No Country for Old Men

Sunday Herald Sun Magazine- 8th Feb 09

There are few bigger pleasures for a single man than sharing a house with his mates. Beer cans are crushed on foreheads, drunk women are brought home by even drunker men, and no food is eaten that hasn't arrived on the back of a moped or isn't served from a plastic container.

Oh, what joy it is to be alive and living with other blokes in those deady days of your 20s. It isn't bad in your 20s either. But once you're over 35, well, it starts to look suspicious. One writer referred to it recently as the land of the "male spinster". And, increasingly, women are seeing men who never settle down, as not so much 'intriguing' as 'worrying'.

According to US sociologist Michael Kimmel, this is 'Guyland'. In his book of the same name, he calls it "the perilous world where boys become men." It's where "young men in their late teens and 20s have nothing better to do than hang out and brag about how much they drank the previous night, or the random girls they've hooked up with."

Sure, it's a lot of fun, but you have to check out of Guyland at some point. That's what I did recently, albeit somewhat late in life. At one-minute-to-midnight at the end of my 30s, I swapped hooking up for tidying up, and bragging about drinking for someone nagging me about drinking.

Yet, some men never leave. These days, 'confirmed bachelor' isn't a euphemism for homosexual, but a description of a slightly sad bloke who won't give up the game. They don't think Guyland is a state you pass through in your 20s, but somewhere you aspire to live forever. Women, perhaps rightly, are starting to clock that an unmarried man over 40 isn't a playboy, but more likely a loner with serious commitment issues and a huge collection of porn.

One acquaintance, a film sound technician and bachelor of 45, attests, "I never want to settle down. Why should I? I grow older every year, but the chicks stay the same age. I can still pull women in their 20s. And besides, the thrill is in the chase."

It's a tempting lifestyle. In fact, life in Guyland is great until the day you wake up and it just isn't great any more. For most men, that happens when their married mates reach a critical mass. Being a single guy is a riot even in your late 30s, when smug marrieds outnumber footloose shaggers- as long as there are enough of you to form a round at the pub to pour scorn on your contemporaries and their trivial conversations about overpriced strollers and out-of-town property bargains.

For me, the revelation I'd overstayed my visa in Guyland came the day my flatmate upped and married, the selfish bastart. There I was, living by myself, looking down the barrell of 40 and thinking, am I going to die alone? How come even takeaways come in sizes designed for two people?

So you meet someone- in my case, clearly, the love of my life- and suddenly, well, I'd like to say I've made a compromise, a trade-off between freedom and domesticity, but I have to admit to all my single brethren: it isn't. It's more like swapping a lifestyle that's built for mental ill-health for a life of staggering happiness and the odd argument about whose turn it is to pay the cleaner.

As comedian Chris Rock said on a recent stand-up tour, "The choice for men over 35 is simple: live on your own- want to kill yourself; get married- want to kill your wife." And, sadly (and not at all funnily), the statistics for single male suicides back him up.

A whole raft of research shows that some of society's longest life expectancies are found among nuns, whilst the shortest are found among single men. Single men die early; they drink more, smoke more and kill themselves more often, whereas single unmarried women live longer than their married sisters. The maths is simple: marriage is bad for women and good for guys.

So what are you gonna do? Not marry simply to save some chick's life? I don't think so. Marry her and save yourself. It's every man for himself, and the selfish man has only one choice: if he wants to die happy and old, marry and marry quick. Staying too long in Guyland is for those with a death wish.

Of course, this doesn't mean the transition from late-30s singleton to smug married is without is 'decompression sickness'- or what one bachelor buddy who got hitched recently calls 'the wedding bends'. You have to learn how to listen not only to a woman's problems, but also loud phone calls to her friends. (She has to learn how to listen to a loud television playing World's Most Amazing Sporting Disasters and Car Crash Nightmares). And you have to learn to compromise- something men living in Guyland never do, because they always wnat to do the same thing (get drunk, get laid, watch World's Most Amazing Sporting Disasters).

But, in return, you'll have your feet rubbed when you're stressed, and you'll have sex on tap. No matter how much they brag, that's something blokes in Guyland will never have.

