Conversations with (Divorced) Friends
April 25, 2008
During a conversation with one of my friends, after she unburdened and then I unburdened (on the phone), and as we were about to reassess and re-analyze our woe, she asked: “How did smart women like us end up like this?” I had no answer for her.
But when I put the question to a different friend, in the midst of our unburdening (at a sandwich shop), she had an immediate answer: “Because we’re smart women, we ended up like this.”
I smiled and nodded when she said that (any compliment is appreciated here). But later, on the drive home, I thought some more about it. Did it mean that we expect too much from life, from our husbands? Do we have too many expectations that cannot be met by most men, in most relationships? Did we even know what we needed to be happy? Was our constant need to understand getting in our way? Were we “smart” girls so unhappy in our marriages because we were relentless in our smartness? Do most men—even the smart ones—need women do be “dumb” sometimes? Or, compromising too often? Did we refuse to cede the stage to them on an ongoing basis? And did this refusal begin the battle of the sexes that we each lived through in some way during our marriage and its deterioration?
A dull headache settles into my head as these questions come. It’s too unsettling to think about. Maybe my questions are the wrong ones, but they are ones that come to my mind, which means that, to some degree, they are the right ones—for me. And that is what I need to change in the future. I need not lead myself or let myself be led down “no exit” paths. The problem is how can a smart woman make it so that if that question is ever put to her again, it will be not from sorrow, but from pleasure, from marveling at how wondrous—lovely, even—life has become for yet another smart woman!
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