ROBIN Rinaldi should sue her marriage counsellor.
When she was in
her mid-30s and engaged to be married to a man several years older, Rinaldi,
the author of a new book called The Wild Oats Project, entered premarital counselling with
a quack named George. Rinaldi wanted kids, and her future husband did not.
Here’s what
George said: “I don’t know whether you two will end up having kids. But my
feeling, Robin, is that if you eventually want children badly enough, Scott
will get on board.”
Scott —
predictably — did not get on board. In fact, he had a vasectomy. And so Rinaldi
decided that if she couldn’t have children, at least she should get to have a
lot of sex with a lot of different men and women — and men and women together.
Yes, the logic
escapes me, too — and I read the whole book. It seems to have something to do
with the fact that both having children and having promiscuous sex are
expressions of her “femininity.” Regardless, her husband apparently felt so
guilty (or spineless) that he agreed to “open” their marriage for a year.
But let’s return
to George’s advice for a moment, because it’s the kind of stupid thing women
tell themselves all the time.
We meet a man
and we immediately start thinking of all the things we will change about him.
Maybe you can get the guy to pick up his dirty socks more than once a week. But
men are not children. And as the average age of marriage has ticked up further,
our spouses are even less likely to alter fundamental aspects of themselves to
suit us. If you think a 40-something man is going to change his mind about children
or religion or politics or money — well, don’t count on it, sweetie.
A pastor
I interviewed in Atlanta once told me that when he is advising young people on
dating and marriage, he says, “you have to know your non-negotiables.”
We are so clear
on our plans for our educations, our jobs, even what kind of house we’d like to
buy. But finding the right partner seems to inspire reticence and confusion —
particularly for women.
It’s more
politically correct for ladies to plot out their career trajectories than say
we are looking for someone who will make a good father. (If you look at the
profiles of the people cast in the next season of “Married at First Sight,” for
instance, all of the men and none of the women say they were looking for
someone who was family-oriented.)
Trying to
suppress maternal desires in an effort to seem enlightened has the potential
for disaster — as Rinaldi quickly learned.
In fact, it may
be more necessary now than ever to have detailed conversations before we tie
the knot. As more and more people decide to forego having children, we can no
longer simply assume that men are just going to “come around.”
Many women say
they are completely fulfilled without becoming mothers. Who am I to argue? But
Rinaldi is not among them. She reports that she dotes on the offspring of
relatives and friends — even excusing herself from adult conversation at
parties to go chat with small children.
She
seethes with jealousy when she finds out others are pregnant or planning to
have children. She is profoundly sad about the empty state of her womb.
Indeed, the
whole Wild Oats Project is a way for Rinaldi to escape the devastation she
experiences when she realises she will not be a mother. So, can feminist
empowerment provide her the comfort she needs?
Rinaldi finds
new lovers — at a commune, on business trips, through dating websites, etc. The
sex, she reports in great detail, is amazing. (Rinaldi’s prose has a kind ofFifty Shades of Grey quality
— both the style and the substance.)
But in her quest
to become a more fulfilled woman, she sounds like, well, a man. She proudly
uses sex partners as objects and works hard to not become emotionally attached
to them — her web ad says that she will go on no more than three dates with
anyone.
Her journey to
feminist enlightenment ends in a predictable place. “I learned I didn’t need a
man or a child in order to experience true womanhood.” Just like a fish doesn’t
need a bicycle. She ends the book divorced, and childless, in a relationship
with one of her lovers. She says she has found “security” in herself.
Count me
sceptical — the book is dedicated to “Ruby,” the child she never had.
This story
originally appeared on the New York Post
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