The Western dating system

An excerpt from the book 'Marrying Anita', by Anita Jain

For years, I never questioned the Western dating system. The tenets on which it rests seemed perfectly sound: after meeting a man or woman through work or friends, one gets to know him o rher, and if one likes what one sees, one continues to deepen the commitment, which sometimes leads to marriage. What surprises me is how much this system leaves to chance encounter, to a kind of fate or fortune. For a decidedly unmystical society that seems to have the answer for everything else- the best medical care, cutting-edge technology, super highways and space shuttles- it seems odd that people are left to their own resources, casting around for another lonely soul, for what is arguably the most important decision of their lives.

If the institution of marriage is present in every society that we know of, from Lapps in northern Sweden to aborigines, and nearly all cultures promote marriage as the foundation of society, isn't it odd, then, that there is very little provision for how it is supposed to occur in the West? I puzzled over this gap and eventually arrived at a "the emperor has no clothes" conclusion.

It was so obvious no organized system for marriage existed in the West that people simply failed to blame the obvious for why they couldn't find someone to marry. They were told by their therapists and their friends that it was because they were too neurotic, too unhappy, had to work on themselves before they could be happy with someone else, or that they wanted it too badly. People are told to blame themselves, and they do: they try to lose weight, they develop new interests, they get a nose job. We wonder what's wrong with us when really we should wonder whether there isn't a better way of doing things. It is a curious misplacement for a self-congratulatory culture in which people are constantly trying to shift blame away from themselves.

Once I began questioning the efficacy of the Western dating system in resulting in marriage, I started wondering why it is that wanting to be committed to someone else is too often associated with weakness in the West. I noticed that when people were happily self sufficient, they liked to preach how they weren't looking for a serious commitment and didn't have time for one. It was only when they were dissatisfied that they began to think of marriage or commitment as a solution. But how many people are happily self sufficient?

Does marriage have to be a salve to loneliness to have value? Isn't it valuable to begin with? In the West, the modern ideal is to be independent, on one's own, and to be able to make the choice to live with another human being, to welcome someone else as a bonus to one's existence- if and when one is ready.

Couldn't one be a perfectly sound person who leads a far more purposeful life once engaged in a harmonious symbiosis with another human being? I certainly think so. Moreover, why do we have to be 'perfectly sound' before we can meet someone? Why can't we be desperately alone and unhappy and become much more balanced or healthy after getting involved with someone?

We've all seen this happen with friends- "God, Peter seems so much happier now that he's going out with Jessica. He's not drinking as much." Conventional wisdom frequently tells us that we're happier when we give to others and focus less on ourselves, so it seems rather a glaring void that there is no instituionalized system of finding a mate in Western culture these days.

To admit to others that I yearned for a long-term commitment or marriage- which is basically to say that I wanted to be able to think about someone else for a change- sounded regressive as soon as it emerged from my mouth. It was atavistic in nature, a throwback to a time when women couldn't financially support themselves. It was a piece of trecherous anathema in the age of strong, independent working women.

Of course, marriages were more or less arranged in Western cultures according to one's social status and welath until the twentieth century, which ushered in a freewheeling era that allowed people to choose their own mates. However, no system stepped in to replace the practice of arranged marriage once it fell by the wayside, leaving a lof of young men and women lonely and frustrated. In the West, people are so resolutely convinced that they alone are equipped to choose their own mates that they readily give up their right to happiness in favour of self determination.

In India, where marriages are routinely arranged by parents and extended family, marriage is not a choice. It just is. There is simply no concept of living a life alone. It happens here and there, but as a mistake, an unintentional slippage in society. In the West, people do it all the time, even relish it, saying things like, "I would rather live alone that with the wrong person." But spend ten minutes with most of these people and it becomes apparent that they are lonely.

The Secret of open Marriages

As read in The Times of India- 21 Apr 2008, Radhika Das

Rekha (name changed to protect identity) is a pretty, outgoing, 30-year-old who works as a copywriter. She is married to 32-year-old Jai (name changed to protect identity), an investment banker, who is rather shy and an introvert. The couple, married for five years, though not regular party-goers, enjoy the occasional night out with close friends or a dinner with a movie thrown in. The five years of their married existence had seen its share of ups and downs - from cosy weekends to occasional fights, door-slamming, tantrums and all.


