2nd
love is just hard, ok
From where I sit, romantic life appears pretty rigid. Everyone twentysomething I know — whether they’re gay or straight, feminist or traditionalist, urban or suburban — seems basically involved in the same pursuit: Finding someone they feel able to love and settling into a life with them. Is the path to a deep, soul-satisfying contentment with another human being complicated? Sure. But was there some time when it wasn’t complicated? A lot of the people I know find themselves depressed when a coveted partner eventually rejects their advances. None of them, however, blame it on Betty Friedan. Mismatched affections were not invented in the ’70s. Loneliness is not a product of liberation.
So color me unconvinced that my cohort faces some uniquely opaque moment in the grand history of male and female relationships. I’d guess that the guys rationalizing their romantic failures today by invoking changing gender roles were the same guys rationalizing their romantic failures because women just wanted rich guys, or bad boys, or sissies, a few generations ago. Love is complicated, but it was ever thus. The excuses might change with each generation, but the feelings do not. (ezra)
