The XX Factor: What women really think.

Competitive Complaining, and Other Strategies for a Happy Life

Like Emily Y., I did not exactly grow up planning my wedding—or picking out baby names, for that matter. In fact, the whole time I was single, I had this recurring nightmare that it was my wedding day and there was nothing I could do about it. Even as the actual day approached, I was completely terrified, and vividly remember a conversation I had with a photographer I worked with at the time, about how scary it was to think I’d never have another relationship with anyone else, ever. “Statistically unlikely,’’ she said, and somehow, that made me feel a lot better. And it still does—and that’s no reflection on my marriage. Which I guess is why I take these pieces about moron husbands no more seriously than I take the opposite kind. (Have you ever noticed how super-mushy book dedications seem to be a pretty good predictor of divorce within the year?) The impulse to make our marriages out to be worse than they are, rather than better, also just seems to be a part of this culture of competitive griping we've got going; even after I wrote about a love affair that ended badly, in an assisted living facility, for heaven's sake, between an 82-year-old woman and a 95-year-old man, I can’t tell you how many (apparently happily married) people in their 40s said wow, hubba hubba, they just couldn’t wait. … And none of them meant it, I'm pretty sure.