A field guide to growing up without growing apart
It’s been over five months since I last posted here. If you asked me what I’ve been up to in that time I could tell you a lot of things. I took a Mediterranean cruise and got to show my favorite travel destination, Italy, to […]
A while back both Cindy and Snow wrote posts on a few things they’re too old/young for (seriously, passive aggression is never good) and after having an eventful house party last weekend I have a list of my own I’d like to share. Here follows […]
The other day my husband wanted to tell me about an “interesting conversation” he’d had with a coworker. Apparently, during a casual conversation about their religious and cultural differences (Christian/Western vs. Muslim/Arab), the coworker had asked my husband if he would ever consider marrying a second wife. Apparently the idea had been on this guy’s mind, because he is open to the idea of taking a second wife “in a few more years.” Rather than blurting out a resounding, “No,” which would have been just fine with me, my husband paused to consider the idea, and then answered, explaining some of the reasons why, no, that didn’t actually make much sense to him.
As he recounted their conversation, I found myself immediately emotionally involved. The coworker in question, whom I have never met but have heard a lot about (usually negative things), immediately became marked in my mind as a dirty, misogynistic pig that I would like nothing to do with. An argument ensued, in which I ranted about how revolting the very idea of polygamy was to me, and my husband played Devil’s Advocate, only enraging me more.
I guess it was inevitable that I’d come to a strong opinion on this issue, considering that I live in one of the few countries where polygamy is still legal. But up until now, the fact that men here can legally marry up to four women at a time has felt like an amusing fun fact, something to giggle about when I see a man walking through the mall surrounded by a flock of women. It isn’t widely practiced enough to confront me in my daily life, so it’s easy to forget, look the other way, or just laugh it off as a cultural quirk. Personally, I have never met anyone with more than one wife, so to have the idea suddenly associated with a real person I hear about regularly, well…something about that pushed me over the edge.
I realize that polygamy has a long history, having been practiced in numerous cultures around the world. I know that it’s mentioned in the Old Testament. I can see some of the practical benefits, especially in societies in which women couldn’t provide for themselves. Sure, maybe it was better to be someone’s second wife than to have no husband at all, no one to protect you or feed you or give you children. When times of war have left whole societies with a huge discrepancy between the number of men and the number of women, okay, perhaps it makes sense to have one man providing for more than one woman, rather than leaving them helpless.
But this is the modern world, and I live in a gated community, not a war-torn village. Hence, I take issue with my husband’s coworker’s desire to take a second wife. I don’t approve, because there’s no practical reason to do so, and the only justification I can see is selfishness on his part.
Part of the reason polygamy isn’t the norm here, although it is allowed, is because you have to be pretty wealthy in order to support two families (or three, or four). This isn’t like Sister Wives where they all live together as one big, happy family. Instead, you need multiple houses, multiple drivers, multiple housekeepers. You need twice as much food, clothing, school supplies, everything. It’s expensive. So one of my questions is, why would a man want to divide his resources, rather than giving the family he has an even higher standard of living? The same principle applies to the husband/father’s time. He can’t physically be in two places at once, so the wife and kids he already has are certainly going to see less of him. He will always be torn between the wants, needs, and affections of one family and those of the other, and I can guarantee you that someone’s soccer match or ballet recital is going to get missed, because he was busy attending to their half-siblings. Inevitably, the children will suffer. And if it were me, I’d probably end up with some serious Daddy Issues.
But my real problem with polygamy doesn’t lie with its effects on the children—you could make a similar argument about people who have 6 kids instead of 3. The heart of this issue is the marriage relationship, so what is taking a second wife going to do to your relationship with the first? Granted, if it’s culturally acceptable, you might not see as much collateral damage as if he had taken up with a mistress, or divorced her outright. But just because Wife #1 doesn’t put up a fuss doesn’t mean she’s happy about it, and it certainly doesn’t mean she feels loved or appreciated or beautiful or cherished. How could she, when her husband has essentially told her that she isn’t enough for him?
No, marrying again has got to have a negative impact on the individual relationships between the husband and his wives. If my husband’s coworker thinks everything will be fine, or even better, between him and his wife after he starts sleeping with someone else, it says a lot of sad and profound things about the state of their relationship currently. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if some of the women whose husbands marry again actually feel relieved, because they know they will still get taken care of, but they won’t have to see him as much. They won’t have to have sex with him every time he feels like it. They’ll be sharing the burden of pleasing this man with someone else. But THAT is exactly what pisses me off the most, the fact that marriage in this culture is more of a practical arrangement, or even a burden, than a real relationship based on love.
I know I come from some traditional values, and that today’s world is more and more open to things that run counter to practices like monogamy. But my husband’s coworker isn’t a forward-thinking liberal interested in an open marriage or polyamory—if his wife wanted to take a second husband, she’d run the risk of being killed. It’s absolutely a double standard, one that teaches men it’s okay for them to have multiple sexual partners, but if a woman does, she’s a whore.
Ultimately I take issue with the fact that this man isn’t thinking of his own wife, the wife of his youth. He’s only thinking about himself—the sexual satisfaction he might get (for a while) from the novelty of Wife #2, the status symbol it would be to have multiple families, and who knows what other motivations. But he is thinking of himself, and himself alone. And that is not what I believe a husband or a father should be.
So, as I yelled and opined about how despicable this practice is, my husband pointed out that I was being a wee bit judgey. Well, yes, I am absolutely making a judgment about this lifestyle choice, and I don’t feel one bit bad. Is that so wrong of me? I know cultures have different values and different ideas of what a marriage should be—that’s true even within my own country. In other areas, I consider myself a fairly tolerant person, so why has this issue suddenly touched a nerve?
