Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, This is part two of our Newsweek Marriage episode.
Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to part one yet, I recommend
Speaker 1: starting there. Susie, I feel like we need to pause
Speaker 1: for a moment and spend a little time talking about us,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't help but wonder are we desperate single women?
Speaker 2: Good Carrie Bradshaw reference.
Speaker 1: That's us and part one, where we unraveled the lasting
Speaker 1: panic over a nineteen eighty six Newsweek cover story that
Speaker 1: claimed a woman over forty was more likely to be
Speaker 1: killed by a terrorist than to get married.
Speaker 3: But guess what we kind of are those women?
Speaker 1: So we thought we'd spend a bit more time talking
Speaker 1: about us, our views on marriage, some of its history,
Speaker 1: and how the way we define modern day partnership has changed.
Speaker 1: I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie Banacarum. This is in Retrospect,
Speaker 1: where each week we revisit a cultural moment from the
Speaker 1: past that shaped us.
Speaker 2: And that we just can't stop thinking about today.
Speaker 1: We're talking about that sensational nineteen eighties cover story from Newsweek,
Speaker 1: but we're also talking about the enduring myth it tapped into,
Speaker 1: that of the desperate single woman.
Speaker 3: This is part two. Okay, So here we are, Susie.
Speaker 1: I'm now married at forty you, of course are partner
Speaker 1: but not married.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's so funny because I never really know how to
Speaker 4: describe Mike. Who is you know, I guess my boyfriend,
Speaker 4: but feels like a little silly at my age to
Speaker 4: be like, this is my boyfriend. But when I say partnered,
Speaker 4: I feel like people are also very confused by that
Speaker 4: because that's not really a I don't know, it's not
Speaker 4: very common vernacular.
Speaker 2: So I guess I'll just refer to him as my
Speaker 2: lover from now.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, there's not a great word. Husband
Speaker 1: is also a disgusting word that I refuse to use.
Speaker 1: I say spouse, oh okay, or I sometimes say partner,
Speaker 1: which is what I said before.
Speaker 4: I definitely say I have a partner, but I don't know,
Speaker 4: but partnered feels weird, like I'm partnered, you know?
Speaker 1: Oh right, I'm partnered anyhow? Yes, But do you feel
Speaker 1: pressure to marry me?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: No, I mean I think there are a couple of
Speaker 4: things is that for me? First of all, I don't
Speaker 4: like weddings, which people find very weird. But I was
Speaker 4: in so many weddings and I remember saying that once
Speaker 4: to someone and they were like, that's such a humble brag.
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's not a humble brag, Like I spent
Speaker 2: all my money.
Speaker 3: In my being Like no one wants to Yeah, no
Speaker 3: one wants a wedding.
Speaker 2: All the dresses are tons of thousands of Its.
Speaker 4: Kind of like a forced fun event, Like you're like, here,
Speaker 4: we are spending thousands of dollars on this weekend with
Speaker 4: people I generally don't know. So I'm not that into
Speaker 4: weddings to start with. I never dreamed of some big wedding.
Speaker 4: But also, you know, I'm not planning on having kids.
Speaker 4: So for me, I really struggle to figure out what
Speaker 4: the difference is between us living together and getting married.
Speaker 2: Like, I guess tax.
Speaker 4: Breaks is what everyone says to me, But that just
Speaker 4: feels like a weird reason to do something that we
Speaker 4: don't feel super compelled either of us to do.
Speaker 2: Did you feel pressured to get married? No?
Speaker 1: And in fact, for a long time I was really
Speaker 1: anti marriage. I mean, honestly, I still am. I just
Speaker 1: happened to have done it at some point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I really don't think that I or we felt this
Speaker 1: pressure and to some degree, I would argue it was
Speaker 1: the opposite, Like in our worlds, being partnered too early
Speaker 1: was really looked down upon, and it was like, well,
Speaker 1: don't you want to establish your career first, Like don't
Speaker 1: you want to be an independent first? Like don't you
Speaker 1: want to think for yourself? Like why would you want
Speaker 1: to attach yourself to someone else? So quote unquote young,
Speaker 1: which like in New York Sanders it was like for
Speaker 1: exactly yeah. But so I was engaged for like forty
Speaker 1: five minutes in my late twenties.
Speaker 2: I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean basically I ended up breaking it off
Speaker 1: after the forty five minutes because I had a total
Speaker 1: panic attack and my ring finger swelled up so that
Speaker 1: I couldn't get to the ring.
Speaker 3: Off of it to give it back.
Speaker 1: Seriously, Yes, So I wrote a modern love column about
Speaker 1: how do I.
Speaker 2: Not know about any of this? Now I'm gonna have
Speaker 2: to go find your modern.
Speaker 3: Love call you can go, you can google it.
Speaker 1: When I started dating my current spouse, I was like,
Speaker 1: just so you know, like I wrote this Modern love,
Speaker 1: you might want to google, like everything you need to
Speaker 1: know is there, so like, just you know, spare me
Speaker 1: having to explain it.
Speaker 2: See that's why Sam was great. It was like, this
Speaker 2: does not scare me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've had a long time to unpack that, and
Speaker 1: like why I panicked and why my finger swelled up
Speaker 1: because it honestly, like it wasn't that I didn't love him,
Speaker 1: it was that suddenly flashing before my eyes were these
Speaker 1: images of like being a domestic and being like chained
Speaker 1: to the kitchen, and like, I don't know, somehow this
Speaker 1: like antiquated notion of being a wife and giving up
Speaker 1: this career that I had like barely just gotten my
Speaker 1: footing in, none of which were things that he would
Speaker 1: have expected nor I would have done. But there is
Speaker 1: so much baggage when it comes to that for.
Speaker 3: Women, Yes, especially hetero marriage exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing, like we all know, no matter
Speaker 1: how progressive you are, no matter how much eff you
Speaker 1: put into it, like heterosexual marriage is not good for women,
Speaker 1: especially if you have children.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's when salaries dip, it's when women start
Speaker 4: pulling the backbreaking double shift of working inside and outside
Speaker 4: the home, and then eventually they care for their parents.
Speaker 4: Like we just expect so much of women, and marriage
Speaker 4: feels like a part of that. I mean, it's interesting
Speaker 4: because I remember in my twenties I had a guy
Speaker 4: friend say to me, like, you think of being married
Speaker 4: as taking something away, but it's like it's adding something.
Speaker 2: And I was like, yeah, for you, but is that
Speaker 2: true for me.
Speaker 4: I don't know, like it will take away for from
Speaker 4: some of the things I want to do in my
Speaker 4: twenties in my thirties, so not only did I not
Speaker 4: get married, I also didn't find a really serious partner
Speaker 4: until I was in my forties because I think I
Speaker 4: just always saw it as a distraction. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: because I was this like hard bitten career woman. It
Speaker 4: was because I just didn't prioritize that. Like I remember
Speaker 4: sort of one day waking up and looking around and
Speaker 4: being like, oh, everybody got married, and I just didn't.
Speaker 4: That didn't occur to me as a necessity in my life,
Speaker 4: which I do think makes us fairly unusual. I mean,
Speaker 4: you were kind of an anti marriage cell it it
Speaker 4: sounds like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so after that happened, it was like
Speaker 1: I really really dug my heels in. And this was
Speaker 1: also right around the time that you know, the Defense
Speaker 1: of Marriage Act was being challenged and I was covering
Speaker 1: gay marriage for Newsweek, and I really felt like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to take this right that I didn't even
Speaker 1: really want when so many others couldn't happen, And so
Speaker 1: I ended up. So this goes back to my news
Speaker 1: Week days, but I ended up with a friend and
Speaker 1: colleague writing this cover story for Newsweek called I don't
Speaker 1: the case against marriage. Now you can imagine that my
Speaker 1: recently broken off engagement.
Speaker 3: But still I.
Speaker 1: Did not love this at the time, but that level right,
Speaker 1: But that article basically made the case that, like, aside
Speaker 1: from yes, maybe tax benefits and of course some things
Speaker 1: that come with parenting or end of life decisions, like
Speaker 1: arguably with enough money and lawyers and privilege, you could
Speaker 1: figure those things out without a marriage certificate. And so
Speaker 1: what for women was the actual reason to want to
Speaker 1: get married? Like there are all of these things working
Speaker 1: against you. And if you really start digging into the
Speaker 1: history of marriage, which I did, and I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: Stephanie Kootz. She's a professor, she's like the preeminent historian
Speaker 1: of marriage. She's written all these books on it. Through
Speaker 1: a feminist lens, you start to realize just how how
Speaker 1: sexist an institution. It is like marriage literally began as
Speaker 1: an economic contract because women didn't have rights or.
Speaker 2: Right well, I mean in a lot of ways.
Speaker 4: It was also the only way to secure your financial future,
Speaker 4: right you literally had to have a husband to have
Speaker 4: your own credit card until like what the seventies.
Speaker 1: Nineteen seventy three. Yes, it's so really, marriage was how women, Yes,
Speaker 1: they had financial security. It was like how they got
Speaker 1: the fathers of their children to stick around. In some cases,
Speaker 1: it was how they gain access to all sorts of
Speaker 1: legal rights, including yes, getting something as simple as getting
Speaker 1: a credit card.
Speaker 3: And you know, so there was.
Speaker 1: That side of it, but culturally too, like for a
Speaker 1: long time, and I think this still persists in some
Speaker 1: circles today. The worst thing a woman could be was
Speaker 1: a spinster. Yeah, like that was the term for an
Speaker 1: unmarried woman that has been used against single women since
Speaker 1: the dawn of time. And I think back to the
Speaker 1: Newsweek article, not my but the one about the terrorism
Speaker 1: and marriage line was part of the fear that that
Speaker 1: was tapping into.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like the concept of
Speaker 4: being a spinster, at least for me, sort of evokes
Speaker 4: like an old timey kind of like ant you know.
Speaker 4: So what's interesting is they took this thing that was
Speaker 4: already considered like not great, but they made it like
Speaker 4: more sad and pathetic. It was like suddenly it was
Speaker 4: like a woman with a lot of cats, like knitting
Speaker 4: in her room by herself, which, like, you know, if
Speaker 4: you think of someone like Emily Dickinson, she was, I
Speaker 4: guess technically a spinster, but she's not described as this
Speaker 4: like sad, lonely, pathetic person.
Speaker 2: I mean, she was like one of the greatest poets
Speaker 2: of our time.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think a lot of the great women
Speaker 1: in history were in fact spinster because they couldn't be married,
Speaker 1: because they had to focus on their art or their
Speaker 1: career or fighting for the right to vote, and like
Speaker 1: they couldn't have a husband getting in the way of that,
Speaker 1: which literally would get in the way in that time.
Speaker 1: And Okay, I don't want to I get us too
Speaker 1: off track here, but I like just need to for
Speaker 1: the record, give a little history lesson on spinsters. So, okay,
Speaker 1: spinster a word that actually comes from women who spun
Speaker 1: wool in the Middle Ages, which was one of the
Speaker 1: only jobs, or one of a few jobs, and a
Speaker 1: low paying job that was available for unmarried women. So
Speaker 1: like that's where the un spinning I'm not valued or
Speaker 1: so exactly. And so because of that, the term came
Speaker 1: to be shorthand and then ultimately a real legal term
Speaker 1: for an unmarried woman, which eventually morphed into a pejorative.
Speaker 1: And so if you look back when women were fighting
Speaker 1: for the right to vote, and you look at all
Speaker 1: of the like suffrage posters and the anti suffrage posters,
Speaker 1: those who were arguing against suffrage, against the right to vote,
Speaker 1: would put out all this propaganda basically painting the suffragists
Speaker 1: as these old, ugly man hating, like unf suckable spinsters essentially,
Speaker 1: and so it was like, oh, you women, you don't
Speaker 1: want to be one of those spinsters, so like, stick
Speaker 1: with us, don't gain any right.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting, right.
Speaker 4: Because it makes me think of all the sort of
Speaker 4: like pride and prejudice, like that whole genre, which is
Speaker 4: the reason you're ugly and unfuckable if you're a spinsters,
Speaker 4: because so much of your currency is literally how you
Speaker 4: physically look and whether or not you're going to be
Speaker 4: able to land amand based on that, because it's not
Speaker 4: like you get to know each other. In a lot
Speaker 4: of cases, you're basically like you meet a few times
Speaker 4: and then you get married. So there's just this like
Speaker 4: common idea that if you're at all attractive, you're not
Speaker 4: going to be sitting home by yourself, which is also
Speaker 4: just like an interesting and fascinating way to think about
Speaker 4: why women choose to be single.
Speaker 1: Yes, and actually is to bring it back to that
Speaker 1: Newsweek article, I think that's what this is tapping into,
Speaker 1: Like this is really where you start to see this enduring,
Speaker 1: persistent tension between having a career and having a family
Speaker 1: and this idea that you have to choose, and all
Speaker 1: the way up until two thousand and nine or whatever
Speaker 1: year it was that I was briefly engaged to this person,
Speaker 1: Like still in my mind, that was the tension. I
Speaker 1: couldn't do both right, And things have changed somewhat though, right,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I mean there's been huge change since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. So in nineteen eighty six when the article
Speaker 1: came out, the average age of marriage was about twenty
Speaker 1: four years old in the United States. Now it's thirty,
Speaker 1: which still seems young to like those of us in
Speaker 1: urban areas like New York. I think something like seven
Speaker 1: percent of adults in the United States identify as queer.
Speaker 3: That number is higher among gen Z.
Speaker 1: And the average age of marriage four non hetero couples
Speaker 1: is older. It's thirty three for women, thirty eighty for men. So, like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is all happening. Things are shifting less
Speaker 1: people are getting married overall, and I think this is
Speaker 1: why you have books like I don't know, if you
Speaker 1: read Rebecca Traster's All the Single Ladies, it was about
Speaker 1: the political power of single women is huge because there
Speaker 1: are many.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think also now there's like a slightly
Speaker 4: different version of being single, which is the auntie, like
Speaker 4: the fun aunt who's like has some money to spare
Speaker 4: and is like that that sort of thing about being
Speaker 4: an auntie, which is I am very much like as
Speaker 4: you know, committed aunt or or I don't know I
Speaker 4: say that word, but you know, I think that's become
Speaker 4: kind of like a fun alternative to this idea of
Speaker 4: the spinster, which we didn't really have before.
Speaker 2: That's like really emerged in the last ten years.
Speaker 1: That's so true, that is, that's an alternative to the spinster.
Speaker 1: But the amount of discussion and inks billed to the
Speaker 1: question of having it all is like absurd at this point,
Speaker 1: And I even remember, like, in subtle ways, I mean, Okay,
Speaker 1: how long ago is this. This might have been a
Speaker 1: decade ago, but I was reporting a story for Cosmo,
Speaker 1: specifically about women who hid their achievements in online dating
Speaker 1: because they worried that they wouldn't get dates. These were
Speaker 1: heterosid women, straight women, and they basically were like, I'm
Speaker 1: fun and flirty and like I like to go to
Speaker 1: the beach, I love travel, and like Coca Cola, rather
Speaker 1: than like, I'm an executive actually at a law for
Speaker 1: or whatever, which was their real title, because they just
Speaker 1: weren't getting as many matches. And then since then there's
Speaker 1: been all this data and research into it, and like, yes,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 3: They weren't crazy to be worried.
Speaker 4: What's funny is it reminds me that around that time
Speaker 4: there was a little bit of a moment where they
Speaker 4: were doing a lot of these stories about like what
Speaker 4: to do if you made more money, like how to
Speaker 4: deal with that when you were dating? And I remember
Speaker 4: reading in something it might have been furnished to Robbie's
Speaker 4: book when she makes more that there was a woman
Speaker 4: who would literally buy tickets to go to the movies
Speaker 4: but pretend she'd been given them for free at work
Speaker 4: so as not to like intimidate her boyfriend.
Speaker 5: Oh and I.
Speaker 4: Remember just being like that is the saddest, weirdest thing.
Speaker 4: And this also kind of reminds me of that Steve
Speaker 4: Harvey book that became an movie like Act like a Lady,
Speaker 4: Think Like a Man.
Speaker 2: The movie was called Think Like a Man.
Speaker 4: I remember there's a character in that who is like
Speaker 4: a ceo, I think, and she's dating a chef, which
Speaker 4: is sort of ironic because I'm actually with a baker.
Speaker 4: And it's this whole thing where people are like, don't
Speaker 4: freak him out, let him be the man, like you know,
Speaker 4: and it's like, I don't know, I have to be honest,
Speaker 4: Like that's never been an issue in my relationship with Mike,
Speaker 4: Like he just doesn't care. It's not that he is
Speaker 4: like doesn't care about my career or doesn't support it,
Speaker 4: but he's not intimidated by it because he's just like
Speaker 4: happy for me.
Speaker 2: And that's what your partners should be. It shouldn't be that.
Speaker 4: You have to like hide your achievements so that like
Speaker 4: you can cater to some man's ego. That's not going
Speaker 4: to work long term anyway. Like that's not a relationship
Speaker 4: that's gonna work, right.
Speaker 1: I remember interviewing this friend of mine who is now
Speaker 1: married to someone entirely different, but she got this big
Speaker 1: promotion at work and she's making much more money than
Speaker 1: her male partner, and she said to me, I've started
Speaker 1: giving more blowjobs since I was more money as some
Speaker 1: sort of and like kedn't asked that, you know, but
Speaker 1: like some sort of internal thing that was like I
Speaker 1: don't know, I have to like make.
Speaker 3: Up for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I owe him anyway. So, like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is tapping into real things. But I also think that
Speaker 1: even from ten years ago, the culture has really really shifted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think to some degree, like when
Speaker 4: you look at something like Sex in the City, I
Speaker 4: feel like it's kind of a good example of something
Speaker 4: that started as one thing, which was very much a
Speaker 4: show about for women desperately trying to like land men
Speaker 4: and really like focused on their dating, and over time
Speaker 4: has kind of morphed into a series about you know,
Speaker 4: the value of female friendship and sort of its enduring
Speaker 4: presence in your life and how whether or not. Your
Speaker 4: relationships come and go, you always have each other. And
Speaker 4: that's definitely not what the series was initially intended to be.
Speaker 4: It was meant to sort of glamorize the sort of
Speaker 4: twenty something Manhattan single and that it was okay to
Speaker 4: want to have sex and to want it.
Speaker 2: To be good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you're right, like, to a large extent,
Speaker 1: Sex and the City was a show about friendship, and
Speaker 1: it did a lot for making singleedom sheet. But I
Speaker 1: do think about how even in that show at the
Speaker 1: end of the series they all end up partnered. Samantha
Speaker 1: then breaks up with that hot younger guy whose name
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting and has that amazing line I love you,
Speaker 1: but I love me more.
Speaker 2: So it's new that's in the movie.
Speaker 4: So it's like, I think it's interesting also that the
Speaker 4: series kind of ends with them all partnered, and then right,
Speaker 4: the movies actually kind of unraveled.
Speaker 3: A few years later. Yeah, so I mean maybe that
Speaker 3: does show something for.
Speaker 2: The time, like a little bit of progress.
Speaker 4: And now, I mean, obviously now this Indian Nixon character,
Speaker 4: Miranda is queer, which is.
Speaker 3: I mean, finally, like obviously we knew.
Speaker 2: That they like added women of color.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a whole new world in this new version,
Speaker 4: which is called and just like that, I think on HBO,
Speaker 4: which I'm saying like I didn't watch it, but like
Speaker 4: to be clear, I watched it and I will be
Speaker 4: watching the next season.
Speaker 2: So I guess the real.
Speaker 4: Question, Jess is you who were so against marriage?
Speaker 2: How did you end up getting married in the end?
Speaker 1: Great question, Susie, and I won't answer that question. After
Speaker 1: the break We'll be right back, Okay. So going back
Speaker 1: to my modern love call not to be like hide
Speaker 1: my Modern Love Gone.
Speaker 2: No, I'm very excited to read it now.
Speaker 1: But part of the whole thing was, so I broke
Speaker 1: off this engagement.
Speaker 3: We stayed together. I thought we were happy.
Speaker 1: Turned out he could never get over the broken engagement,
Speaker 1: and so when we finally did break up, he just
Speaker 1: dumped me. It was on New Year's say, oh god, anyway,
Speaker 1: I've worked through it in therapy, but after eight years
Speaker 1: it was just like I'm done, I'm out. We had
Speaker 1: just thrown away all of our suitcases because we lived
Speaker 1: in like a tiny studio apartment in these village, so
Speaker 1: we had no suitcases. So he was like, this is over,
Speaker 1: and then like couldn't pack up any of his.
Speaker 2: I'm just figuring him with like garbage bags.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, I mean that's basically what happened.
Speaker 1: But part of the modern love calm was like, at
Speaker 1: the time my friend Jesse Ellison and I were writing
Speaker 1: this anti marriage article, we remember her mom saying to us, well,
Speaker 1: one thing about marriage is it makes it harder for
Speaker 1: the person to leave.
Speaker 3: And we were like, oh, that's so panthetic. Like we
Speaker 3: were like, you know, I can't believe it. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And but then when this was happening to me, I
Speaker 1: was like, wow, so after eight years you can just
Speaker 1: overnight walk out, like you know, it's tempted couples therapy
Speaker 1: know anything. And I remember thinking to myself, like, I
Speaker 1: guess if we were married, we maybe would have had
Speaker 1: a conversation about it, maybe we would have separated.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So that's sort of.
Speaker 2: Where this legal entanglement.
Speaker 3: So that's sort of where this modern love calm ends.
Speaker 3: So I don't know.
Speaker 1: At a certain point, I felt like I was established
Speaker 1: in my career, I had written a book like all
Speaker 1: of these things, and I felt much more comfortable in
Speaker 1: my independent self that I felt ready to get married
Speaker 1: to this person who is a very progressive human who
Speaker 1: wasn't going to buy into so much of the bullshit
Speaker 1: around weddings.
Speaker 2: You didn't really have like a super traditional wedding.
Speaker 1: I went to great less to plan like an epic
Speaker 1: party that had none of the trappings of utterly sexist
Speaker 1: wedding institutions, which, by the way, let me just name
Speaker 1: the father gives away his daughter like that was because
Speaker 1: he was literally giving owners right, so you couldn't do that.
Speaker 1: I have a great relationship with my dad. He did
Speaker 1: not walk me down the aisle. We walked ourselves down.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really an aisle. The bride's family typically pays
Speaker 1: for the wedding. That's sort of like a dowry.
Speaker 2: A dowry.
Speaker 3: No, we were established in our careers. We split the cost.
Speaker 1: We had one of my best friends, Amanda, officiate our
Speaker 1: wedding and she quoted glorious tone in it. But you
Speaker 1: typically declare someone man and wife, like man always comes
Speaker 1: first first of all, and then it's wife, so like
Speaker 1: the man is still a human, independent person and the
Speaker 1: woman is now just a wife, like is she in service?
Speaker 4: There's that line about honoring and obeying and I always
Speaker 4: foune that weird, Like I'm not obeying it.
Speaker 1: It's so weird, and even like the wearing of white,
Speaker 1: like that's literally to represent purity.
Speaker 3: Why do people see like I never do which like they.
Speaker 2: Never know anymore. Let's just be honest, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: And like obviously I didn't take my husband's last naye,
Speaker 1: so like I didn't do any of this.
Speaker 2: Don you also go down the aisle to like a
Speaker 2: smashing Pumpkin song?
Speaker 3: Yes, we did.
Speaker 1: We walked ourselves together down to a smashing Moment song.
Speaker 3: It was it was a grunge wedding.
Speaker 1: We also instead of I don't know if this is
Speaker 1: cheesy at this point because now like everyone's California sober
Speaker 1: and doing like microdosing, but instead of choosing chicken or
Speaker 1: fish or whatever you do it normal weddings, we had.
Speaker 3: People choose their drug of Oh I did it, and
Speaker 3: give backs.
Speaker 2: What was the primary drug of choice?
Speaker 3: Just out of curious microdosing mushrooms?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes sense to basically everyone did it like
Speaker 1: my parents.
Speaker 2: Really I love that and also that would not be
Speaker 2: my family.
Speaker 1: It was a desert When it was a desert wedding,
Speaker 1: I was like oh, very happy. But as we were
Speaker 1: planning this, it was just so interesting and funny to
Speaker 1: like come across all of the little origin stories for
Speaker 1: these things that most.
Speaker 3: People I know still do, even like the throwing of
Speaker 3: the book.
Speaker 1: So my big planet was that I was going to
Speaker 1: get like a poisonous cactus bouquet. Our wedding was in
Speaker 1: the desert, is in josuit tree, and so that I
Speaker 1: was going to be like, don't you dare tell me
Speaker 1: to throw this anyway?
Speaker 3: I didn't. I didn't have a book here.
Speaker 4: Thinking about me was that when I was single, I
Speaker 4: refused to participate in that ritual. I found it so degraded,
Speaker 4: like want to catch this bouquet and people are like,
Speaker 4: oh god it.
Speaker 3: I was like, no, that's so weird.
Speaker 1: I wrote a story about this one I don't know,
Speaker 1: in like the Twenty Times or something about how the
Speaker 1: new thing that I was noticing this was the time
Speaker 1: I was going to two million weddings, was they would
Speaker 1: do the book Katos and everyone would like run away exactly,
Speaker 1: and it would just like thud On wanted to catch
Speaker 1: the fucking.
Speaker 2: Role stand in the middle of the room and be like,
Speaker 2: no one wanted.
Speaker 3: To get married.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I was doing a piece about
Speaker 1: Helen Fisher. She's an anthropologist who studies love. She's written
Speaker 1: a bunch of books, and part of her research has
Speaker 1: found that, you know, monogamy is not natural essentially, and
Speaker 1: that couples and partnerships often tend to go in stages
Speaker 1: of like seven I think it's around seven years. It's
Speaker 1: like the seven years and exactly. Yeah, I guess that's
Speaker 1: probably where that comes from. And so it's us who've
Speaker 1: created this necessity for this idea of together forever.
Speaker 2: And she.
Speaker 1: Was married at the time and actually live next door
Speaker 1: to her husband.
Speaker 2: So this is actually one of my dreams.
Speaker 4: Honestly, I always wanted this, Like, I mean, I think
Speaker 4: Mike thinks this is crazy, so we're definitely not going
Speaker 4: to do this. But like my dream is to live
Speaker 4: in apartments, like either next door to each other or
Speaker 4: across from each other, because I feel like then you
Speaker 4: just both get to have your own space. And also
Speaker 4: I think it's a New York fantasy, right because if
Speaker 4: you have a big house, fine, but right in New York,
Speaker 4: like in an apartment, you're.
Speaker 2: You know, it's tight.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So you do kind of wish you had this
Speaker 4: way to like own your own little piece of the world,
Speaker 4: and that's definitely something that's complicated for me. I mean
Speaker 4: even with getting married, Like I own my apartment. This
Speaker 4: apartment is probably my greatest achievement, if we're just being honest,
Speaker 4: Like what it took for me to be able to
Speaker 4: buy this apartment was you know, a lot of work
Speaker 4: and sacrifice. So it's hard for me to imagine leaving
Speaker 4: this apartment, even though that's like a choice I might
Speaker 4: have to make to be in a relationship.
Speaker 1: Like or maybe you don't, Like I think that's the thing,
Speaker 1: Like you can really create your own version of family today,
Speaker 1: and it's like choose your own adventure and like go
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 4: It just does feel like there are lots of ways
Speaker 4: to have family now, and.
Speaker 3: There are lots of ways to have family and chosen family.
Speaker 2: Yes, chosen family.
Speaker 1: Actually, Susie, I thought it would be interesting to bring
Speaker 1: Searon on Sean Attia, one of our producers on this
Speaker 1: podcast Slash our Friend, because she has a pretty interesting
Speaker 1: domestic arrangement that we can let her talk about.
Speaker 5: Hi Searon, Hi, Hi Sharon. Hello, Hello, It's so nice
Speaker 5: to be unmuted.
Speaker 1: Amazing so you have a I think what you would
Speaker 1: call life partner slash chosen family in m your room.
Speaker 3: Yes, could you talk to us a little bit about that? Absolutely, so, Susie.
Speaker 5: I don't think you've met em yet, but we were
Speaker 5: randomly assigned freshman year roommates, so we owe a lot
Speaker 5: of credit to the NYU Housing Department and we have
Speaker 5: never lived with anyone else ever since. We're hitting our
Speaker 5: tenure anniversary this August.
Speaker 2: I got the invite for the party.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be lit. We are I can't
Speaker 3: believe I said lit.
Speaker 5: We are very much treating this kind of like a wedding,
Speaker 5: but not a wedding.
Speaker 3: There's going to be merch.
Speaker 5: If people want to give us gifts, I would prefer
Speaker 5: money so we could go on a trip.
Speaker 3: I've offered to officiate just in case you decide you
Speaker 3: totally no.
Speaker 5: But I really do think that that kind of speaks
Speaker 5: to our relationship in that over the last ten years,
Speaker 5: even our closest friends and family are sort of confused
Speaker 5: as to what the relationship is. They're like, okay, your
Speaker 5: roommates and your best friends, but are you more than that?
Speaker 3: Like, is there an asterisk or a plus there, And
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 5: Part of that is because we both came out in
Speaker 5: college and so then people are like, oh, you actually
Speaker 5: could be really together, but then we confuse them more
Speaker 5: because we're not. And I always joke that if we
Speaker 5: were actually together, why would we be paying rent for
Speaker 5: a two bedroom in New York? Why wouldn't we jump
Speaker 5: do like a one bedroom.
Speaker 3: I mean the way you've described it, like, it's not
Speaker 3: just plent like it's right more right? Yeah, I think absolutely,
Speaker 3: it's more than that. I think we go on dates.
Speaker 5: We factor each other into life plans, we plan these
Speaker 5: big trips together. We're always invited together to things like
Speaker 5: not even as a plus one both people, even if
Speaker 5: it's only one of our friends.
Speaker 2: Do you guys go on dates with other people too?
Speaker 4: Or do you consider this like the primary relationship in
Speaker 4: your life?
Speaker 5: Oh like, do we romantically date people outside of the
Speaker 5: two of us?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 5: Yes, but no we kind of famously like don't really
Speaker 5: care about dating.
Speaker 3: Occasionally. I go on dates, not really.
Speaker 5: I think the way I think about it is either
Speaker 5: I go on a shitty date where like maybe there're sparks,
Speaker 5: but it's probably like awkward and the small talks mediocre,
Speaker 5: or I get to hang out with my favorite person
Speaker 5: and do life like they're an amazing chef. We might
Speaker 5: go to a restaurant we've been wanting to go see
Speaker 5: a play, like I just I think I have the
Speaker 5: ideal setup.
Speaker 3: And the that's an amazing cook. By the way, Yes,
Speaker 3: I have a question.
Speaker 4: We don't have to use if it's too personal, but like, no,
Speaker 4: do you but don't you miss sex?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: I mean I have sex?
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 5: I definitely date and stuff with like the idea of
Speaker 5: like looking for someone where it's like and that person's
Speaker 5: going to be like my best friend and my lover
Speaker 5: right and we're going to live together. I just don't
Speaker 5: really view relationships and that sort of hierarchy, and so
Speaker 5: I don't pook like romance as like the top of it.
Speaker 5: And I just haven't found my person yet. I actually
Speaker 5: feel really fulfilled by my relationships. And when I date people,
Speaker 5: they absolutely feel intimidated and threatened by say right, oh
Speaker 5: big time. And I don't even like do anything to
Speaker 5: appease that person. I'm like, yeah, absolutely, You're like.
Speaker 3: This is the setup, this is my primary person.
Speaker 1: It's interesting you say that though about not putting kind
Speaker 1: of like all your eggs in one but like you
Speaker 1: can get different things from different people, because if you
Speaker 1: actually look at the history of marriage, like this idea
Speaker 1: of a soulmate and all encompassing soulmate is a relatively
Speaker 1: new invention. Yeah, definitely, Like it didn't used to be
Speaker 1: that you were supposed to find one all fulfilling person
Speaker 1: for every aspect of your life sexually, romantically, friendship, intellectual stimulation,
Speaker 1: and so.
Speaker 2: On some level. For women, you weren't supposed to get
Speaker 2: those things.
Speaker 4: It was like nobody gave a shit whether or not
Speaker 4: you felt romantic, you had a soul Like they were like, this.
Speaker 2: Is what you do is pay your bills.
Speaker 1: But there was some time in between when and it
Speaker 1: became like you are looking for everything and it's actually
Speaker 1: I mean, I think like from the time of my
Speaker 1: broken off long term relationship to the time of my
Speaker 1: present relationship and marriage, I sort of got more comfortable
Speaker 1: with the idea that like, my girlfriends are my like
Speaker 1: intellectual stimulations, like there who I got, ye, Like my
Speaker 1: husband doesn't need to fulfill all of that.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, that's even want that I mean I think
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 4: Also, I was single for a long time before I
Speaker 4: found a partner, and I just wouldn't want to have
Speaker 4: the kind of partner who wanted to go with me
Speaker 4: to everything and be with me like that wouldn't be
Speaker 4: appealing to me because so much of my friendships are
Speaker 4: about like the relationship I have with that person on
Speaker 4: my own. I don't want someone else to be inserted
Speaker 4: in every single aspect of my life.
Speaker 3: Sean, do you feel pressure to marry at any point?
Speaker 1: And explain how you explain your relationship with them to
Speaker 1: your immigrant parents.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it was really hard helpful that they
Speaker 5: sort of met M as my roommate, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, And so I think you're the first. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and so for the very first year they were just like,
Speaker 5: we're so happy that she's far away in New York,
Speaker 5: but that she has a best friend and like has
Speaker 5: created a family. And I call EM's family like my
Speaker 5: in laws, and they live on the East Coast, so
Speaker 5: I actually go visit them often more sometimes than flying
Speaker 5: out to LA and I have a really close relationship
Speaker 5: with them. But yeah, how do I describe it to
Speaker 5: my friends and family? I think sometimes I think it's hilarious,
Speaker 5: the murkiness.
Speaker 3: So every year on our anniversary.
Speaker 5: I post something and my sister will get a call
Speaker 5: from an aunt or an uncle or a message from
Speaker 5: a cousin every year led clockwork, and they'll be like, Okay,
Speaker 5: but are they because I mean I'll post like a
Speaker 5: very romantic caption photo. I'll be like, I love our
Speaker 5: life together, the life we've built, you know things that
Speaker 5: like I think straight people, straight girls maybe aren't posting
Speaker 5: about their friendships. But yeah, I think there's murkiness. And
Speaker 5: I find a lot of humor in the confusion and
Speaker 5: confusing people in terms of feeling pressure to have a wedding.
