Identify this marriage essay without the help of my long-retired English teacher...

December 18, 2007 3:57 PM

In high school (the late 1990s) I read an essay on marriage -- the writer's main contention was that it's unrealistic to think that a single person can ever be at the exact same life stages as yourself, e.g. Young & Passionate (teens), Ready to Have Children (30's), Wanting Intellectual Companionship (60's), and thusly, that having just one partner over the course of a lifetime is a near impossibility.

I know I'm totally butchering what the life stages were, and I think reading the essay was part of a unit themed around female-writers/feminists if that helps at all. Who the heck wrote it?

posted by acorn1515 to society & culture (3 comments total)

Could it have been Erik Erikson or Helena Lopata?
posted by Soup at 5:26 PM on December 18, 2007

Sounds like an extract from one of Robert Heinlein's books. Time Enough for Love maybe? It has a lot of set pieces that just expound on Heinlein's philosophies.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 4:13 AM on December 19, 2007

I don't know the specific essay you mention but I thought I heard of The (or one of The) Playboy Manifesto(s) from the 60's talking about a similar concept.

Hefner proposed that 18 yo males should be matched with 30 yo females; both at (or approaching) peaks of sexuality and the male can learn how to be a proper man from an older woman. They would stay together for 12 years till he was 30 and she was 42. Then he would be matched with an 18 yo woman and they would stay together for 12 years.

After the 12 years a 42 yo would be matched with other 42 yo and ride out life. All having to do with the different male/female mindsets at different times of life and the age-ism mindsets.

Something like that. I could be off on the exact years.
posted by Kensational at 11:12 AM on December 19, 2007