Signs of a Healthier Culture to Come

We have a new advice columnist at what passes for a newspaper in this city, The Chronicle Herald. She's surprisingly readable. I've been noticing her sensible wit for a few weeks now, impressed with the way she eschews popular etiquette for a more thoughtful ethics. Then, this weekend, she won me over completely with her response to a woman looking for confirmation that it was about time her boyfriend asked her to marry him. Check it out — and see if you can refrain from cheering as Angela Mombourquette puts Put a Ring on It in her place.

That piece tied in really nicely with this book I've been reading lately, Rewriting the Rules: An Integrative Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships, by Meg Barker. It's a general appeal to anyone who's ever had a meaningful other to try and see what's best for ourselves and our relationships in any given situation, rather than falling back on the clichéd and often terrible scripts our culture would have us stick to. Split into chapters on attraction, love, sex, gender, monogamy, conflict, break-up, commitment, and oneself, it manages to question a large pile of received wisdom without either preaching new rules or leaving the reader adrift.

I was thinking a lot about these issues last night when Alison and I watched a fairly new rom-com called Celeste and Jessie Forever. It's about a married couple who separate but maintain an intimate friendship, and the challenges that precarious position presents. Often the challenges have to do with the perceptions of well-meaning friends or coworkers who can't understand the relationship, because it doesn't fit into any of their prefab boxes.

One couple of friends goes so far as to "break up" with the eponymous pair, because they can't stand watching them delude themselves and each other by not moving on with their lives. We paused the movie at that point to talk about what jerks those "friends" were, and compare the situation to experiences we'd had where acquaintances seemed to feel the need to choose between us after we started seeing other people and stopped living together. And there were even some cases where we were pretty sure folks just started avoiding both of us, because the whole situation just seemed too weird or maybe potentially volatile for their comfort.

Then this morning, as I waited at the dentist's office to get a cavity filled, I read this passage in the chapter on break-ups. Funny how these things can suddenly align themselves:

"[W]hen there is only one way of seeing things available to us then, however much we want to do things otherwise, we can feel forced into a corner. For example, when things become difficult in a relationship, we might try to think and talk about how we could shift it into a form which would work better. However, if all that surrounds us are the mainstream rules, we will feel pressure to read such conversations as break-ups. Other people in our lives will assume that, for example, moving out of shared accommodation, spending less time together, or deciding not to be sexual any more, equates to having broken up, even if other aspects of the relationship (such as emotional closeness or shared goals) have remained the same. Despite our best intentions, others may then feel that they have to take sides, deciding which of us to support and which of us to blame, and that puts further pressure on us to feel that we are breaking up."