growing in the goo

I picture this situation where a wife is tired of her marriage, so she goes over to Craig's list personals for a look...

and is instantly cured of the desire to cheat. Who ARE those people on there?!

Right now I'm reading "American Wife," and the main character is based on Laura Bush. There are loads of parallels, but obviously the author has never had any sort of insight on Laura Bush's inner thoughts, so most of the book is fiction.

At any rate, the main character is named Alice, and she doesn't get married (to "Charlie Blackwell") until she's 31. About not marrying sooner, Alice says, "The generic relief of being coupled off was something I could have found by marrying Wade Trommler in 1967, or another man since. The remarkable part was that I'd be getting much more."

I love that term, "The generic relief of being coupled off." Because isn't that a lot of what it is? The thought that it's something that should be done, that part of the list can be checked off. That once that's done, the real life can begin. Many single girls around my age (myself included) are convinced that we'll never get married. Not because we don't want to, but because we don't think we'll meet anyone.

Isn't that odd? Is there a man shortage? Or are we all just not communicating properly? Maybe someone just needs to stand up and advertise their single status on the morning train and get the ball rolling.

My college boyfriend, as a justification for us staying together and trying to make something not quite right work a bit longer, I think, used to say that if we had met back in the '50s or '60s, we would have been engaged and married "by now" (aka senior year of college). I wonder if with the introduction of more ways of meeting people, the marriage rate has gone down? Maybe all of us just need a choice of five potentials. Kind of like determining your college...a few reaches, a few maybes, a safety. Are eharmony, match.com, echemistry, craigslist, randolphsingles.org, etc. too much?

Of course, it also comes down to the fact that we're looking for different things than we did in the '50s and '60s. We've gone from looking for the great breadwinner/homemaker to searching for the ideal companion (who just might happen to be a great breadwinner or homemaker). It almost seems like a transition from assembling a 4-piece puzzle to figuring out a freaking Rubik's cube.

I've never been very good at a Rubik's cube. Or, perhaps, I've never been bothered to try one.