I’m a regular reader of The Atlantic magazine and I enjoy the semi-regular pieces written by Sandra Tsing Loh regarding modern family life and relationship issues. Ms. Tsing Loh blends the subtle and the blunt quite nicely. She usually starts with the standard modern-female issues and viewpoints, but then mixes in drafts of earthy humor and ‘what the hell does that mean’ cynicism, even at her own expense. In a nutshell, she keeps it real. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Loh is going through a marital breakup and divorce, and her thoughts about it in the July Atlantic (‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’<\/a>) are void of her usual insight and refreshing candor. I myself went through a divorce, and I remember that my own thoughts and writings about it were rambling, confused, contradictory and self-indulgent during the first year or two thereafter. The Atlantic was doing Ms. Tsing Loh a favor by publishing her recent piece, thinly disguised as a book review. Perhaps it will contribute to her healing process, and perhaps they owe it to her after all the other good stuff she’s provided them with. <\/p>\n I posted a fairly detailed reflection<\/a> on Ms. Tsing Loh’s article on a nice little blog called She Started It<\/a>. The “she” in question is a writer, wife and mother from the Atlanta area. “She” (Anjali E.S.) was gracious enough to accept my comments and acknowledge my thoughts. I was careful to thank Ms. E.S. for her insight regarding Ms. Tsing Loh’s blaming the world around her for what happened to her marriage. I amplified and developed Anjali’s insight; but as her blog title says, she indeed started it.<\/p>\n I want to further extend that line of thinking here, especially with regard to Ms. Tsing Loh’s reflections on her own husband and about various other husbands she knows. I hope this is not too unfair, but I read Loh as saying that post-feminist men don’t function anymore; their libidos are shot. Enlightened guys who went along with becoming sharing helpmeets weren’t robust enough to keep the fires of passion burning. Modern men just aren’t strong enough to meet the modern woman’s reasonable demands. As such, Ms. Tsing Loh tells us that some modern Euro women are turning to immigrant men from the Islamic lands. (Good luck with that!)<\/p>\n Again, as pointed out by her critics (many of whom are women), Ms. Tsing Loh admits to an affair, admits that she and her husband were spending more time apart with their careers, and claims that she “doesn’t have the strength” to work on reconciliation. She thus seems a bit unrealistic in her expectations regarding marriage and men. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that women are solely or primarily responsible for making marriages work. I realize that relationships are highly interactive phenomenon; Loh’s evident loss of enthusiasm regarding her marital relationship cannot, by definition, be all her doing. But I do think that a viable marriage takes a lot of work on both parties’ accounts; forget the romantic illusions, and forget the expectation that the emotional burdens will always be fairly and evenly split. Again, I’m not saying that women should be given the duty by society of making marriages work. However, for marriages that do work, there often are times when one party has to work more than the other to keep things from falling apart.<\/p>\n Yes, I know that I’m not exactly the best person to make that statement, given that I couldn’t make my own marriage work. I don’t want to go into the whole thing here. But I will say that I put a lot of effort into my own marriage before concluding that it was beyond repair. I will also admit to having done something much like what Sandra Tsing Loh is now doing; I blamed the Catholic Church, then my family, then my ex’s family, then myself, then her, then my boss, then the corporate world . . . Until I finally accepted the fact that this on this planet, irony and tragedy flourish alongside hope and fulfillment. In a number of years, as wisdom seeps in, Loh might well realize that blaming social institutions and one-half of the human race for what happened between her and her ex was perhaps a bit hasty.<\/p>\n But right now, Ms. Tsing Loh is hurt, and long-run views cannot be expected of her. However, she has issued a video on the Atlantic web site where she talks about her divorce from within a U Haul trailer. Her sense of humor thus hasn’t gone completely off-line. That’s a good sign. I think she’s going to be OK, in good time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a regular reader of The Atlantic magazine and I enjoy the semi-regular pieces written by Sandra Tsing Loh regarding modern family life and relationship issues. Ms. Tsing Loh blends the subtle and the blunt quite nicely. 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