Some final (for now) thoughts on marriage

I finished the book Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert recently and I really liked the book. I felt like it explored topics and questions regarding marriage in a way that I have never seen before in other books that I have read. By the end, I was anxious to finish the book because I found that it was kind of beating a dead horse. I was happy at the end when she seemed to realize that marriage is what you and your partner want it to be.

Here are some of the interesting points and facts that were raised in the second half of the book:

• Marriage does not benefit women as much as it benefits men, this is called the marriage benefit imbalance. Married men live longer than single men, they accumulate more wealth than single men, excel at their careers more than single men, ect.
  
• Women on the other hand, married women do not live longer than single women, they do not accumulate more wealth than single women, they are less healthy, do not thrive in their careers to the extent that single women do, and they are more likely to die a violent death than single women (usually at the hands of their husbands).
• A poet, Jack Gilbert, said that marriage is what happens between the memorable, in the parts that are the same everyday. "Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over some two thousand indistinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel."
• A Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman said that couples were all trying to find balance in their marriages. People are trying to have their marriages "empower without disempowering, enable without disabling, fulfill without burdening."

In the end, Gilbert realized that it was couples that have the control over marriage. I really enjoyed this part, it felt like she was reclaiming the power of marriage that she had obviously felt that she had lost or had never had.

"It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us."

I think that I am still not ready to get married, but at least while reading this book I was able to explore so many interesting things about marriage and realize some of the issues that I had with it. I agreed with Gilbert in the end, that we are in control of our own relationships. Marriages are all different. That is kind of comforting, knowing that there isn't really a normal and that we can all stop comparing notes with each other because its an individual thing. So, read this book. I think you would enjoy it!