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Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
'Modern Love' Tackles The Drama Of The Self-Absorbed Dad

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bowleserised
12/02/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
Did she mean "brooding" or was the first hunk really "broody"?

One's Heathcliff and the other's a chicken.
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The Queen of No
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
What the hell? I mean, did the NYT just print this because it was so ridiculous how delusional this woman is? Why are people so comfortable with their totally improvable flaws? Honey, the chemistry between you and your husband is the problem, oh, and your totally misguided ideas on sex.
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QueenOfTheForest
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
Marriages are complicated things. I'm not excusing this woman, whom I think is a self-absorbed first class a-hole, but I just wanted to share my experience. My marriage failed a few years ago - we didn't have sex for three years (the last three years) - and yes, I held back. We had mismatched sex drives to begin with, and the ex's alcoholicism didn't help. He's sober now, but wasn't then - and who wants to sleep with a smelly, selfish drunk, especially after coming home from a full day's work outside the home, cleaning up, feeding the kids, paying the bills and running the household while the ex drinks in the basement and passes out on the couch at 9 p.m.?

So for all we know, maybe her husband is like mine was.

And fwiw, I didn't cheat, didn't sleep with another man until two years after I got divorced.
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ronaldpagan
12/01/08

@QueenOfTheForest: A lot of times people don't want to sleep with their partner because of the partner's inadequacies, but a lot of times it's just a matter of differing sex drives or levels of attraction. There are plenty of reasons in this essay to think that the writer's issues have nothing to do with the husband's personal problems.
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Flackette Goes Retro
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
When did oversharing become art? This woman, who has a garden-variety problem, seems to think that she is a special snowflake. So she doesn't like sex with her husband but has at various points in her life enjoyed fucking other people. Great. Sounds like she and her husband would both be better off finding someone else. They brought children into this, who will already have to suffer their entire lives knowing that their parents, if they remain married, clearly don't really like each other. And if they divorce, that's a whole other set of issues for the kids. She has fucked things up enough for people, the least she could do is not publish the entire humiliating account in a national newspaper.
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GoldenRatioφ (aka -girl11)
12/02/08

@Flackette is a Red State Elitist: Yeah, that was my reaction. I have a much lower sex-drive than my bf. I seriously cannot imagine thinking that requires a full-length article in the NY Times where I would try to justify/analyze it in great depth. Who knows why I got stuck with this miserable sex drive- tho she seems to think the problem is much deeper and mysterious than something so plebian as sex drive.

And my overshare: we "compromise," try to meet in the middle, and it seems to work out just fine. I can't imagine using it against my bf, or vice versa like this woman seems to do. Craziness.
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checkyopremisebitch
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
Not all Modern Love is awful. See: [www.nytimes.com]
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arodriguez.romero
12/01/08

@checkyopremisebitch: yes, the one about the Alzheimer's patient and his spouse was bittersweet. There was one about an American woman who married a Chinese man that I sorta liked too.
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sybann
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
This woman's story reads like repressed sexual abuse - or she's a furious asshole.
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clevernamehere
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
I never understand how people can write articles like this about their current spouses. Maybe he's totally given her the ok for this piece, but even if he has it just seems cruel. Everyone doesn't need to know your business. Diaries are supposed to be private for a reason.
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arodriguez.romero
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
I remember ranting at lunch time with my coworkers over the Ayelet/Michael thing. I think it's ok for her, or whomever, to "rate" their love and make a choice. I don't think it's ok to share that in a forum that the kids in question might one day read. In the same way this lady seems like a gross person to know, since her husband could read all the roiling hair nonsense.

Not to defend, just the opposite, but, Ayelet and Lauren are authors. Everybody knows somebody who chooses career over family. They are just another two of those.
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Mama Penguino
12/01/08

@arodriguez.romero speaks java: I should have read on before posting my own comment on this. I'm with you, babe!
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HymanHummingbird
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
This has column has been bugging me since I read it last night, thanks Tatiana and all for nailing why. Another confounding part:
"Iâve always found it odd that on a Tuesday night you might go about the bodily act of having sex and then, the next morning, amid a chattering group of children, eat Cheerios. It seems to me that if sex were separated out from the daily wheel of life, it might survive monogamy more intact."
Whu-hut?? Um, sex IS a big part of the daily wheel of life! She seems to be both making it so much more important and yet so much LESS important than it really is. ...
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sequined
12/02/08

@HymanHummingbird: Yeah I used to think like that, too. When I was like twelve and felt uncomfortable about touching myself. Then I grew up and got over it, grew into my sexuality, and developed a healthy relationship with myself and my body and its functions. If she cared, she could address those problems.
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Pizza!Pizza!Pizza!
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
Good god woman. The spark you felt with the other dudes? Something you may have wanted to look for in a long-term partner. You can't just pair up a dude with any woman and expect him to want sex every day- and it's not because men as a whole want sex less. It's because they're mismatched.
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ronaldpagan
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
Doesn't she sound a lot like all those dudes who go on and on about how they don't want to fuck anyone they respect and don't respect anyone they want to fuck? You can see it in her language and how she talks about, like, how hearing her husband moan is incompatible with feeding her kids Cheerios in the morning? She likes sex but she thinks it's dirty and shameful, which is one of the oldest cliches ever. You just hear it from men more often than you hear it from women.
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casi nadie (loves MCC forever)
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
so yeah . . . having nearly entered the modern love contest last year (before i'd really read any of the essays) i'm now really glad i didn't.
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HannahBethD
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
The hatred of her orgasm giver and how she waxes eloquent about her glass staining sound like she really needs control and hates to lose it.

