A Response to a Blog Post on Marriage

This is a response I posted to an article online by a woman describing her frustration with being the only single woman among all her married friends and her single friends who never wanted to be married. She describes feeling ashamed about her longing for a husband. Here it is:

One of the saddest things about the women’s movement has been its inability to separate women’s autonomy from women’s inclinations. In my opinion, one of its greatest achievements was to liberate women from the shackles of stereotyped gender roles and responsibilities and to open up opportunities for women to live their best lives. Today, we women have the opportunity to follow our dreams in any way we please, from living in an ashram in India to running a Fortune 500 corporation to leading the next great cultural revolution. This freedom is our birthright, and is long overdue.

However, freedom from gender roles is not the same as freedom from human nature. The great failing of the feminist revolution is that it neglected to consider the consequences of extending the freedom of breaking social rules to breaking gender norms with legitimate foundations. In order to buttress its position that women should have equal opportunities, the feminist movement asserted that there were no psychological differences between women and men and that both could pursue similar aims in similar ways with little fallout. This, in my opinion, was patently false.

In my experience, women are indeed different from men in elemental ways. Although there are, as always, many exceptions, many women have a propensity for passion and intensity and hunger for intimacy. In my experience, connection is an essential feminine need which often does not get met in our society. This is, I believe, one of the reasons women are not inclined to sleep around like men – we simply do not derive the same rewards, as the passion and intensity we crave from our intimate relations are missing in promiscuous sex. This is also, I believe, why we are more drawn to and more desirous of marital relations.

It is unfortunate that the women’s movement has neglected to address these essential aspects of the feminine experience. I completely understand how you felt, Elizabeth. Tens of millions of women are in the same position, wondering if something is wrong with them because they don’t feel like they “need a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” A marriage is one of the most intimate relationships a woman can have, and that’s why so many of us crave one. There’s nothing wrong with that.