I enjoy reading Mistress Matisse's Journal, the blog of a Seattle writer and dominatrix. Today, she's got two responses to Lori Gottlieb, one on her blog and the other in her column (to which she links).
Very different from mine. She's mad and she's got a right to be, because she did what Gottlieb advises--married someone just because she was afraid of being alone. She lived to tell the tale, but doesn't want anyone following in her footsteps.
Matisse's anger made me think, actually. I hadn't noticed this--there is so much to notice and argue with in Gottlieb's piece--but Gottlieb actually pretty much tars all marriages with the "settling" brush. "How sad, they settled." She seems to see the world as being divided into boring people who marry and their tragically brave hipster sisters who hold out for more, except then they end up alone, so they should have gritted their teeth and submitted to boredom like their duller but smarter sisters.
This is what sucks about being on the more gentle/receptive/submissive side of the rainbow, at least for me personally--I can absorb an insult (as opposed to a threat, to which I am hypersensitive) and start patiently working the argument towards broader horizons on the heart and the instincts, when I should have noticed I was being kicked and said something. See? Look at me, I'm still not saying something. Not directly.
But Matisse did, so check it out.
