The Cut Has Done It Again

March 28, 2024 5:47 PM

"He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it."

Unpaywalled link

Also by the author: "I was only going to be what I was: attractive occasionally, like most people, relative to whoever happened to stand nearby. I was horrified; I couldn’t get over it. Being average-looking is, by definition, completely normal. Why hadn’t anyone prepared me for it?"

posted by computech_apolloniajames (125 comments total)

"Me after reading any article on the cut: this is horrifying"
posted by General Malaise at 5:58 PM on March 28 [17 favorites]

I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out.

Was this written by a man? It's like satire of one of those novels about a professor who sleeps with his students.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:04 PM on March 28 [110 favorites]

Speaking of satire: THE CASE FOR MARRYING A PRINCE WHO WAS TURNED INTO A BEAST BY A WITCH AND THEN TRANSFORMED BACK AGAIN
posted by General Malaise at 6:05 PM on March 28 [53 favorites]

I feel OK pitying this writer because she almost certainly pities me. I work so hard because I'm old and ugly 😭 if only I'd married a wealthy older sugar daddy when I had some youth left in me.
posted by muddgirl at 6:09 PM on March 28 [46 favorites]

I liked it better when Harvard students/alum used to just say, "I went to school in Boston."
posted by Toddles at 6:18 PM on March 28 [44 favorites]

My feeling is that if you're going to marry older as a strategy, marry older. Marrying someone who is thirty when you're twenty just means he'll dump you when you're forty and he's fifty and you'll have a hell of a time. Marry someone who's fifty or fifty-five; he'll have more money and you'll be the last wife, so you'll inherit. You might not even have to have a kid, if he had a few with one of the previous numbers. He pops his clogs when he's seventy-five or eighty and that's years of moneyed freedom.

You notice among many men who have substantial age-gap relationships that the third wife - you want to be the third - must be substantially younger but doesn't get dumped at thirty-five or forty. As long as she's twenty-five or thirty years younger, she still feels young to him, even if he's eighty and she's fifty. That's the sweet spot.

This writer doesn't understand why women don't date older men who have been taught to have manners; I don't understand why, if you're leveraging your youth for a better deal, you don't hold out for a really good one. Nothing wrong with marrying for advantage, but get the worth out of your looks - as she points out, they don't last forever.
posted by Frowner at 6:19 PM on March 28 [141 favorites]

Let us read the words of this young woman — sorry, this twenty-seven year old girl with Botox.

Gape! at the fertile beauty she must have, to ensnare a man a mere decade older than her!

Aww! over the beauty she does not feel in her soul, as she has a More Beautiful Friend like in Austen (I do forget the part where Elizabeth Bennett is in competition with Jane — perhaps she refers to the faded 27 year old Anne Elliott who of course is vanquished by a brain-injured teenager).

And Harumph! as your older and wiser self! Scorn! at the dragging down of womankind by this one! Smug! at your greater wisdom, your value of more than 27ness! Watch helplessly! o Sensitive Woke Guy, who cannot in good conscience comment on this piece.

Most of all congratulations to Grazia on writing the kind of piece that these outlets love to publish.
posted by Hypatia at 6:20 PM on March 28 [19 favorites]

Was this written by a man?

I haven't read it yet; does anyone breast boobily?
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:22 PM on March 28 [30 favorites]

From the satire above:

no woman can change a man unless she is a witch dressed up as a beggar with magical powers and a heart full of spite.

Now I see my path.
posted by clew at 6:28 PM on March 28 [90 favorites]

I read the McSweeny's satire and decided I don't have to read The Cut's article.
posted by AlSweigart at 6:33 PM on March 28 [35 favorites]

The Cut often has interesting, thoughtful pieces. This is not one of them. (I admit to not reading the whole thing.)

I was with someone 11 years older than I was but I was in my 30s and he was in his 40s when it started. We were both established adults. Both of us had our own issues but our issues fit together. He also never once talked down to me or made me feel stupid. It was a relationship of equals. (We're not together now due to circumstances but we're still very close.) So I'm not against "age-gap" relationships at all. And for my part, I've always had friends who were older than I was, even as a teenager.

But, me, personally, I want to feel like I'm on the same level with the person I'm with. Age isn't necessarily a factor there. But whatever, I'm turning 44 this year so I don't really have much time for anyone's nonsense. No, I don't want to teach a man how to take care of himself or anything (I did some of that in my 20s and I get why women want to opt out) but I don't necessarily think an older man is a solution to all problems at this point.

I honestly think I'm just happy to sit on my couch and watch movies but that's probably a different topic.
posted by edencosmic at 6:40 PM on March 28 [12 favorites]

Folks, I just don't think you appreciate that the author lives in both London and Miami. Her forthcoming novel ought to be required reading for you.
posted by mullacc at 6:44 PM on March 28 [42 favorites]

Upside, for balance: Marry an older man, you'll be rid of him sooner!
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:44 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

Marry someone who's fifty or fifty-five

YMMV. Does not work with Real Billionaires. 1 (wife#4 just got dumped 5 yrs ago), 2 (on wife#4? 5?)
posted by lalochezia at 6:46 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

I am a male in my fifties I am a better person than I was in my twenties and thirties. I am not looking for a younger partner and am terrified by the prospect, plus I'm happily married to someone my age. But the point I took from this article I believe to be true: most young men are feral and need to spend time developing. Like, change your sheets once or twice a week! It took me a long time to learn that, longer than it should have. Even today someone at work said to buy cheap hand soap and I replied "we're better than that".
posted by monkeymike at 6:48 PM on March 28 [17 favorites]

Big Dorothea Casaubon before she gets wise vibes on this one
posted by potrzebie at 6:48 PM on March 28 [31 favorites]

YMMV. Does not work with Real Billionaires. 1 (wife#4 just got dumped 5 yrs ago), 2 (on wife#4? 5?)

It's true that if you're playing for those stakes, you run bigger risks and need to be craftier, plus "fairly pretty and quite young" won't be good enough. But you don't need to marry a billionaire! Marry a guy who leaves you say a nice paid-off house and [the regional equivalent of] four or five million [in midwestern dollars; this would be more in NYC, for instance] and you'll never need to work again. Those guys will, for starters, probably die sooner, and just being twenty-five and pretty will get you through.
posted by Frowner at 6:51 PM on March 28 [12 favorites]

She buys lottery tickets, doesn’t check the numbers, and doesn’t cash in scratch-offs when she wins?
posted by dianeF at 7:00 PM on March 28 [8 favorites]

But she went to Harvard, did you miss that part?
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 7:05 PM on March 28 [12 favorites]

Tell me you were raised by remote and withholding perfectionists without telling me you were raised by remote and withholding perfectionists.
posted by minervous at 7:09 PM on March 28 [24 favorites]

Was this written by a man? It's like satire of one of those novels about a professor who sleeps with his students.

It's missing the "I was looking at the mirror..." part to be a true man-written cliche.

From the article:
Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours.

So no judgment, but this sounds weird for everyone involved and also like something with a clear expiry date. He's going to upgrade to a younger version of her sooner or later who provides that same energy, and there she'll be.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:26 PM on March 28 [26 favorites]

I liked this response from ah, to be young.

“If the entire premise of your essay can be refuted by an Anne Lamott quote…girl that’s bad. I can guarantee you’re about to have a bad day on the internet. I could actually just end this here! But instead, I will do a close read, because I’m insane, and that is more fun.”
posted by MonkeyToes at 7:27 PM on March 28 [38 favorites]

I haven't read it yet; does anyone breast boobily?