Things were more or less beginning to settle down in a pattern familiar to most married couples and there was even talk of planning for a family. Till one fine day when Rekha was jolted out of her routine existence by Jai, who confessed to being physically attracted to a colleague. What was even more surprising was the fact that Rekha herself seemed not totally averse to the idea of infusing some adventure into their humdrum lives. Of course, as long as this urge to stray did not become a habit, she could live with it. In fact, she was looking forward to having a little 'fun’ of her own.

"We spent hours discussing what each of us wanted from this and set some boundaries that were not to be crossed. And at any point, if either of us had a problem, we would pull back. We didn’t want to do anything that would hurt the other," says Rekha.

Rekha and Jai are amongst the new breed of young couples who are consensually seeking gratification outside marriage without rocking their own boat. Using the term 'open marriage’ these couples are seeking to spice up their relationships by experimenting with other partners. Call it shocking or call it an indication of changing societal codes the question is: is an open marriage really what some define it to be - one in which both partners are free to participate sexually with partners outside marriage?

Tracing the origins of the term, researchers believed that it was first used in the West in the 60s to give societal sanction to individuals to choose their own life partner. But the meaning of the term changed radically in 1972, when Nena and George O'Neill used the term in their bestselling book Open Marriage: A New Life Style for Couples. The O'Neill’s perceived open marriage as one that is liberating and not suffocating where each partner gives the other space to grow as an individual first. While the O’Neill’s have discussed the possibility of developing 'intimate’ friendships outside marriage, popular culture began using the phrase as a synonym for sexual infidelity, much to the dismay of the authors.

In India too, the idea of open marriage has been adapted differently by experts. According to psychologist, Dr. Rachna Kothari, "Open marriage is an alliance where husband and wife are open to relationships outside marriage. It may specifically refer to both the partners, not having any reservations about indulging in sexual relationships outside their marriage."

Dr. Vibhuti Patel, a reader in the University of Mumbai, and member secretary, Women Development Cell, feels otherwise, "Open marriage is one where spouses share a democratic and transparent relationship without any 'personal secrets’. Here, the couples are candid and share each others problems, predicaments, confusions and doubts without fear of emotional blackmail or retaliation."

Agrees Arvinder J. Singh, a practicing therapist who deals with emotional and psychological problems, "Open marriage is where there is entry and exit whenever and wherever; without any conditions imposed upon each other. Marriage has some written and some unwritten codes and to me, open marriage means unwritten codes, that is, no commitments and no expectations."

Indeed, the system of marriage and divorce with its written codes evolved more recently. In fact, according to Dr. Patel, the system of divorce is only 5000 years old! According to Dr. Prakash Kothari, chief of sexual medicine at KEM Hospital and GS Medical College, Mumbai, "There was no marriage system in our country earlier. Anybody could go and sleep with anybody if they desired to."

According to Dr. Patel, "In traditional societies, adultery was and is the norm and not an exception. Look at the Garhwali tribe in the Himalayas, the Garo and Khasi tribes in the north east and the Mewati tribe in Rajasthan."

Truly, if we look closely at traditional societies you’d find that the concept of 'open marriages’ was and is prevalent in its own way. Marriages were and are more democratic and liberating without its modern-day garb of hypocrisy. If anything, the written codes brought with them oppressive traditions which led to jealousy, betrayal, and deceit. These are traditions that couples have been increasingly battling with - earlier in silence and today more vocally. "Open marriages are based on assertion of identities, dignity, self-esteem and self respect of both partners. In 'closed marriages’ there is more emotional, psychological, sexual, physical and economic violence as well as cheating, fraud and back-stabbing," asserts Dr. Patel.

In essence, people who are looking at open marriages or relationships are in fact those who are stepping out of the closet, and rewriting the codes. According to Dr. Devika Chawla, Professor of Communication Studies, Ohio University, US, who has researched on women's experiences in Hindu arranged marriages," open marriages can be an expression of uninhibited sexuality and sexual freedom."

Sexual freedom or not, increasing couples are seeking gratification outside of their marriages or relationships in an attempt to have a healthier conjugal and holistic life and shed the garb of hypocrisy. Of course, sexual fidelity will always remain a challenge, but what will ultimately triumph are the strength, honesty, and trust that an 'open marriage' is based on.