Book Recommendation, Part I: Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

Recently someone said to me, you’re awfully obsessed with your marital status. Well, if you read this blog, I am sure it seems that way.

The truth is I am involved in a lot of different things. But, they aren’t nearly as interesting to blog about.

In truth, this commentator was partly right. I am paying attention to my relationship with Husband. I am trying to be a mindful wife. (Please forgive the awful pop reference. I know it’s bad.) But, I want to be good at marriage. I want Husband to be good at it, too (not that he isn’t).

This may be why I read so many books on the subject.

A few books I’ve read, I was sad to see end. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Gilbert’s latest book, Committed, is turning out that way, too.

First – just to get it out of the way — if you are interested in relationships, you must buy this book. By page ten, I read some things I hadn’t heard before. That’s reason enough in my book (bad pun).

I am just 103 pages into Committed (182 pages to go). By page five, I wanted to put it down and start blogging about how it was affecting me and my perspective as a later-in-life married person.

By the first 100 pages or so, Gilbert has explained the premise of the book: she and her partner, Felipe, were “forced” to get married due to his visa status. Thanks to increasing homeland security, he could not (at the point in time she is referencing) enter the U.S. again until he was married to an American. Given that they both had devastating divorces in their past, they were loathe to tie the knot again with anyone. They had promised everlasting, unmarried love prior to the run in with our border officials. But, as she writes, they loved each other enough to get married to each other so they could live together.

But, she knew that promising to marry him so they could stay together would not be enough to keep the past marital demons at bay. This book is really about her journey to make peace with the institution of marriage.

Amen, sister. I wish I had your book five years ago.

Gilbert’s ruminations on marriage and its expectations fascinated me.  I ended up underlining so many parts – and even reading parts aloud to Husband (much to his chagrin) – I knew I was going to have to blog about this book in pieces. Hence, my stopping at page 103 to ruminate.

We all know that romantic love is a universal human experience. Yet, we mess it up so often. Heaven help us.

Turns out, though, Heaven wasn’t in the picture in early days.

Gilbert writes that in early Christianity, marriage wasn’t considered particularly divine. Christian leaders found marriage to involve sex, and that just wouldn’t do. She then goes on to write about how much marriage has changed in the last few millennia – its acceptance, its place in religion, its importance to society and the changes around who you are allowed to marry (from race to sexual preference). And, this malleability is key to How We Might Have Gotten Here To Today’s Marriage State.

I admit I have a special place in my heart for this malleability. For one, the fact I got married for the first time at age 42 no longer made me a spinster who finally made good (as it would have been labeled a hundred years ago). Rather, I now am considered an independent woman who is simply called a late bloomer when it comes to romantic union. A much nicer label, don’t you think?

But, then, perhaps we LBBs are really less strange and less special than we think. Perhaps we are just one subgroup in Today’s Marriage State, which is ever evolving and changing rapidly in today’s world.

Certain changes have reminded me that the relationship challenges I face, are child’s play. I could have been forced to marry a cousin to keep the family jewels in the fold, like so many women were forced to do 400 years ago.

Today’s ability to follow one’s heart instead is the norm. Often that doesn’t even include marriage. In Sweden, for instance, marriage is a diminishing trend. Today, I could even marry a woman. Gay marriage – unthinkable 100 years ago – is gaining rising acceptance. And interracial marriage – also a point of angst among conservatives just a mere 40 years ago, is no biggie today.

Regardless of its form, coupling is here to stay. But, apparently, we aren’t any better at it today, than we were 1,000 years ago. The reasons for it – and the rules — have just changed.

Gilbert talks about infatuation a lot in the first 100 pages – how some of us (her past self included) chose love impetuously, based on chemistry, lust and desires. Oh, yeah, like I don’t know that one.

It made me think, perhaps we LBBs really are recovering infatuation addicts. Maybe those of us who married later in life just finally woke up and made a decision on a mate based on something we hadn’t thought of before – stop making chemistry everything and start seeing a real person. Maybe, just maybe, we broke an infatuation cycle.

(I say this because, if I’m really honest and think about it hard enough, I know now that Husband didn’t deserve the 25 year old me. He deserved someone better, and I needed to grow up before he could even recognize me as mate material. So, there may be truth to this infatuation cycle.)

Gilbert also writes much about expectations we have of our mate once together – with or without the infatuation part. And, how that may be the enemy of our happiness. Just like what This Emotional Life said, perhaps we are asking too much of the marriage institution.

How did it go from protecting family assets (marrying cousins) to “you must complete me?”

Well, she follows the trail.

Gilbert muses, while we are now free to follow our heart’s yearnings to marry a soulmate (and all that implies), we actually have become a slave to finding that perfect one.

Maybe that’s why we LBBs sometimes struggle with merging. We waited a long time, and our expectations are high. When our spouse reveals his humanity, we aren’t always so glad to see it.

Gilbert also discusses the flip side of being able to choose someone your heart said “this is the one.” The ability to get in and out, at a whim. Having so much choice about who, where, when and how you may marry means you are free to seek out a soulmate — and when they turn out to be “just human,” well, next! That can be some heady stuff. The urge to run for the hills is strong, given how the media portrays “perfect love.”

I am eager to now read page 104. So, I’ll get back to you. I really need to finish this book.

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