You were joking, but - yes. Yes, she does. Not until the fourth paragraph, but - yes.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:32 PM on March 28 [10 favorites]

This feels like an obvious troll, and I think the Cut has misjudged their readership, because everyone is too exhausted to fall for the troll. Pretty much all the social media reaction that I've seen has either been mocking the terrible writing or saying that her relationship sounds kinda weird, but she's entitled to her own weird relationship choices. There are too many genuinely horrifying things going on in the world for me to get worked up about some Harvard tradwife and her flush ponytail.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 7:36 PM on March 28 [20 favorites]

You were joking, but - yes. Yes, she does.

Geez...no matter how absurd I try to be, apparently I can't out-absurd Real Life.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:42 PM on March 28 [10 favorites]

Geez...no matter how absurd I try to be, apparently I can't out-absurd Real Life.

Oh Greg! Sweetie! We slipped out of the Real Life time stream YEARS ago! We've been in Hollywood Screenwriter Reality for at least a decade if not more! The longer we're here, the more chaotic it gets, which used to just be annoying but now is becoming life-threatening.

I'm not sure we're going to get out of this until we get to a new phase of the Mayan Calendar, or something.
posted by hippybear at 7:49 PM on March 28 [24 favorites]

Anyway, I'm 17 years younger than mr hippybear and we've been together for 30 years. Make of that what you will. [Narrator: the queers might do age difference better than the straights.]
posted by hippybear at 7:51 PM on March 28 [29 favorites]

If Gen Z is speed running feminism then I can't wait for the rediscovery of political lesbianism. Like if you want to opt out of the male world then go all the way, right?
posted by muddgirl at 7:51 PM on March 28 [11 favorites]

But the point I took from this article I believe to be true: most young men are feral and need to spend time developing.

that was also the only part that I found resonant. However, I do wonder if the author took their flawed logic about how men have to be "trained" by their partners and what that says about her own husband. If he's been maturing by dating college co-eds, how mature could he actually be compared to peers who have dated partners who, you know, have had actual careers and moved out of their parents' house?

(Oh, wait, I forgot, he's from Europe. He may not be mature, but he is sophisticated and that's close enough for the status signaling)

One can write an article about how young men often take more than their fair share of emotional labor to be turned into functional adults by their romantic partners, and how that absolutely sucks and it's absolutely respectable for someone to nope out of that, but this isn't it.
posted by bl1nk at 7:56 PM on March 28 [15 favorites]

I blame their mothers for raising horrible children. /S/
posted by djseafood at 8:03 PM on March 28 [3 favorites]

This feels like an obvious troll, and I think the Cut has misjudged their readership, because everyone is too exhausted to fall for the troll.

I think the Cut has judged this one perfectly, in that everyone's talking about it.

The troll here is not the author -- who appears to be either entirely serious or extremely committed to the bit -- but rather the editor who pulled this glorious trash out of the slush pile.
posted by automatronic at 8:07 PM on March 28 [37 favorites]

This feels like an obvious troll, and I think the Cut has misjudged their readership, because everyone is too exhausted to fall for the troll.

Obviously as a columnist for @TheCut I’m biased in loving it, but other pubs should really ask themselves why they aren’t running fun shit everyone wants to talk about?
posted by stray at 8:12 PM on March 28 [5 favorites]

True story. I know a billionaire who divorced his wife of 35(?) years with whom he has 7, yes seven, children. He ended up marrying a Polish "model". (I put that in quotes because I never saw and he could not find anything she actually got paid to model. No pictures, no magazines, no video, no nothing.) The 2nd wife was 35 or so years younger.

Anyway, we were drinking at a hotel bar and got to talking. I am divorced too. I knew him well enough to be drinking at a bar with him, but it really wasn't anything more than a superficial friendship. As it does, talk turned to being divorced. I asked him why he divorced his wife of 35 years. Grown apart? Third party betrayal? Nope. He said, "At the point she stopped giving me blowjobs it was time to go. Not only did she stop initiating them, but she turned down my requests. I am a very wealthy man. I have given her everything she has ever wanted to asked for. I have a busy life. I have 7 children, Is it too much to ask for my wife to blow me every once in a while?" All I could stammer in response was, "Well it makes sense to me."

Unfortunately, whenever I see his 2nd wife, which is rare, I cannot help but thinking, "She has not aged well, but I bet she gives a good bj."
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:16 PM on March 28 [16 favorites]

Kneepads... Just supply her with kneepads! /s
posted by hippybear at 8:19 PM on March 28 [8 favorites]

So we're responding to the article in kind, with more poorly written fiction?
posted by Sing Or Swim at 8:38 PM on March 28 [14 favorites]

Say what you will about feminism, but it completely lacks the contempt for men that women have without it. She mentions that she liked Victorian novels, and this is exactly the advice that old women give young ones in those—“better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.”

Charlotte Lucas did as well for herself as she could under the circumstances, but she had the grace not to lecture people on how clever she was for doing it.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:44 PM on March 28 [27 favorites]

Becky Sharp would like to have a word…
posted by cron at 9:08 PM on March 28 [7 favorites]

Twenty bucks says he trades her in for a younger model within ten years. And the article she writes after *that* is the one I want to read.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:09 PM on March 28 [24 favorites]

Tell me you were raised by remote and withholding perfectionists without telling me you were raised by remote and withholding perfectionists.

On the contrary, I think there's a nonzero chance she's a victim of emotional incest (with her extra-creepy extremely Catholic daddy who [apparently?] named her after her mom). That's about the only thing restraining the full force of my mockery here.

I mean, you can marry an older guy, or you can marry for money, without rhapsodizing over being expected to take on all his tastes, habits, and preferences or revelling in dwelling on the power imbalance caused by his paying the rent. A million young ladies pull this off with sugar daddies daily.
posted by praemunire at 9:14 PM on March 28 [11 favorites]

But she went to Harvard, did you miss that part?


Do you have any idea how hard it's gotten to be an MIT alum, and read this sort of thing, and not make exactly the comment you'd expect? I used to be better than to act that way, but damn, it's gotten hard recently.
posted by ocschwar at 9:17 PM on March 28 [5 favorites]

Yikes!

I have not even LATFA, but the comments tell me all I need to know.

My dad was 50, my mom 30 when they married... Hmmm. It was always weird, but, "How Weird Was It?"
posted by Windopaene at 9:22 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

And if you are going to go for the young bride, do a Tony Randall or go home...
posted by Windopaene at 9:24 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

That ah, to be young piece posted by MonkeyToes was bracing bit of criticism.
posted by zenon at 10:17 PM on March 28 [7 favorites]

I’m real happy never to have been thin enough to feel I would get a good return out of investing in my appearance.
posted by bq at 10:30 PM on March 28 [16 favorites]

Charlotte Lucas did as well for herself as she could under the circumstances, but she had the grace not to lecture people on how clever she was for doing it.