I understand. I used to be that way. But that was because I spent the bulk of my childhood being sexually assaulted on an almost daily basis, not because I'm entitled fuckhead who wants to fuck around on my significant other.
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ILikePineapples
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
The problem with the editors of Modern Love, I think, is that they overvalue the novelty of these personal stories because they're afraid of the column coming off as trite or cliched. It would be much harder to have an original piece if you weren't shocking people with your unbelievably uncomfortable relationship and bad manners.

I read one really good Modern Love once, about a woman admitting to herself that she loves her husband more than her kids. Now, who would let their kids read that, I have no idea, but the piece was good.
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Macloserboy
12/01/08

@ILikePineapples: Wasn't that Michael Chabon's wife? And she caught shit for it too.
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ILikePineapples
12/01/08

@Macloserboy: You're right, it was! I just looked it up- I didn't know that when I read it! OMG, what shit did she catch? I'm so curious now.
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Macloserboy
12/01/08

@ILikePineapples: The mommy bloggers went apeshit over it.
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Mama Penguino
12/01/08

@Macloserboy: That's a tough one. As a mom, I wouldn't ever want my kids to think they were second to dad, but I am still in love with my husband, so I would hardly condemn Mrs. Chabon (or whatever her name is). I do remember a friend telling me a story from her childhood. She asked her mother, "Who would you save if our house were on fire: me or daddy?" And the mom said, "Your father, of course, because there is no greater love than between a husband and wife." Needless to say, friend was massively fucked up about it and became one of the worst mothers in the universe. Just sayin'.
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ILikePineapples
12/01/08

@Macloserboy: Ah, gotcha. For some reason, when I read your comment, I immediately assumed you meant "caught shit from Michael Chabon," which would have been big scandal and far more interesting. (Mommy blog criticism is just boring and expected.)
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Mama Penguino
12/01/08

@ILikePineapples: Not all mothers are dumkopfs whose IQs retreat in the hormonal tide of having children. It was mommy-bloggers, after all, who defended Britney Spears when she was dropping her kids right and left, so to speak.
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Mama Penguino
12/01/08

@Macloserboy: @ILikePineapples: I just read about the essay, "Motherlove," and it appears it's more than just her own feelings on the matter, but that she believes that all families should be similarly arranged; i.e., love for family members should be hierarchical with mom & dad at the top, loving each other, and the children as satellites. My motto is if it works for her, great, but please refrain from suggesting it for me.
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The Queen of No
12/01/08

@ILikePineapples: See, to me that doesn't sound at all ridiculous. But realistically, I think it can cause problems. My own Grandmother admitted she loved my Grandfather more than her children. Subsequently, my Mother and her siblings all have a very cold and distant relationship with my Grandmother. It takes all kinds, I suppose.
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sequined
12/02/08

@ILikePineapples: My mom and dad have both told me and my sister that they love each other most. They don't phrase it hierarchically, and I don't think it means they love us less, exactly, but certainly in a different way. My mom does candidly answer the question "who's your favorite" with "your father." They chose each other; they turned us into who we are. It's different, and I don't think acknowledging that has fucked up me and my sister in any way. We know we're loved.
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SarahMC
12/01/08

In reply to Frigidity & Stained Glass Windows: 'Modern Love' Continues To Prove Unhappy Families All Same, Dull
This is beyond disturbing and it's mortifying to read about. I am sick of people writing about the terrible shit they've done, their terrible personalities, and the terrible things they think in their tiny heads, and believing that it makes them important and praise-worthy because they put pen to paper.
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JerseyGrrrl
12/01/08

@SarahMC: Why is it mortifying to you to read about someone else's problems? I like this column because occasionally I read something in it that I've experienced myself, and, pathetically though you might think, it makes me feel better that I'm not alone in my experience. In addition, the author sometimes discusses how he or she addressed the issue, which is even more helpful. I see some of my issues with sex in this woman, and I appreciated her candide telling. It made me feel less alone with "disturbing" problem.
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SarahMC
12/01/08

@JerseyGrrrl: Because they admit to things that are pretty awful sometimes. I mean, the passage RonaldPagan quoted above? Jesus. Yet there's never any self-reflection or analysis of one's own issues.
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JerseyGrrrl
12/01/08

@SarahMC: That's true. I thought that was a really awful thing to tell, but I find honesty incredibly refreshing, especially in New York.
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RainbowBrite
12/01/08

@JerseyGrrrl: Honesty might be refreshing, but broadcasting one's destructive behavior as a way of normalizing it is not.
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JerseyGrrrl
12/01/08

@RainbowBrite: I'm not sure that's her MO with this. If it is, I completely agree. But maybe this is therapy for her? Maybe she's reaching out to other women with these issues, since we know sexlessness in marriage is a prevalent problem. I'm disappointed everyone is attacking her for her selfishness. At least she's being honest with herself and her husband, and acknowledging this as a problem. Hopefully she'll find a way to work it out, because more than anything, I pity and sympathize with someone living with little to no sex because it's begun to bore her. I mean, how sad is that?
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SarahMC
12/01/08

@JerseyGrrrl: I might respect her honesty a bit more if she spoke about this with her husband/therapist privately. Writing about it in the NYT whilst she is still married to the man, and the mother of his children, is selfish and I'd imagine pretty hurtful to him (and her children, should they read it).
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ceejeemcbeegee is not here
12/01/08

@SarahMC: Like the Jezebel said: "I'm sick to death of people writing first-person essays about bad behavior and expecting that the mere act of writing about it absolves them of any responsibility and places them above censure." (Jessica Grose of jezebel.com)
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