Loving & Leaving

Lin Good, a consultant, was Associate Librarian at Queen’s University.

Brenda Rabkin is a freelance writer, teacher, and broadcaster. Her media experience is strongly reflected in this book, the simple approach and capsule portrayals of people being reminiscent of a television script.

The style suits the contents: case studies on the disintegration of marriage from the perspective of women. The examples were chosen from 80 women, ranging in age from 26 to 67, who decided to leave their marriages because of that dissatisfaction described by Betty Friedan as “the problem that has no name.” Often it is a vague feeling of wanting something better, “emotional intimacy, and equal partnership, ...control over her own life” (p.21).

Ms. Rabkin says that the women she met rebelled against marriage as an institution. However, in several cases the husbands were clearly domineering and insecure. Today women can leave such partners without enduring social ostracism, starvation, and a lonely life forever. There are still penalties, however; a lower standard of living, loneliness, and competition in a changed job market are often the lot of the divorced woman.

The chapter entitled “Late Enders,” about older women who walked out after many years of marriage, emphasizes the impact of family law reform on present society. Most married women in Canada are now entitled to an equal share of all assets accumulated during the marriage, and they may also be entitled to maintenance, at least until they develop economic self-sufficiency. Thus, economic security is a less important feature of marriage.

The author’s acknowledged bias is certainly justified by the chosen case studies. Moreover, other case studies could probably be found to prove a different thesis. Moreover, the unrelenting condemnation of the past becomes somewhat tiresome. Even in those days, many marriages were happy partnerships of equals, and some married women enjoyed fulfilling careers and kept separate identities as individuals.

Today, women who do not achieve this ideal frequently leave the unsatisfactory relationship into which they entered with such hopes of individual happiness and married bliss. And others, some of whom are described in chapter six, “Changing the Script,” work through the difficulties to a marriage totally satisfying to both partners, loving, intimate, and secure.

This book vividly illustrates why marriage is an “endangered institution”;however, it could also serve as a useful personal guide to women, and men, who still prefer marriage as the expression of love and commitment and are determined to make it work.