Charlotte Lucas goes to Stanford and marries a rising nerd who is pre-IPO. She'll get that sweet community property settlement. Not a trust fund MBA with a prenup.
posted by muddgirl at 10:37 PM on March 28 [6 favorites]

I think it is better to marry your baby-faced undergraduate boyfriend who is 2 years younger than you. Sure, you'll have no money, but he's still cute in his 40s!
posted by jb at 10:48 PM on March 28 [16 favorites]

i guess context is everything, because i read this as absolutely razor-sharp satire, both hilarious and horrifying. then i looked up the author. i...
i am still undecided.
i read the McSweeney's, as well but it really seems more a parody than satire.
posted by lapolla at 11:12 PM on March 28 [2 favorites]

yes my best hope is that this is arch self-mockery that hasn't quite landed.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:28 AM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.

There are probably good articles about the good points of being the younger partner in an age-gap relationship, but this isn't one unless you have a particular aversion to making your own choices.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:35 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

“… But the point I took from this article I believe to be true: most young men are feral and need to spend time developing.”

I dunno. I have a ten year age gap with an older fella and I am in my 50s. I also have to explain the sheets-changing thing* It’s cute as fuck that she thinks a 30 year old is a grown up bloke.

*In my least feminist of all moments in life, and to my shame, my atavistic brain asks itself: just what exactly did the first wife do to enable this kind of easy-leaning masculine energy?
posted by honey-barbara at 1:39 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

I imagine that many of us have made at various points in our lifes certain trade-offs between pride and convenience (or fine, let's call it "ease"), choices that could be seen as taking the easy way out. Maybe it's marrying a rich guy who mostly values you for your youth and beauty to have some years of financial stability so you can focus on your writing. Maybe it's tolerating a lot more concern-trolling from your parents than you otherwise would so you can move back in with them for free while you're saving for your own property. Maybe it's going into a profession with good job security and good income you don't feel particularly passionate about. There are always some people who just couldn't imagine accepting that sort of compromise, and you know they'll side-eye you for it. That in turn can trigger a bit of defiance, an urge to say "I know what you're thinking, but guess what, I've done my homework, I've looked at the numbers, and for me, it actually pays off."

And here's the thing, I think that a clear-eyed accounting of these sort of calculations could be a useful exercise, even if it reveals you to be materialistic, and transactional and a bit craven, and well, calculating. But I don't think that's the problem that people have with this essay.

The problem is that there is not actually anything clear-eyed about it. Other's have already discussed that the age-gap is actually too small for this strategy to work in the optimal way, and pointed out the total lack of risk management considerations, no contingency plans, no idea whatsoever how she's gonna secure her bag once the next young thing inevitably shows up in a couple of years.

Instead, the writer seems to breathlessly fetishize the power imbalance caused by her set-up, and girl, that's not a sober accounting, that's just your personal kink.
posted by sohalt at 2:03 AM on March 29 [37 favorites]

Metafilter: not a sober accounting, just your personal kink
posted by chavenet at 2:11 AM on March 29 [37 favorites]

This reminds me of my sister's theory about why patriarchal religions can be attractive for young women.

When you're 20, the world is kinda scary. All the stuff that you have to learn to do to be an adult. All the stuff that you don't do well now. It's a relief to hear an authority figure, a pastor in your church, say, "That's the man's job." All you have to do is marry the right man, a good Christian man, and he'll take care of all the scary stuff.

It's only when you get older, when you grow into yourself as a person and figure out what you want, when you start gaining the confidence to make your own decisions, that it starts to feel like a prison.

It sounds like the author is starting to feel some of that:

I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him...

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials...

posted by clawsoon at 4:18 AM on March 29 [17 favorites]

This reminds me of my sister's theory about why patriarchal religions can be attractive for young women.

The author's parents are right wing Hispanic Catholics, so you might have something there. They are both public figures. Her father runs a pro-life group and her mother was part of Ron deSantis' cabinet.
posted by vacapinta at 4:38 AM on March 29 [26 favorites]

I’m a straight man so I cannot directly relate to anything in this article*, but I am grateful that I was raised by patents who loved and respected each other equally, which helped me grow into an adult who sought (and found) the same dynamic in my own marriage rather than something transactional or based on ego gratification from other men.

* except perhaps the “young men are feral” part, which hoo boy, yes, and brought to mind a tweet I saw during the lockdown days where someone asked “What’s something that feels like a mental illness but isn’t?” and a woman answered “Being attracted to men.”
posted by The Card Cheat at 4:47 AM on March 29 [13 favorites]

MonkeyToes: I liked this response from ah, to be young.

People have said that this article isn’t about age gaps, it’s about marrying rich, and I agree. But I would posit that it’s about something else even more.

It’s about a person who wants really really desperately to be taken seriously as a writer.

OP: Also by the author

My own inglorious adolescence ends with me dumped, over brunch, at twenty. He has a strong jaw which dazes and a soft birthmark, near the mouth. He is ten years older than me. That last bit is not the part that hurts. It’s that he’s telling me about another girl. “She’s amazing,” he says. “I haven’t felt like this in a long time.” I think of what we’ve done for a long time and I go to the bathroom and vomit. When I come back he’s still speaking. I wonder, in silence, what it would be like to be the sort of girl about whom they say, he can’t shut up about her. “She’s a writer,” he tells me, with love in his eyes. He looks so handsome, I want to kiss him, exactly now, when, because, he can’t shut up about her. I go home, look her up, write a poem, get over him as soon as I get it published, thinking vaguely, see, there, that was easy, take that—I might be less lovely, but there are other competitions...

I can be a writer too.

Lo, here is something about which we can psychologize further.
posted by clawsoon at 5:00 AM on March 29 [10 favorites]

I am grateful that I was raised by patents who loved and respected each other equally, which helped me grow into an adult who sought (and found) the same dynamic in my own marriage rather than something transactional or based on ego gratification from other men.

You are very blessed, Card Cheat. Wonderful that you had this legacy and were able to build upon it. It is a gift to us all.
posted by dutchrick at 5:02 AM on March 29 [1 favorite]

vacapinta: The author's parents are right wing Hispanic Catholics, so you might have something there. They are both public figures. Her father runs a pro-life group and her mother was part of Ron deSantis' cabinet.

The Harvard version of the Tradwife trend?
posted by clawsoon at 5:21 AM on March 29 [5 favorites]

She chose her husband “on purpose, not by chance,” as opposed to all the women out there who choose their husbands…not on purpose? What would choosing a husband by chance even mean? Is she referring to the swaths of women who picked their husbands from a husband lottery? If so, how does one sign up for the husband lottery? Is it also located in the south of France?

omg this is amazing*



*from the MonkeyToes link in the thread
posted by Kitteh at 5:52 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

Oh, look. The Princeton tradwife has competition. Although, I sense that the Princeton incarnation actually has some juice when she's writing about her academic field and not all the reactionary bullshit.

This piece is so much nothing. I guess we're expected to see the thing about marrying a sugar daddy as kind of a troll? It can't be a serious argument. How many times does that work out? How many guys that age don't have kids and other people ready to lay claim to their estates? What age are you going to be when you realize that's not going to work out?

This seems like such nonsense and not entertaining enough nonsense to be published in Salon or the NYT's Moden Love column.
posted by BibiRose at 6:01 AM on March 29 [2 favorites]

So no judgment, but this sounds weird for everyone involved and also like something with a clear expiry date. He's going to upgrade to a younger version of her sooner or later who provides that same energy, and there she'll be.

It sounds like an excellent premise for a vampire story.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:29 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

Someone posted a picture of the author and the storied K., and they look -- fine? They both look fine. Just different types of cute. But I guess I couldn't hear it either when I was young and obsessed with my own appearance. These things get into your head when you need to have a particular reason for every single slight and happenstance. As a teen, I could also have written about exactly how I looked and how other girls looked at such length. In fact, I did, but it was locked up in a file in an air-gapped computer.

