frequently crossed the line to criminal behavior), she's still feeling the anguish of a mother watching her child suffer.

Having said all this, I don't feel any wiser. I don't know if there's any lesson to learn beyond the usual one of not wasting the precious time we have. That's a cliché, sure, but it's also something I forget over and over again.

I just know that I'm surprised by my grief, even though I know this is not my story. I'm not even sure it was mine to tell.

Maybe I felt compelled to tell it anyway because the solace of words is reliable, as solid to me as our fragile and suffering flesh - the words pouring out of me, each of them declaring I am, I am, I am.