If I am ever introduced to my husband’s coworker, which is very possible, I honestly don’t know if I can smile and be pleasant—that’s how much his idea of marriage gets under my skin. I’m left wondering why I can’t get past this, why this issue instead of the myriad other differences between my culture and his? Is it even possible to be truly, completely open-minded, or would that mean you don’t have any convictions of your own? I don’t have the answers, but I know it felt good, and very, very justified to rant about this, kind of like Sleeping Booty ranting about body-building. Tolerance is great, but everybody has their limits.
I have now been married to a wonderful guy for ONE WHOLE YEAR. **silent cheer** And in that time, I have stumbled upon the key to a happy marriage. Since you can probably barely contain your excitement right now, I’ll just say it. The secret […]
Last week The Little Merskank posted a rant about balls. But she was talking about the Cinderella type of balls. I am talking about testicles. Nuts. Nards. Apple bags. I am talking about balls and birth control. Part of being in your twenties is considering […]
“So, did you have an arranged marriage?”
This was the question one of my colleagues at school asked me the other day, completely out of the blue. The notion seemed so absurd that I didn’t even take the time to formulate an articulate response. I just laughed and said, “no!”
“Oh,” she said, “so then you met in college?”
Yes. Yes we did, as if those are the only two possible ways to meet your spouse. It was an amusing exchange, but not til later did I stop and realize that while I regarded arranged marriage as an archaic construct, for her, it was reality. And she is not the only person I have met here for whom arranged marriage is as natural as mee
ting someone as an undergraduate, dating for a few years, and then getting married. Arabs, Indians, and Asians. Muslims and Christians. For many people in this part of the world, marriage and relationships are defined quite differently than what we see in the West.
And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, the hook-up culture, which I dearly hope was not what my friend had in mind when she asked if I met my husband in college. Maligned by some and exalted by others, the hook-up culture is basically the phenomenon of casual sex replacing more traditional dating. I recently read an article that touched on many interesting points about the hook-up culture, but ultimately lauded it as vehicle for female empowerment.
Wait, what?
To be honest, I vehemently disagree with the majority of opinions expressed by this article, but I’m not going to give you a point-by-point analysis. I think we can attribute those differing opinions to the fact that my worldview is entirely different than those of the article’s author and most of the people she quotes.
But.
The article, juxtaposed with the ideas of femininity, relationships, and marriage I see every day in the Middle East really got me thinking. Not to sound like a Negative Nancy (a term which inevitably reminds me of my mother) but I deeply believe that both extremes, the arranged marriage and the casual hookup, miss the mark.
Arranged marriage takes a lot of different forms, and I honestly haven’t researched it enough to speak with any authority. I do think the concept has some merit, and probably shouldn’t be laughed away as thoughtlessly as I did when my coworker brought it up. I like the idea that women are considered valuable, and I like that a family has a right to care about and contribute to who their daughter ends up with. However, it also seems inevitable that women are somewhat objectified in this process, like a product being advertized and sold. One wife=x number of camels. One other Indian friend of mine also had an arranged marriage, in which the families contacted each other and proposed the idea. They were family friends, so the man and woman at least knew of each other beforehand. Then they had a dinner together with both families, to feel it out. The next day, the man’s father called my friend’s father, who in turn asked his daughter, “So, do you want to marry him or not?” She said yes.
It’s not the way I would want to go about it, but my Indian friend didn’t seem to have any complaints, 20 years later. My issue with the idea stems from the personal autonomy of the woman, though. Even though she did have the final say, how much pressure was on her to say yes? If she had loved someone else, but the families didn’t get along, would she be forced to miss out on true love? There’s no getting around these problems. There may be many great marriages that began with these awkward arrangements, but I fear for the women who aren’t so lucky. I am afraid I see them every day, clad in black and following their husbands dutifully down the street, entirely powerless.
You see, female empowerment and I go way back. This idea, this catchphrase, was a central cog in the ideological machine of my college experience. But to me, to us, the naughty princesses, female empowerment, or FEM, as we called it, was about friendship, supporting each other, celebrating what made us amazing, strong women. We pursued female empowerment through girl-power music, sleepovers, cathartic art projects, and yes, the occasional bra burning. But never did we achieve it through meaningless sex.
The article I read describes a primary tenet of the hook-up culture as the idea that casual sex lets you get what you want in smaller, less intimate, and less committed doses, so that a real relationship doesn’t distract you from your professional goals: “For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy 
did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.”
While I am all in favor of women achieving their dreams, climbing corporate ladders, and not letting anything get in the way of their success, I still find this comparison unnecessary and sad. A meaningful relationship = career ender? One young woman quoted in the article admits that her current dating philosophy is “100% selfish.” She doesn’t want to devote time to a guy with long-term potential—that would just make things messy. Instead she, and many others, would rather just hook-up until, one magical day when they believe themselves to have reached consummate success and empowerment, they will stop, settle down, and continue to live fabulous lives none the worse for wear.
I just don’t think this scenario should be anyone’s goal. If a loving guy you are genuinely crazy about (unlike the fake, place-holder boyfriends mentioned in the article) wants to be with you, why shouldn’t he help you achieve your dreams, rather than holding you back? It’s true that relationships take work and require investment, but I don’t think we as women are doing ourselves any favors if we perpetuate the idea that a career and a marriage are mutually exclusive. Limiting ourselves by believing that we can’t have both isn’t empowerment, it is bondage and self-worship, and it is destructive.
In the last few years I’ve gone from being a celibate college student to, now, a happily married young professional. And at no point during that time do I believe my life would have been better or any of my goals accomplished through the subtraction of a real relationship and the addition of casual sex. On the spectrum from arranged marriage to ubiquitous hookups, I’m really glad I fell somewhere in the middle, making my own choice and finding power in my brain and my heart, not my body.