I don't hold with the way she interpreted Ferrante's Neapolitan series as having to do with Lila's beauty as much as it did. Of course she was beautiful, but their personalities and intelligence were the crux of it.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:32 AM on March 29 [2 favorites]

My mom was 10 years younger than my Dad. They stayed married until he died, and though I can't swear it was *always* an equal relationship, by the time I was able to notice such things, that's what it was.

I did not read TFA and I won't, but all the people dumping on the 10-year age difference are deeply confused about what that means. Particularly when the woman is 27 at the start. The worst issue here is the life-expectancy difference, and the probably 20 years alone she has to look forward to in another 40 years, if everything works out how she hopes.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:43 AM on March 29 [2 favorites]

She has a point about women’s careers taking off just as they have to decide about whether to have children and put that career on pause. But I’m not sure her “solution” is really going to help anyone. Ah well.
posted by dellsolace at 6:45 AM on March 29 [3 favorites]

In cases like these I basically never RTFA, I just come here and appreciate everyone's witticisms over a nice cup of coffee. Thanks for coming through yet again (especially Frowner).
posted by Emmy Rae at 6:46 AM on March 29 [27 favorites]

If Gen Z is speed running feminism then I can't wait for the rediscovery of political lesbianism. Like if you want to opt out of the male world then go all the way, right?

I've seen a lot of mention of the 4B movement lately on TikTok (mostly in comments) fwiw.
posted by misskaz at 6:48 AM on March 29 [6 favorites]

I don't bear her or her husband any ill will and honestly hope their marriage works out, but whenever I read articles like this I always think the fact that it got published holds a great deal of potential downsides for the health of the relationship and few if any potential upsides. As the author of the "ah to be young" piece posted here by MonkeyToes put it, "I sincerely hope your husband signed off on that essay, girl."
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:50 AM on March 29 [12 favorites]

re: 4b: generations run differently in korea, and also while it's very newsworthy the overall size of the movement might be a little bit disappointing for those wishing for an army of angry amazons; it's more like a coven.

but also: they're right, esp. in context of where that's coming from.

also also: the last couple decades have so thoroughly disabused me of the notion that elite universities actually have any real connection to intelligence, sense, respect, self-awareness, decency, or morality and i'm not sure what i got out of my experience other than mild trauma and debt. maybe i should have prettied myself up, lobotomized myself, and gone stepford and written about it, except that sounds so miserable. probably because i didn't lobotomize myself.
posted by i used to be someone else at 7:42 AM on March 29 [6 favorites]

Particularly when the woman is 27 at the start

But that is the crux of it, the author is 27 now. From TFA she is 20-21 at the start and they marry when she is 23. People obviously mature at wildly different times but the old saw of "half your age plus 7" is an ok rule of thumb. There is a huge difference between 20 dating 30 and 27 dating 37.
posted by being_quiet at 7:50 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

My grandmother took the opposite approach. After the end of her very unhappy first, twenty-year marriage, she started dating her scuba instructor, who was the same age as her eldest child. Her kids were horrified at the time, as she supported him through a master’s program, but then he got a well paid job as an engineer and she got to spend the next 40 years doing whatever she wanted. Now she’s 93 and in terrible health, but she has a loving partner who feeds her and bathes her and generally makes her last years as comfortable as they can be.
posted by Just the one swan, actually at 7:56 AM on March 29 [40 favorites]

As ever, the moral of the story is "seriously dating someone much older or much younger than you, especially someone much older if you're a women dating men, is something with a lot of potential to go wrong and requires good judgement and maturity if it's going to work out - so don't write articles claiming that it is ONE WEIRD TRICK to happiness".
posted by Frowner at 8:06 AM on March 29 [6 favorites]

> From TFA she is 20-21 at the start and they marry when she is 23.

My mom was 21 when she married my Dad, then 31. They did the "till death do us part" all the way, and if they were fuckup parents they didn't fuck up worse than most.

There is a lot of presentism in the comments here. People who think the kinds of relationships they're used to are normative, which is not so.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:14 AM on March 29 [5 favorites]

I can't think of any other response than "oh honey, no." which is what I kept thinking to myself.

My god, my romantic and personal life in my 50s, with an equal partner close to my age, is so much better than my 20s, when all my youth attracted was as series of creeps and charming-but-extremely depressed boys (one of which I married).

You don't have to be young or hot as fuck to be in a relationship! You really don't. You don't even really need a relationship at all to be happy.

I hope she keeps enough of her own power (and at least some money) that she can leave if and when she needs to, or cope if he leaves her.

I will say, in a sugar-daddy plan, it's not like the old days. We have all this medical tech that can keep you alive, and rich dudes will definitely make use of it, and then what happens to your merry widow plans? People you want to die have a way of holding on way longer than you'd think. See: Kissinger. Or Cheney, who has been shambling around half-dead for decades.
posted by emjaybee at 8:20 AM on March 29 [16 favorites]

I ask for the (former) feral women: who will teach us how to decorate, to iron our shirts, to clean our fridges? Why is it presumed that feralness is received for the males? I had actual mushrooms growing in the back seat of my car at that age.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:29 AM on March 29 [44 favorites]

Man, her essay on not being pretty is a ride.

"The breathtaking beauty of a young girl eventually exhales, deflates, we all start looking similar, in a decade or two we’ll fall into some binary of well-kept or not well-kept, and then what’ll matter is money, which fingers crossed I’ll have."

I mean - is this a femcel?
posted by eyeofthetiger at 8:30 AM on March 29 [10 favorites]

In re presentism - it reminds me of this murder mystery from the 1940s that I was reading. One of the characters is the SuperSecretary to a very important political figure - she writes speeches, makes decisions, manages his schedule, etc. It's a really important job and she's very valued. However, as several people say of her, she would be great at a very important political job herself...if she was a man. This is treated by her and the speakers as a fact (and I add that this isn't retconning - it was written in the forties.)

Anyway - if you were her in the forties, of course you'd take the best women's job you could get, you'd do everything you could and you'd probably feel that you had achieved a lot and were a success. You would have achieved one of the highest career peaks available to a non-elite-class woman.

But if you were her today, you wouldn't be satisfied with being a secretary, and you wouldn't recommend to young women that it's just one weird career hack to be the secretary to a very important man.

This is because, of course, why be the admin when you can have the job? But also, it's because the whole ecosystem has changed. As secretary to a Very Important Man, you wouldn't be one of a whole network of incredibly powerful career women who were all SuperSecretaries; you'd just be a secretary. Maybe a skilled and valued one with an interesting job, but most of the power and decision-making that used to be SuperSecretary turf will have been moved to other administrative roles. If you want a political career with power, you aren't going to aim to be an administrative assistant.

Similarly, okay, maybe in the middle of the century marrying an older guy with his own career and having your life determined by his career path was the best option for most non-elite women - maybe just being married to a talented man and supporting him and having your life determined by his established habits and preferences would be the equivalent of being a SuperSecretary, and you'd have a whole network of wives of smart and talented men who were living the same kind of life. Although of course one could note "see Mad Men" here and think about how that can play out.

