On December 3rd 2011, I exchanged wedding vows with another human. The marriage lasted less than five years, produced two children, a home, and numerous features in major media outlets. Two years earlier, marriage was not a high priority. My future wife was married to someone else, and, at thirty-three, my bachelorhood seemed permanent, being recently monumentalized in a Times’ article entitled, “The Decline and Fall of the Bachelor Pad.”
The Times’ piece presented me as one of many bachelors taking on unconventional housing situations after being “walloped” by the recession. What it missed was that I wasn’t reacting to economic hardship as much as bullshit concepts of success. Observing my unhealthy, unhappy, accomplished family, I saw few reasons to submit myself to the path of school, work, family, retirement, and starring in a reasonably well-attended funeral. I was placing “a higher premium on living a rich life, rich with experience” than on jobs, possessions, degrees, marital status, and the other commodities disguising themselves as goalposts for personal evolution. I was out to create a new world. Who had time or needed marriage and kids?
When my future wife started transitioning to her role as ex-wife of her first husband, biological needs took over and I made time for marriage and kids.
I figured if I could deconstruct bachelorhood, why not marriage and family? Our low-impact, DIY wedding was featured in the Times’; the ceremony was meant to counter the trend of exclusive, costly, cookie-cutter weddings, and we had an open-registration reception and presentations by famous folks speaking about “ecological efficiency, neuroscience, holistic healing,” instead of toasts by drunk friends. Later, our small and sustainable home overlooking Brooklyn’s Prospect Park was featured in Dwell Magazine’s best-selling small space issue .
We were probably seen as one of the coolest families living in the coolest part of the most important city in the world. I was serious about fixing the world, especially its broken and notions of love and community, but instead of solving anything, I became a casualty of a society in the throes of collapse—a story the Times’ had no interest in reporting on.
In the last decade, the forces our marriage attempted to counter —huge home sizes, sprawl, car-dependence, big debt, hyper-consumption , carbon footprints, social isolation—have increased. Marriage has kept transitioning from sacred institution to a tradable commodity, with an average U.S. wedding costing about twenty-eight thousand dollars and far more in places like Manhattan. The several hundred thousand dollars spent on my divorce allude to the parasitic industries maintaining the country’s consistent forty-to-fifty percent divorce rate and the country’s population of twenty two million “erased” parents (I’m now in both categories) . Coupled with dire climate forecasts, it’s little wonder why marriage and fertility rates are at historic lows.
Ten years on, I still view love, romance, sex, family, and even marriage as critical components and rites in one’s personal evolution, but in light of my experiences, I’m loathe to assume their absence or presence is an indication of personal happiness and fulfillment.
Previously Published on substack
photo courtesy of author