Couplings

[liisa22]

Anything I may think about the couplings are merely suppositions.  I don't feel like I really had enough information/background on the gang, ok group, to make any real ideas.  Especially in the case of Beth and Will.   

[liisa22]

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kolsonheld wrote:
With Lil, it seemed like she just wanted to be married. Her friends didn't really know Tuck, and in the end, it wasn't what she expected. Sadie's marriage almost seemed the most real, even though it seemed like they were married to do the 'right thing' following baby. It certainly isn't easy with Ed gone so often, but they seem to have a bond and truly love each other. Beth and Emily have a hard time believing that someone would want to be with them, and I wonder if that is why they end up with their partners. They don't show much confidence in this area, at least right away. 

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Sounds about right.  Once Lil got married,  the others felt that they too needed to be 'married' and there wasn't a lot of thought put into whom they decided to marry.

[DSaff]

I have had a hard time reading about these relationships because they seem doomed to fail. I don't see the couples building a life based on friendship, trust, love, and commitment. They didn't seem to choose each other for those reasons. Did they see that in their parents marriages? They saw the commitment to staying together due to the lack of divorce, but I'm not sure they saw the friendship needed to sustain that relationship. It will be interesting to continue reading and find out what happens.

[mattzay]

I agree. With the exception of the sex scene, we really do not get Will's take on the relationship. We do not get to see how he sees Beth or what he thinks about her or their relationship. I would really like to know if he really was impotent or simply pretending to be until he felt more comfortable in a relationship.

[KxBurns]

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DSaff wrote:

I have had a hard time reading about these relationships because they seem doomed to fail. I don't see the couples building a life based on friendship, trust, love, and commitment. They didn't seem to choose each other for those reasons. Did they see that in their parents marriages? They saw the commitment to staying together due to the lack of divorce, but I'm not sure they saw the friendship needed to sustain that relationship. It will be interesting to continue reading and find out what happens.

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What about Sadie and Ed? Although we don't get much of their backstory, and the marriage seems predicated on an unexpected pregnancy, they seem like they grow into a solid relationship. Anyone agree or disagree?

[detailmuse]

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KxBurns wrote:
What about Sadie and Ed? Although we don't get much of their backstory, and the marriage seems predicated on an unexpected pregnancy, they seem like they grow into a solid relationship. Anyone agree or disagree?

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A good arrangement, at least; hard to gauge a relationship when one partner is away so much ... Ed even went back to work instead of accompanying Sadie to the cemetery.

[KxBurns]

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detailmuse wrote:

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KxBurns wrote:
What about Sadie and Ed? Although we don't get much of their backstory, and the marriage seems predicated on an unexpected pregnancy, they seem like they grow into a solid relationship. Anyone agree or disagree?

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A good arrangement, at least; hard to gauge a relationship when one partner is away so much ... Ed even went back to work instead of accompanying Sadie to the cemetery.

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True! I think that aspect of their relationship reflects something many modern couples deal with... What impact does Ed's constant travel have on Sadie?

[detailmuse]

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KxBurns wrote:
What impact does Ed's constant travel have on Sadie?

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Except for Ed's income (granted, an important exception), his absence basically throws Sadie into single-parenthood. I remember her looking ahead one time to his being gone for the next four months, and it seemed she was looking into a dark, spiraling tunnel -- she wouldn't have any kind of break from the kids for all that time.

[Jennd1]

I think Lil set a trend when she was the first to marry and I think she felt college was ending and marriage was the next logical progession in her life.  A lot of the other couples seem as if they happened without much thought.  I think Lil married to grow up, while others marry for security or because it is the right thing to do.  I agree with the statement that the act of being married becomes more important than the person as the novel moves forward.

[mapleann]

When Beth was shopping for the wedding with Mrs. Bernstein, the bathroom breakdown, I liked how Mrs. Bernstein commended Beth on rationalization of her decision to chose Will over Dave, "I guess, I just don't think 'the one' exists. I think we make choices. We decide who 'the one' is, but we don't realize we're deciding because our, I don't know, conscious minds are saying, 'This is the one.' But there are all these other people out there, who we could just as easily fall in love with and make a life with. It would just be a different life, a different sort of being in love...." (p.169). Then Mrs.Bernstein thought, "Her daughter was right: people simply made choices" (p. 170). The cross generation agreement that coupling was a choice, and there were many correct or right choices. Bernstein always viewed Beth as the perpetual adolescent, but she did not at this moment in time. Beth made her mother realize that she is ready for commitment.

[m3girl]

The women/girls hook up with men that can take care of them.  And sometimes that works out (Beth/Will and Emily/Josh) and sometimes it doesn't (Lil/Tuck and Sadie/Ed).  Self sufficiency is something missing in these girls and it worries me because without that - don't you just get absorbed into your married life and your husband's life and lose yourself.

I was disappointed in these women and their choice of men/husbands.  Tuck's a loser who takes advantage of Lil; Sadie marries Ed because she's pregnant and he continues to do whatever he wants - wherever it takes him.  Will seems gross.  And Josh is just strange - proposing the way he did.

The women seek safety and security - because they can't seem to be able to obtain that on their own.  Are any of them truely happy with their relationships?  I doubt it.

Most of the women I know from this generation seem to have their lives much more together, are more independent and savy than this group.

Susan

[ClaudiaLuce]

I wrote in my post to Joanna that I felt that the setting was "ageless" therefore, I felt that the couplings and the marriages followed somewhat of a "past" principle of romanticism and that the ladies married those men who made them feel most loved and wanted.  Perhaps my interpretation of this novel is unique to me - I have felt by reading many of the posts that most readers were determined to fit the characters into present day and to make them fit their sterotypes of present day feminists.  Perhaps they were all just romantics who were somehow "lost in the romance of the past".

Claudia