But right now, when you marry a rich older guy with an established career, you're an outlier and your network is just "attractive young women who married rich older guys". It's no longer a successful life path unless you're really committed to the bit and make it an actual career, like being a successful demimondaine in 1900.
posted by Frowner at 8:37 AM on March 29 [19 favorites]

who will teach us how to decorate, to iron our shirts, to clean our fridges?

Youtube!
posted by bq at 8:40 AM on March 29 [9 favorites]

Further, when divorce was difficult and stigmatized, that may have kept a lot of women in bad or actually abusive marriages, but it did mean that Joe Important might cheat but was less likely to kick you to the curb in favor of a twentysomething. Especially Joe Important But Not Independently Wealthy, who wouldn't want the stigma of a divorce to damage his career.

At this point, a rich older guy is going to write a "I'm rich, you're not, if we divorce I keep my stuff and you leave with the clothes on your back" pre nup and feel completely happy about replacing you with a more elastic younger version after childbirth, and no one in his social circle will say boo.

Again, this is why you want to be the last wife.
posted by Frowner at 8:42 AM on March 29 [9 favorites]

the other way I look at it is that the actual One Weird Trick to a happy relationship is an equal distribution of power. That doesn't have to mean you're making equal incomes, or doing a divided split of housework, but there is some form of mutual recognition that you're both getting something valuable out of the relationship, and that value is something you are both contributing, and will generally be reliable over time. You can grow old together because you support each other. Age gap relationships can produce this equilibrium, but are often entered into, as this author described, as a transaction around the wife's youth, vs the husband's resources. Youth doesn't last, but career income will grow, which means that the equilibrium gets harder to maintain.

Is there a chance that the husband will love the wife for more than her youth? Are there successful relationships with massive age gaps? Sure. But because this essay is so centered on youth, because the author is so fixated with her youth, it doesn't really give the reader any indication that equilibrium is a likely scenario. If anything, there's ample evidence that people who get hung up on peaking when they're in their 20's will just spend all kinds of money to maintain the illusion of youth instead of investing in other forms of developing themselves. So we're all just watching a train on a track towards a brick wall. It could take other tracks, but hasn't yet.
posted by bl1nk at 8:49 AM on March 29 [21 favorites]

The author's parents are right wing Hispanic Catholics, so you might have something there. They are both public figures. Her father runs a pro-life group and her mother was part of Ron deSantis' cabinet.
posted by vacapinta at 4:38 AM on March 29

The article makes so much more sense now.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:54 AM on March 29 [21 favorites]

Imagine going to Harvard and having this essay be the one thing people will know about you.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:03 AM on March 29 [18 favorites]

I wonder how our current cultural focus on "age-gap relationships" fits into our ongoing discourse about child protection / overprotection. Culturally we say that children have never been more oversurveilled and overcontrolled; we also have endless true stories of sexual exploitation; we also scoff at political organizations using "child safety" to promote their reactionary agendas. Similarly Elder Millennials gaze curiously at the new generation of women who loudly proclaim (and get published saying) that life is OVER, OVER at 30, which was not in the zeitgeist during our youth.

The brutal truth is that no one will care about or want to "protect" the author once she is a few years older. One could say it's a pleasure of adulthood, being considered able to make your own decisions, having built enough of a life that you can really fuck it up. But then ... are you protected? Are you cherished? Are you still valuable?

For we have, right now, re-created a special liminal category of woman -- LEGAL ADULTS -- "girls" of 23, "girls" of 27 -- who we feel we must still "protect" from sexual exploitation even in (in my opinion) its least-bad forms. Or at least we feel we must care about their romantic choices. (Yes -- a 23 year old choosing to marry a richer, more experienced 33 year year old may not be 100% amazing, but it is not like {all the other things that can happen}.)

Obviously, as in the age of 19th century pseudo-chivalry, only certain young women are allowed in this category.

I think this is a temptation for some young women to ... not age out of this space of care / caring. In one way the article is a cheat code to adulthood -- marry older and get the pleasures of your 30s: good wine, good house, mature partner, but not alas comfort with your own choices and power. In another it is like the liminal space of college -- many adult pleasures and freedoms with more protections and less responsibilities than post-college life.

The culture has, of course, spoken about the needs of protection for all girls and women -- the Me Too movement, the re-evaluation of 2000s celebrity culture, the re-revelation of abuse in workplaces. But those discourses involve feminism -- sometimes race! sometimes gender theory! Sometimes expanding the circle to queer and trans and nonbinary youths! Sometimes considering the responsibilities, oversights, and participation-in-bad-stuff of grown-up women! Whereas the "protection of young people", well that is noncontroversial, nonpolitical, something we must all agree on... why wouldn't you get Botox at 27 at that rate?
posted by Hypatia at 9:58 AM on March 29 [8 favorites]

Internalized misogyny is the worst misogyny.
posted by rpfields at 9:58 AM on March 29 [14 favorites]

I have not read any of the linked stuff, but I have read most of these comments. this is pure metafilter gold in here and as always Frowner brings the wisdom with a nice side of sophisticated snark.

I have SO.MANY.THOUGHTS. on this topic...

I have had a sugar daddy, although with no expectations of marriage. I have dated a wealthy man 12 years older (30s, 40s). we had a pretty equal relationship other than occasional meals at fancy restaurants and one really nice vacation I could never have afforded on my own. He wanted to be on the marriage track, but also wanted children (which I did not), so we broke up. we are still friends. he is married, with children, and has a big fancy house. I do not suffer regrets.

I never felt like our age difference mattered, and he did not let our financial differences matter (we did not live together so I paid my own rent etc)

on the other hand, my FIL is on wife #3, who is certainly following the Frowner School of Be The Last Wife Method. He is almost 87 now and she is 46. they have been together like 18 years I think. She is not at all happy, but she's holding out for that payday.

It's one thing to get together with a 68 year old man. they had sex, they traveled and did fun stuff. The fact that he is an emotionally distant workaholic was less impactful then. now he is getting slow and frail and is no fun and they don't have sex (shocking!). the fact that she is an emotionally immature drama queen depressive doesn't help.

he's not even that rich, but he has a great house and a fat pension coming. she'll get all that. will my husband and his brother get anything? we have no idea. we don't really care. I hope my FIL lives to be 110 and she has to change his diapers for a decade. or she can leave. we don't even hate her but she is such a brat (complaining to me about how much it sucks she got a Tesla to replace the other Tesla and now its gotten scratched and she's sad and he bought her EMERALDS that cold unfeeling bastard. I could go on...) I don't really wish that on my FIL to be honest, but he's a pretty lame dad on the whole and she's only made it worse. I wouldn't trade lives with her.
posted by supermedusa at 10:05 AM on March 29 [12 favorites]

Grazie Sophia Christie is a writer living in Miami and London. She’s at work on her first novel.

Aren’t we all?
posted by snofoam at 10:17 AM on March 29 [20 favorites]

From the satire above: "no woman can change a man unless she is a witch dressed up as a beggar with magical powers and a heart full of spite."
posted by clew at 8:28 PM on March 28

This is not unlike my most recent relationship. First revealing herself with a photo of her in the shadows as a witch. We were work-friends, and she met me. She was about 7 years older. She thought she could change me or something. Mistrust and so much more, as well as an inability to deal with my own foibles (fine), but after the breakup, I had my first stalker. Let me tell you that was fun.

Some of us don't want that.

