Mary Eberstadt and editor R. R. Reno discuss the current state of marriage on Spirit Catholic Radio. In 2009, there were a series of tell-all articles by women, published in New York Times and The Atlantic among others,that lamented the woes of marriage. Eberstadt, observing the trend, wrote up an analysis, “What Does Woman Want: The war between sexless,” published in the October 2009 of First Things.
She says that she noticed two major complaints in this confessional literature. One, in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, women feel like they have to be everything—mother, father, breadwinner, stay at home parent. This feeling of immense responsibility, something that men don’t seem to experience to the same degree, is understandably overwhelming. Two, many women writing confessional pieces complain of marriages without romance, marriages without sex. Marriages have become “sexless” in both a figurative and literal way.
However, as Reno and Eberstadt point out, the way these writers understand their discomfiture is perhaps more troubling than the widespread unease itself. Marriage has become impossible, these women say, without providing an adequate explanation of the cause of their difficulties. Marriage has always had its difficulties, but what difficulties are particular to this moment in time?
For one: porn. Perhaps the gravest modern pathology, porn has saturated culture with sex resulting in the paradoxical effect of de-sexing romance. Men consume porn at rates and in modes with no historical precedent. Though none of the writers that Eberstadt profiled seemed to realize porn’s destructive role in the lives of their male partners, she and Reno both think that it can be blamed at least in part for de-sexed marriage and apathetic husbands.
That the ideal of marriage has persisted despite the many assault upon it, shows that marriage has enduring appeal. Only when we can understand why the appeal endures can we properly understand these pathologies.
Listen to the interview below:
