"Please fasten your seatbelts: we are about to encounter contradictions. The subject is love, and things may get bumpy" (3). Indeed, the first two chapters have been nothing else but pages after pages of a polemist arguing against something that as a society, we have learned to not question. Laura Kipnis questions our quest for lasting love and looks at the meanings and cultural significance of fidelity and betrayal.
One review from the back of her book states, "[this book] raises a thousand questions most of us lack the courage to ask". We're afraid to ask because we're afraid we might find answers that might oppose our essential need to love and be loved. In the prologue, Kipnis argues that adultery is an "experiment" to keep us feeling "alive". She gives the analogy of "adultery is to love-by-the-rules what the test tube is to science: a container for experiments" (9). Agree or disagree? I think that there is adultery because marriage life has been portrayed by the media as something so negative--that after a couple years of marriage, there will be less sex, less attraction, more arguments, etc. The media already gives couples a sense of what to expect from marriage without having even been married. So I wonder, how much does the media and the society play into our expectations of marriage? When we do find ourselves having less sex, feeling less attractive, and arguing more, are these our signs of a fail marriage or have we been socially constructed to feel that way when we encounter these signs? And with over 50,000 couple therapists in this nation, how can we not expect to think marriage is set for failure?
Kipnis goes on to her first chapter of "Love's Labor" and argues that we cannot separate how we love from how we work (22). It's important to keep in mind that our approach to "achieve what is most essentially human" is " a recent cultural dictate" (25). In this chapter, Kipnis helps me to see this whole notion of "working on your relationship" in a new light. Just like how we're dissatisfied with our work and want to look for something else, we're also expecting the same from our relationship when we ask, "isn't there supposed to be more?" (42). And her solution so far is adultery. I don't believe adultery is the way to go once a relationship becomes monotonous, but I'm not sure how else to go about it. This makes me question, is it apart of human nature to always want more, or is it our society that promises us we can have more....and it'll be better? I think what Kipnis really wants us to get out of this chapter is that our notion of love is shaped by our society and adultery is an outlet to what we have been restricted to.
In chapter 2, Kipnis goes on to discuss about "Domestic Gulags". Here Kipnis disagrees with our modern idea of "mature love" in which she describes "maturity" as "a depressing badge of early senescence and impending decrepitude". Instead of viewing "maturity" this way, we tend to think of it as "a sterling achievement, a sign of your worth as a person and your qualifications to love and be loved". By trying to live up to this "mature love", any sort of change means personal failure and therefore we are constrain to continuously strive for this "enviable state" (58). Here, she also goes into details about "Couple Linguistics 101", listing all the things you cannot do in a relationship (84-92). These eight pages of cannots made me feel overwhelmed by what we restrict and demand from our relationships. Maybe it's because I find myself saying a lot of these to my boyfriend but my gosh, reading them here makes me question why I'm so demanding! And by demanding so much, is it a sign of a failure or is failure our only expectation?
Kipnis brings two good points on page 94:
"why has modern love developed in such a way as to maximize submission and minimize freedom, with so little argument about it?"
"Isn't it a little depressing to think we're somehow incapable of inventing forms of emotional life based on anything other than subjugation?"
Overall, Kipnis has really helped me to ask those questions that I've been afraid to ask. I'm excited to here what others think of her.
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2 comments:
Ka Joua thanks so much for your post. You raised a lot of really interesting questions. I really liked that you brought up how the media may affect our expectations to have a dull marriage - I totally agree with you and haven't really thought about it before. I think it must be difficult for the media to both acknowledge that the initial feelings of excitement and attraction do wear off while still showing that marriages can be happy and lasting. It would be easy to go too far in either direction and both would create either unrealistic or negative expectations. I wonder which is better.
I am also a family studies major, and I do think that relationships will require work, even if the two people are "meant to be." I don't think that going through phases of boredom necessarily means the relationship is doomed. I feel like there are options besides adultery to rekindle the romance and excitement in a marriage - communication maybe?
Ka Zoua,
Thanks so much for your personal reactions--they're a lot of what I wanted to voice but just couldn't quite get there. I think your comment about the media's version of "mature love" is really interesting--Kipnis buys into this notion without challenging it, portraying love as sexless and miserable. How much is she herself buying into socialized notions of love?
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