"I just know she's out there," says Maggie, having wrapped up a full day at work and rendezvoused with me for drinks before rushing home to prepare dinner for her husband, Larry—whom she married at 19, with whom she had kids by 21 and grandchildren by 42, who does not work because Maggie's new job as a secretary, coupled with the disability benefits he collects by faking an injury, allows him to stay home and watch TV all day. "I just know it! The perfect woman is just waiting for you to discover her. Don't give up."
Physician, heal thyself. There's a direct correlation, I've decided, between how much married friends obsess over my joining their ranks and how much their own marriages suck bilgewater. Unfortunately for Maggie, she obsesses profusely.
She's a giving, sweet woman whose sense of worth is perversely dependent upon her own complete subjugation. Larry is an increasingly bitter good ol' boy who lifts no finger except to find fault with his superiors—a distressingly inclusive demographic. Put the two of them together and you have a fluid give-and-take. She fluidly gives and he fluidly takes. I asked her once why she does every conceivable household chore, from purchasing the pot roast to scraping Larry's soggy carrots into the trash. "Well, Larry's a very traditional man, and he believes in traditional marriage roles."
"But if that's the case, wouldn't he have, like, a job?"
"Yeah. Well. He's a bit more progressive there."
It's an atrocious marriage. Exploiter and exploited, asshole and sucker. It physically hurts me to have them over and see my friend be demeaned. But that discomfort is nothing compared to when she manages to condescend to me about my own unmarriedness. It's all I can do not to pin her marriage on the wall and vivisect it for easier examination. Restraint is especially laborious when she implies that with a little luck and effort, I too can attain the lofty status that she enjoys. That is, of course, ludicrous. I want what Larry's got.