Is Marriage For White People?

By now, I'm sure you've all read (and bitched about) that Washington Post article with the bold headline "Marriage is for White People."

Oh boy.

I'm not entirely sure about the assertion in that headline, but I think that marriage as an institution is in flux. For everyone. At least in my circle of late twentysomethings, marriage, potential or otherwise, takes a back seat to careers, bills, and tonight's episode of Lost. In other words, we're too busy building our lives to meld our lives with someone else's, as much as we might like to. That's not a black thing, or a white thing. It's simply a product of our times.

Many of us grew up without fathers, or with emotionally distant ones. Some lived with the trauma of divorce, or of witnessing their parents' broken marriages, ironically held together "for the kids." As time went on, we began to see our parents as they really were: flawed human beings faced the twin responsibilities of marriage and children years before their time -- and often crumbling under the strain. Only in the last few years, thanks to talk shows, reality television, and (let's face it) Desperate Housewives, have we really started to see marriage as the partnership -- and gigantic responsibility that it really is. Maybe Jane Austen had it right...

So we become battle-weary veterans of marriage decades before we take our own vows. We survive our own parents' relationships intact and (hindsight being 20/20) make damn sure that we get it right this time. We get our affairs in order, get the degrees and the jobs and the merit raises, search for fulfillment amongst our hobbies and friends, and tentatively sit through myriad bad dates (ok, and a handful of good ones) trying to find that one person in six billion that will complement and complete us forever.

And we are not fucking it up.

Somewhere along the way, because of this, we turn into hopelessly romantic commitmentphobes: believing in true love, buying the champagne and the flowers, writing exceedingly pretentious poetry, watching Amelie of your own free will....until he/she fucks up. It could be finding a few too many phone numbers in your girl's pocket or finding a past-due notice for child support in your man's drawer. She could be calling too much, or not enough, or not at all. Sometimes, you're the one that gets dropped, leaving you to wonder if there's a point to all this. For whatever reason, another one bites the dust, and the cycle begins anew. All the while, we are growing and maturing, and refining our standards -- a luxury our parents either didn't have or chose not to take. We're taking this time freely, and that's not a bad thing.

For anyone.