And dear sweet noble precious innocent praiseworthy Grazia, I hope you get precisely the man you deserve.
posted by symbioid at 10:18 AM on March 29 [3 favorites]

Imagine going to Harvard and having this essay be the one thing people will know about you.

tbf thanks to this essay, people will also know that she went to Harvard.
posted by General Malaise at 10:20 AM on March 29 [13 favorites]

I have a hunch that with relationships your viewpoint very much shapes what you get. If you believe relationships are transactional with the exchange of youth for money, that's what you get. If you believe they are based in love and respect that's also what you end up with. You get out what you put in.

So I guess the writer has what she expected, and it seems to be a balm to the gnawing terror she feels of ageing.
posted by eyeofthetiger at 11:02 AM on March 29 [4 favorites]

Slate has a take.

one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about

posted by clawsoon at 11:13 AM on March 29 [16 favorites]

tl;dr: "I am pretty happy in my relationship. That's all I have to say". Despite the framing, there is no generally applicable theory of relationships that can be drawn from this article.
posted by senor biggles at 11:14 AM on March 29 [4 favorites]

I'm not drawing any generally applicable theory of relationships from the article - I am considering the source and drawing the conclusion that it's another bit of right wing cultural warfare & anti-feminist backlash disguised as a personal memoir - a companion to the "tradwives" & kind-of-not-explicitly-Christian influencers all over Instagram and TikTok and Facebook. "See, girls, true happiness is just finding the right man so you can swan around all day looking pretty and playing at writing, all that "career" and "financial independence" stuff just gives you wrinkles. "
posted by soundguy99 at 11:29 AM on March 29 [22 favorites]

Wouldn't girls be trying to hear from someone with more experience with it than this - especially when the revulsion she has for men her own age is not a shared experience? If I'm hearing it correctly, they haven't even gotten to the seven year itch, and she has assumptions about the division of labor that they'd assume as parents that may be unfounded based on a brand spanking new idea that a high-earning primary breadwinner would, upon becoming a father *downshift* to spend more time at home instead of ramping up to guarantee security.
posted by Selena777 at 12:17 PM on March 29 [4 favorites]

Speaking for myself, and only myself, I was involved in a really toxic relationship with a man 16 years my senior when I was 23. It was clear I was valued for my youth from the comments of his friends when I'd show up to meet him at bars and gatherings:

"Look at her! No lines around the eyes at all."
"You have just the smoothest skin. Beautiful."
"What a sweet girl you are! Aren't you precious?"

He liked having a 23 year old girlfriend and I didn't know any better. Listen, at that age, I was a hot immature mess with a growing drinking problem and a huge HUGE lack of self-confidence. I was an easy target. I was the cliche girl with daddy issues. I can see that very clearly now at 47, but at 23, I was thrilled that someone older was treating me like an adult (NARRATOR: no, he wasn't) and paying attention to me. The whole thing imploded nearly five (!!) years later when he realized he wanted kids and I was not ready, much less interested. I got dumped for a woman a decade older than me, but much more appropriate.

If this woman is using her youth to get her the marriage she thinks she wants, mazel tov, but youth doesn't last forever. He's gotta love you for more than that.
posted by Kitteh at 12:19 PM on March 29 [10 favorites]

This part in the article is concerning:

"I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him"

I can see tolerating this for a month or two, but she's only 3ish years into a lifelong commitment and expresses to the public, for everyone to know, that she's not allowed to ever get angry with him?!

Learning about her conservative/antichoice family also makes me wonder--not that it's my business, but I think it's relevant if we're contemplating the stealth conservatism in the piece--how their bedroom life is, and how much of that is coercive. In its subtle way. There's so much in Christian conservative culture about how it's wrong for a wife to deprive her husband of sex. And all the high praise for youth might echo the high praise that "purity" also gets in those circles.

I don't know, but I get a creepy sense that the author is giving up even more freedom and personal sovereignty than she lets on here.
posted by knotty knots at 1:45 PM on March 29 [6 favorites]

So many things to say, but I've said a lot of them before. I've got this song in my head, courtesy of an ex's taste in music.

tl;dr: Her plan doesn't work well if the older man's fortunes undergo a reversal, in health or in wealth. Life is more of a dice roll than she might think. It helps to have job history, life experience, and/or inheritance if things go wrong. I guess she might have that last one.

I've been both the younger woman being judged and the older woman looking on with concern at this point, and now I see what she can't yet see: There is real value in living your own life and having your own adventures and developing your own self-sufficiency when you're younger. And there are no guarantees, no matter how well-cushioned from life's blows and the prospects of aging you think your older husband might be.

There can be good things about the arrangement, and people are entirely too judgemental about age gaps between consenting adults. I learned a lot, myself. I wouldn't say don't do it. I would just say: You might not be the life expert you think you are, so have some humility. I would just say: It's not the best thing to subsume yourself in someone else's life story and tastes and neglect your own. I would just say: You don't know what you don't know, and I hope you don't have to find out. I would just say: Feminism is still here for you if you change your mind later on, when you outgrow your young ingenue phase and everything stops coming so easily.

The guy who's still boyish and unformed enough at age 30 to go for a woman that much younger isn't guaranteed to ever actually grow up. And the guy who's didactic and self-sure enough at that age to dictate his tastes to a younger woman as if they're universal constants doesn't always navigate the younger spouse's or his own growth or setbacks well.

Growing together is hard at any age or combination thereof. Becoming a tradwife doesn't solve that problem. It sucks to try to teach young men social graces, but it sucks arguably even more when the older man you thought had some social graces devolves before your eyes, 'cause just try telling him something when you're perpetually the younger one he met when you didn't know anything. Add a reversal of fortunes to the equation and your suave, debonair older guy may not understand how to respond or treat his young wife. "I'm not a coward, I've just never been tested," and all that.

Exiting that roller coaster a decade later puts you right back in the position of the women you currently pity: on an artificial timeline, making up for lost days, finally having the adventures you should have had in your twenties. Or maybe not having adventures at all, if you have kids and no job history or inheritance.

I don't actually pity her, and she shouldn't pity me. Here in the future, I try to be kind to my younger self, after all, when I think back on my last 13 years. I wish her well. I hope her plans work out. I hope she develops a bit of humility without suffering painful hardship.
posted by limeonaire at 1:58 PM on March 29 [16 favorites]

Exiting that roller coaster a decade later puts you right back in the position of the women you currently pity: on an artificial timeline, making up for lost days, finally having the adventures you should have had in your twenties. Or maybe not having adventures at all, if you have kids and no job history or inheritance.

To be fair, this kind of life break, breaking up after a decade, puts ANYONE regardless of gender or age or age differential in the exact same place. That is a factor about ANY relationship breaking up -- after a decade, you emerge into a world where you have no experience outside that relationship and have no clear paths about how to start.

I think that's part of your point, but I wanted to make it more explicit: breaking up with someone after a decade means you're emerging into a life you don't know how to handle because the relationship stopped all your development in those areas when it started.
posted by hippybear at 2:05 PM on March 29 [4 favorites]

Reflecting on this, here we all are ragging on this woman who clearly was/is somewhat naive and screwed up in her youth, as so many of us were ... what about the dude? If we are going to be all blamey, he gets at least half, right? What kind of person purchases another person's youth?

Having said that, one of my dearest friends is married to a guy a decade and a half older. Many years ago, she went after him... but she was the person with the stable high paying job and he was a musician (who also is a domestic god). They are still together and doing well. But this relationship started when she was a decade older than the author and presumably both of them were much more clear eyed.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 2:08 PM on March 29 [4 favorites]

Went to Harvard for undergrad tells you a lot about a person (probably bad and annoying), intentionally trying to date HBS people tells you even more about a person (DEFINITELY bad and annoying, prefers to be around bad and annoying people). All the other details like "lives in Miami AND London" or "Writes articles for the Tablet" are just icing on the bad annoying cake.
posted by youthenrage at 2:14 PM on March 29 [2 favorites]

I think that's part of your point, but I wanted to make it more explicit: breaking up with someone after a decade means you're emerging into a life you don't know how to handle because the relationship stopped all your development in those areas when it started.

Totally! And now that I'm the older, more established person in a partnership, it's something I really try to be mindful of—I don't want my partner to forgo important life experiences or give up their own agency to be with me. That speaks to i_am_joe's_spleen's point too.
posted by limeonaire at 2:15 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]

I do think one thing that has helped my relationship with a large age gap work is that we both share some interests but have completely divergent interests and we have always given ourselves the space to not have to Do Things As A Couple all the time. It's okay for one to stay home while the other does a thing. Heck, we've had years where one of us has been working in an entirely different city. But our rule is, we have a home, and you always come home eventually.
posted by hippybear at 2:19 PM on March 29 [4 favorites]

To be fair, this kind of life break, breaking up after a decade, puts ANYONE regardless of gender or age or age differential in the exact same place. That is a factor about ANY relationship breaking up -- after a decade, you emerge into a world where you have no experience outside that relationship and have no clear paths about how to start.

Yes, but the thing that makes her particularly vulnerable if he dumps her when she hits 30 is that it sounds like she's basically a housewife who dabbles in some writing ventures. So she would have no real work history/career as an adult. Unless she comes from a family with the kind of wealth where she can just cash in on her inheritance, and maybe she does.
posted by litera scripta manet at 3:17 PM on March 29 [5 favorites]

My age-mate partner and I were driving back from a farmer's funeral out in the country today, a funeral he made sure I got to despite the unreliability of the car currently and the difficulty securing a rental at the last minute on Easter weekend in a college town and the fact that my mom's car is consistently on empty. It happened to be that today is a teacher work day, and so he spent it figuring all this out because he knew I would cop out if left to figure it out myself and he knew how I would regret not going because he knows how I loved the dead farmer. She kept me in greens the better part of a decade and him for about a year until I was forced to admit he's a Dinty Moore man and is never going to learn to love salad.

"The Sultans of Swing" was playing on the radio and we were singing and air-various-instruments-ing along because we both know the song because we're the same age. M. Knopfler said "[blah blah whatever is the line] steps! up! to the microphone" and my boyfriend dropped his air guitar and grabbed his air microphone and said, "Testes... testes... testes?!?" with the perfectly perfect alarmed glance in the direction of his lap on the last "testes" because he is the most hilarious person on our globe. And I said, "please tell me that isn't your material. If that's yours, I'm going to... I'm going to have to pay you a lot of money." And he admitted it was not his (but I'm telling you if you'd seen him you'd know he made it his own and you would have marveled at the sheer genius), and he said it was the kind of puerile humor that caused his previous long relationship to dissolve and I said that it wasn't puerile and what was this woman's problem did she just want to watch My Dinner with Andre twenty four seven and he said yes, exactly, and I said well she needs to grow up because My Dinner with Andre is funny but so is testes testes testes and anyone who can't see that is still a goddamn child.

IOW thank god for these idiots who can't see the beauty of the manchild in front of them and therefore must needs remove themselves from the market and seal themselves away with some French Casaubon who folds clothes and uses coasters like an angel, and thank god my own May-December asininity lasted as long as it did through all the years it did when the divine Mr. testes testes testes was with My Dinner with Andre woman et alia so that when he was finally free, so was I.

Perfect. Perfect match, at the perfect time. His "power" is not an "expanding cone" howdothesepeoplegetpublished or a "funnel"- which, fuck, this is so exasperating! A funnel is a cone, hello? GDI, a funnel is in the shape of a cone, and if my power is a funnel, doesn't that mean it is concentrated? Whereas the man's power, the upside-down funnel of his "expanding cone" would be dissipated? Could you, in other words, take a moment or two of the many many hours your relationship has allowed you to spend Jane Austening among silken pillows in your husband's sunlit chalet and rein in some of these metaphors?) In any case, we are neither of us conically powerful and we are not together because of the geometry of our earning potential over a lifetime but because we make each other happy. He is far, far better socialized than I am and far more considerate, and not because of some army of ex girlfriends. He is charming and sweet-natured because of native wit and a decent upbringing.

Furthermore, I learned how to be a halfway decent human being from my college boyfriend, not the other way around. I couldn't have held the old fucker I was May-Decembering with longer than about ten minutes had I been a hotheaded little snot trying to trade on youth alone. In yet more other words, that is to say, I dispute the article's premise.

And finally, how, if you went to "Harvard College" do you commit the crime against parallelism we see in this sentence: "As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse." No, it's "liked history, read Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I'd read" (Jesus Christ, "female pitfalls." Maybe they should've kicked her out of the wholeass school, not just that supper club party she crashed.)
posted by Don Pepino at 3:29 PM on March 29 [18 favorites]

Her father is both a doctor and a lawyer. I'm not sure if that's the sort of thing that makes you rich from all your income or poor from all your student loans.
posted by clawsoon at 3:30 PM on March 29 [3 favorites]

A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s
But is she living her own life?

What I find so disheartening about this is the complete and unquestioned materialism. “I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone”.

Babe, the fancy car is not the goal. The goal is crafting yourself into a worthwhile human being who has contributed to the world. Ambition can be materialistic but it’s usually not about accumulation of money, it’s about respect and achievement. That’s not to say that a career is the only way, I still remember the shock it was to hear my mom say ‘that’s when I felt like what I was doing was really important - about the work of raising small children. I don’t say everyone needs to be doing something important all the time, but - yeah, at least some of the time you should be doing something you feel is genuinely important, whether that’s building a career or volunteering or caring for your family or just having a job that earns the money you need to live. This woman seems to be actively looking for the Island of the Lotus Eaters. Is this what “you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
posted by bq at 3:38 PM on March 29 [9 favorites]

oh god I can't believe she published this under her real name

like I imagine her interviewing for a job 20 years from now and this article is potentially still web-searchable

the horror
posted by cnidaria at 3:55 PM on March 29 [10 favorites]

Yeah, the materialistic, consumerist, transactional nature of her relationship goals/ideals is something to behold. Even though she manages to go beyond that into why she actually seems to like the old fart (jk) as a person, it all still reeks of being overly caught up in the outward signs rather than the inward truths. All the world's a stage for you to blithely prance around, or something. IDK. UGH. Her writing elicits reactions at least?
posted by nikoniko at 4:00 PM on March 29

Man, this is such raw capitalism. I guess a hardworking straight man making say $50k is just persona non grata. That’s not me, but looking for a rich older partner is a weird look in a world where I think aspirational wealth is a sickness. At 54, I tend to assume that dudes making bank have serious competitiveness or ego issues that would make them crap in a relationship because those are the people I’ve known, though that’s a stereotype. As long as Maslow’s needs are met, I would think someone who’s content where they are would make a better partner.
posted by caviar2d2 at 4:25 PM on March 29 [2 favorites]

I find it kinda odd that she doesn't reflect on her parents' relationship at all. It seems like she pulls all of her ideas about relationships from 19th-century novels. Consciously, anyway. There are obviously social and societal ideas that are shaping hers, but... she doesn't seem to be aware of them? Or at least doesn't want to talk about them?
posted by clawsoon at 4:43 PM on March 29 [4 favorites]

Again, this is why you want to be the last wife.

