How to Marry Yourself
February 21, 2010
IF A WOMAN cannot find Mr. Wrong, she can always marry herself. Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the fantastically popular Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, describes a friend who does just that:
On the morning of her fortieth birthday, my friend Christine went down to the northern Pacific Ocean at dawn. It was a cold and overcast day. Nothing romantic about it. She brought with her a small wooden boat that she had built with her own hands. She filled the little boat with rose petals and rice – artifacts of a symbolic wedding. She walked out into the cold water, right up to her chest, and set that boat on fire. Then she let it go – releasing along with it her most tenacious fantasies of marriage as an act of personal salvation. Christine told me later that as the sea took away the Tyranny of the Bride forever (still burning), she felt transcendent and mighty, as though she were physically carrying herself across some critical threshold. She had finally married her own life, and not a moment too soon.
Carrying herself across the threshold? And people say feminism has made women happy.
Karen I. writes:
My fortieth birthday is approaching and I will spend it with my devoted husband and children, who will take me out to dinner and sing as I blow out all those candles. Isn’t that so much better than the sad ritual you describe in How to Marry Yourself? I am so glad I realized in my twenties what was really important in life. If more young women would do the same, there would be fewer women celebrating their fortieth birthdays alone, still trying to convince themselves they like it that way.
N.W. writes:
I imagine that Ms. Gilbert’s advice on how to marry yourself is the inevitable sequel to Ms. Berman’s pointers on how to pleasure yourself.
Laura writes:
I have to say I am skeptical about Christine’s boat. Something tells me this handmade vessel was a piece of junk and she was eager for an excuse to get rid of it. But the rose petals and rice – brilliant touches. I wonder if she will go on to stage mock christenings and birthday parties for imaginary children.
Rita writes:
That story makes me so sad! So many older women I know are alone due to never marrying or, even more likely, from divorce. I married and had children in my twenties but my husband wasn’t faithful and so I’m alone as well.
Feminism played a huge part in the demise of my marriage. My trying to be “equal”, being forced to work outside the home (due to needing two incomes to survive -due to oversupply of workers) coupled with so many “liberated” women our there perfectly willing to ease his pain through sex, made a real mess of things. Feminism is a curse! Oh if only all young women would listen to us and let go of this fantasy of equality. There’s nothing equal about sleeping alone. There’s nothing equal or glamorous about marrying yourself!