Speaker 5: I am, to my core a middle child, and I
Speaker 5: mean that in that it has seeped into every part
Speaker 5: of my personality. And so my older sister has been
Speaker 5: with her partner and husband now for fifteen years, and
Speaker 5: they were like high school sweethearts, and when they were
Speaker 5: getting married, I very much kind of looked at my
Speaker 5: parents and maybe also said something where I was like,
Speaker 5: get this out of your system, like this is the
Speaker 5: wedding where you invite the uncles and that guy was
Speaker 5: a lawyer for you on that one deal. Because even
Speaker 5: if I get married someday, which I'm not closed off to,
Speaker 5: but I have no goals to get married.
Speaker 3: I'm not like by thirty or forty.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I'm also like the only out queer person
Speaker 5: in my ginormous family, and so people just don't ask me.
Speaker 3: Questions about marriage.
Speaker 5: So if anything, I think if I said yes, they'd
Speaker 5: be like, oh fuck, like we love her so much?
Speaker 3: What does that mean? Like is it going to be
Speaker 3: a gay wedding?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And so I'm the fun aunt, like I'm the fun cousin,
Speaker 5: I'm the fun granddaughter.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And whether or not I have a big party like
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 1: And you're about to coming up? Yeah, I mean okay.
Speaker 1: So to like to bring it back to the Newsweek's story,
Speaker 1: I think probably a lot of us would just kind
Speaker 1: of shrug or roll our eyes if that headline were
Speaker 1: to come out today.
Speaker 5: But Sean, what would your reaction? I think I would
Speaker 5: just probably be deep in sharing all of the hilarious
Speaker 5: memes and falling along on TikTok and Twitter. I also
Speaker 5: think it just feels like a really straight conversation, and
Speaker 5: so I think amongst like my queer group chats, we
Speaker 5: would just be like, Okay, this changes nothing.
Speaker 3: Well, it would be like, are the straights.
Speaker 5: Okay, yeah, yeah, literally this which it's okay, which we're
Speaker 5: asking all the time, or like our streets okay.
Speaker 4: I mean it's really debatable whether or not the answer
Speaker 4: is like no, I mean generally speaking.
Speaker 3: It just wouldn't exist.
Speaker 1: Like like, sure you could find data to show that
Speaker 1: likelihood of women marrying was low, but it would not
Speaker 1: be framed in such a hetero What.
Speaker 4: If it was, it would be like on Fox News,
Speaker 4: so you'd be like, I don't care what Fox News.
Speaker 1: Says anyway, right, So I think the reality is that
Speaker 1: this headline in retrospect, it's kind of funny and it
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist today. However, some of that tension around work
Speaker 1: and partnership, whatever the partnership you create for yourself is,
Speaker 1: does still exist.
Speaker 4: Well it's interesting because Sharon, the way you're describing your relationship,
Speaker 4: it doesn't really exist for you, right, Like you don't
Speaker 4: feel some kind of tension where you have to choose
Speaker 4: between having this relationship in your life and work. And
Speaker 4: maybe that's just something that is generational. But I think
Speaker 4: it's kind of it's heartening to see Sharon feel like
Speaker 4: she can just you know, because I think relationships like
Speaker 4: this have probably existed in the past, but they weren't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they weren't represented. And also right, they.
Speaker 4: Felt like they had to pretend to be best friends externally. Right,
Speaker 4: that you get to decide what you want from your
Speaker 4: life and nobody gets to say and that's.
Speaker 1: Great, honestly, Susie, maybe that's a good place to end it.
Speaker 1: It's like, build the life that you want, lean into
Speaker 1: what your ambition is in whatever way that may play out,
Speaker 1: and like screw the headlines, whether it's coming from Newsweek
Speaker 1: or else.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the noise is just noise. Ignore it. This
Speaker 2: is in retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 4: Is there a cultural moment you can't stop thinking about
Speaker 4: and want us to explore in a future episode. Email
Speaker 4: us at in retropod at gmail dot com or find
Speaker 4: us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 3: If you love this podcast, please rate.
Speaker 1: And review us on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen.
Speaker 1: If you hate it, you can post nasty comments on
Speaker 1: our Instagram, which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 4: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 4: and at Susie b ny I see also check out
Speaker 4: Jessica's books, Feminist Fight, Club and This is eighteen in
Speaker 4: Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Speaker 1: Lauren Hanson is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 1: engineer and sound designer. Sharon Attia is our researcher and
Speaker 1: associate producer.
Speaker 4: Our executive producer from the media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 4: executive producers from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 2: Our artwork is from Pentagrams.
Speaker 4: Additional editing help from Mary Doo and Mike Coscarelli, Sound
Speaker 4: correction and mastering by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 2: We are your hosts Susie Vannacarum.
Speaker 3: And Jessica Bennett. We're also executive producers.
Speaker 1: For even more, check out in retropod dot com.
Speaker 3: See you next week.