There are certain pragmatic but ethically frowned upon acts that can ensure you are always, indeed, the final wife.
posted by Well I never at 7:07 PM on March 29 [23 favorites]

OK I'm not reading this, but my cynical assumption is that she doesn't have to worry about being shamed out of town from this stupid essay. If she has the slightest interest, she'll be launched as the new young (-ish) Good Woman Who Drives All the Evil Feminists Crazy. She won't have to worry about interviewing anywhere because there's an entire right-wing media infrastructure, and most of it is not even dependent on paying customers; all she needs to do is catch the attention of an old billionaire with a similar 1950s kink to secure sinecure on the Bari Weiss/Megan Whatserface/(ok there's lots of these chicks but I try not to give them clicks so I can't remember their names). It sounds like she's already got an in with the Republican donor side! (And she'll be with friends, as plenty of folks doing the conservatives-under-50 gig are failed artists. Ugh, now I really want to know what her book is about. This is how the Cut gets you.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:45 PM on March 29 [6 favorites]

There's an entire genre of literature based around that final wife idea.
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM on March 29 [2 favorites]

If she has the slightest interest, she'll be launched as the new young (-ish) Good Woman Who Drives All the Evil Feminists Crazy.

With all these folks, I wonder if they have the self-awareness to realize they are broadcasting their mental health issues and clear need for therapy. My guess is no.

Do they ever wonder why they’re not, you know, happy?
posted by leotrotsky at 6:12 AM on March 30 [1 favorite]

I'll badly quote Hannah Gadsby here: a girl of 17 is never, ever, ever in her prime. EVER.
posted by petiteviolette at 7:41 AM on March 30 [13 favorites]

I just want to note explicitly, as some others have, that 10 years is not some gaping cavernous, unbridgeable gap, and that May-December romances can work, and that this really is about marrying rich and not about marrying older.

Is it just me or does she sound like a twit? Have enjoyed the commentary. Did read the fucking article. It’s just so weird to me. I am sure she will get her first novel published and I am equally sure that I will never read it and don’t need to think about her or her essay anymore.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:24 PM on March 30 [2 favorites]

and that this really is about marrying rich and not about marrying older.

Is it just me or does she sound like a twit?

To me, she seems about 50% aware of her situation and the dynamics. She very intentionally sought out and married an older guy with a high income, and she is open-eyed about the transactive nature of exchanging her youthful body and pliable personality for a very nice material lifestyle.

But she also seems completely unaware of a tremendous amount, as itemized in many comments above. It's like she got partway there, but stalled out in the "neener neener I'm the kept wife and it's so hot, suck it y'all" part and never got past that.
posted by Dip Flash at 2:54 PM on March 30 [4 favorites]

I feel a little ill after reading this. It's like a bulletin from an alien universe. If she really believes that feminism has never brought women leisure, then I'm not sure what to think about her, as she stands so very far away, and in a world I rejected before I could even think of entering it. (I was hell bent on bohemia from the time I was about twelve.)

I had an older boyfriend when I was 18; he was thirty, and a computer science student, though with, he boasted, a millionaire father in Australia. I liked, as I did then, the adventure of getting to know someone, his music (jazz) collection, etc., but I never lost the contempt I felt for him for being an adult who was sleeping with a teenager. When he inevitably broke up with me, he became quite upset at my indifference, and when I accepted an invitation to a party just as he was leaving, he became enraged. But I thought we both knew the deal, I tried to tell him. You got me, 18 year old flesh, and I learned that you weren't as interesting as I thought. He used to tell me that I was beautiful, and that I should make some old man very happy, which I found revolting, is the point of all this, I suppose.

This piece is beautifully written, and I look forward to reading her work following her (probable) divorce and after she slowly, surely, realises that what beauty buys you isn't necessarily worth it, or worth the man who chooses you based on it. She has described her marriage as something baldly transactional, and pretends that acknowledging its transactional nature will grant her some lasting, smug, sense of accomplishment. And she has sunk into the idea that beauty is the only metric of a woman's worth. This is a young woman's prerogative, but the older women watching her know that this dance can go on only so long. Graduate degrees last longer, and she might like to ramp up her skill set, as they say. But then I'm 65, and married to another woman, so my take on this is about as far away from hers as possible.
posted by jokeefe at 5:56 PM on March 30 [10 favorites]

Reading more comments, I see I am in a minority when it comes to appreciating her writing for itself, if not its content. That's okay: I still found it well written, and like others have said, look forward to the break-up essays.

Anyway, so she married rich, and has started a magazine called Miami Native. Given the same deal, at least Nicole Cliffe gave us The Toast (of beloved memory). Miami Native looks, as someone on Twitter/X said, "effete". No argument there.
posted by jokeefe at 8:52 PM on March 30 [1 favorite]

Is it just me or does she sound like a twit?

She comes off as someone who truly deeply thinks that her life & experience represent all other women. As jokeefe said above, it's like a bulletin from an alien universe. She's stating all these things about her looks, her perception of herself, her life experience as someone who's only 27, and drawing these sweeping conclusions about all of womanhood or something, and it just comes across as self-centered and juvenile.
posted by augustimagination at 9:21 PM on March 30 [7 favorites]

There are plenty of novels thinking through the tradeoffs of marrying for ease.

At least one anti-suffrage pro-woman novelist in the… 1890s? wrote a novel that was against divorce on the grounds that, basically, second-rate women deserved security too. It beats Emma all to hell for an unsympathetic protagonist, and I wish I could remember the title.
posted by clew at 9:26 AM on March 31 [1 favorite]

Something has just occurred to me.

Most of the negative comments in here are about the author. Where is the dispersion for her partner, a dude who seems to have no qualms about marrying someone young enough to be his child?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:49 AM on March 31 [1 favorite]

There's a ten year age gap between them, fwiw. She's not young enough to be his child.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 12:10 PM on March 31 [5 favorites]

EmpressCallipygos: Most of the negative comments in here are about the author. Where is the dispersion for her partner, a dude who seems to have no qualms about marrying someone young enough to be his child?

Part of it is misogyny, no doubt, but part of it is probably also that her partner barely appears as a person in the essay. He is a collection of desirable functions.
posted by clawsoon at 1:39 PM on March 31 [5 favorites]

Also, he didn’t write an article laying out all his personal flaws and the thought processes that shaped his decisions in detail. When he does, please send me the link and I will gleefully post about what a butthead he is.
posted by bq at 1:52 PM on March 31 [9 favorites]

Believe me I'd love to read an article from the perspective of his college friends who tried to warn the author about why he wasn't such a catch.
posted by muddgirl at 8:05 PM on March 31 [7 favorites]

Most of the negative comments in here are about the author.

As stated above, because the author wrote the piece. I have zero desire to jump on an individual simply choosing for choosing a partner who is either 10 years younger or 10 years older, or more. The author was a legal adult when she married; so was her partner. You do you but I just don't feel like age gaps, in general, are a type of sin.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:59 PM on April 2 [2 favorites]