In high school, I dated a tall and handsome boy from Pakistan. He was well-spoken and soft-spoken, studious and focused. He knew that one day, he was going to become a doctor, a plastic surgeon. We got along well, but I knew it couldn’t amount to much. I was just 17; the world was too big, and my eyes too wide.
In college, I met a white farm boy from small-town Nebraska. His parents had 4 children. They made do, barely, on a single income, but they sent their girls to a private Lutheran school. My then-boyfriend did not possess a natural aptitude for the university. I became his personal tutor for basic engineering courses like statics and dynamics. In contrast, my smart and good-looking Muslim ex-boyfriend tutored me for my Advance Placement Physics exam, of which I scored a 4/5, thanks to him.
My mother didn’t care much for my white boyfriend. At the time, she didn’t care much for other things that I was doing either, so it seemed to be just another thing mom disapproved of. Then one day, she cried to me about how much she disliked him, and that she would have preferred my ex. That she was desperate to tears took me aback. I had understood that in much of East Asia, Muslim was considered an extreme religion and many people would not allow their girls to marry into it. But I was too naive to understand that to my mother, education and class trumped religious upbringing.
I once read an article on The Atlantic about marriage across classes. It cited several studies about how spouses from different backgrounds can struggle to reconcile their points of view. Different perspectives on important matters such as children and career, on daily habits such as time and money management can cause tensions among couples. I suppose the preference for cross-class marriage is for upward mobility; and the question is, will it last?
It makes sense to think that children should inherit their family’s values and traditions. But from my observation, between the rich, the educated, and the rich and educated, their children turned out on a wide spectrum: some were smart and focused, some had a sensible head over their shoulders, some never read a book apart from what given to them within their vocation, and others hardly read at all. For those on the other end of the spectrum, what kept them well footed in their socioeconomic circle had nothing to do with their ability to manage time and money and everything to do with their inherited wealth and social network. Then I think about my grandfather coming from hardship to creating a remarkable life for himself, and I can’t help but admire his determination and ambition. Agency matters.
As an institution, modern-day marriage is on shaky ground, and it has had much to do with advancement in women’s freedom and independence. Having agency over their own body and economic situation allows women the freedom to marry whom they wish and to leave a marriage if it no longer suits them. Times have changed, but our expectation upon what a marriage should provide has only gotten more ambitious. If in the past, marriage was a contract to maintain a certain socioeconomic standing, we now expect soulmates to help us achieve everything on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Marriage was expected to last until death, but people died young then. Nowadays, forever is equivalent to more or less 60 years. High expectation breeds anxiety, spinning around what contributes to a lasting marriage. Are they shared values, common goals, and similar interests? Is it really about class?
Every family has its own pettiness and idiosyncrasies, and even siblings differ and argue into adulthood. Over time, couples argue over big things, and little things too. In Becoming, Michelle Obama wrote, “I understand now that even a happy marriage can be a vexation, that it’s a contract best renewed and renewed again, even quietly and privately – even alone….You can live for a hundred straight days beneath an iron-gray sky that claps itself like a lid over the city. Frigid, biting winds blow in off the lake. Snow falls in dozens of ways, in heavy overnight dumps and daytimes, sideways squalls, in demoralizing sloppy sleet and fairy-tale billows of fluff….Eventually, however, something happens. A slow reversal begins. It can be subtle, a whiff of humidity in the air, a slight lifting of the sky. You feel it first in your heart, the possibility that winter might have passed….Now the sun is out and there are little nubby buds on the trees and your neighbors have taken off their heavy coats. And maybe there’s a new airiness to your thoughts on the morning you decide to pull out every window in your apartment so you can spray the glass and wipe down the sills….Maybe you spend the whole day considering new ways to live before finally you fit every window back into its frame and empty your bucket of Pine-Sol into the sink. And maybe now all your certainty returns, because yes, truly, it’s spring and once again you’ve made the choice to stay.”
Farmboy and I broke up, not because we couldn’t resolve our differences. Rather, it was because we had become too much alike. After all, I was just 20; the world was too big, and my eyes too wide. But I appreciate our time together. I had learned much from him, and I hope that he learned something from me too.
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