Ball and chain

Was religion the major stumbling block in the decision to commit to each other?

I'm not sure it was a stumbling block at all. I think that by the time we became serious I'd given up the notion of ever having a Christmas tree in the house and he'd given up on the notion of marrying a Jewish woman. I mean, I mentally got rid of the Christmas tree on the second date. And then the more subtle parts of the negotiations evolved from there.

Why were the negotiations always about your conversion and not his?

Because I didn't have a very strong religious upbringing and I don't have a relationship that I care about with the Episcopal Church and I didn't really feel like I'd be leaving anything behind. It's much more of a cultural identification than it is a spiritual one for me. So I was actually interested in adding a spiritual element to my life. I'd be really happy if Judaism turns out to be that spiritual element. However, it turns out that Jonathan's relationship with Judaism isn't a spiritual one; it's much more a cultural and political one, so I need to find my own path. I'm not going to be turned on to Judaism by Zionist editorials. Whether I agree or disagree, it's just not going to be my route. It's going to be a more searching, spiritual thing.

A lot of the "Committed" guys write about giving in to notions of commitment. Did you feel like you sacrificed by getting married?

It hasn't been a sacrifice. Something that's become more clear to me since I had a baby is that I think for women -- at least for me, and I find myself a more clichéd example of my gender every day --- as they find commitment and gain a family they feel more contented. Women find a sort of solace in a certain amount of solidity; they eagerly move toward these things that bind them to the world, like a husband and family. And men see it as a taking away of their freedoms; for them, each step is a reduction of their liberties, whereas women find certain amount of liberation in knowing where they stand.

Did you like being single?

I felt much more at loose ends, more anxious. I didn't feel like there was this world of opportunities and "Oh, I can just go sleep with anyone in a bar!" That didn't do it for me. But men have fantasies that they can just take off, and those become less of a possibility with certain passages of life like marriage and having a child. Not that Jonathan is ever going to jump on a plane and go to Rome on a whim, but I think he always thinks it would be nice if he could.

We were once watching television at some bar and there was a college basketball game on TV and Jonathan was looking at the game and said, "Wouldn't it be great to be back in college?" And I thought that was ridiculous. When I was in college I was so lost and depressed and in such a psychic panic about "whither me." But he regards that time as just full of liberty; he could go to bars with strangers, he didn't have to be home at night. It's a romantic fantasy about that kind of freedom that I just don't get. One thing I have never ever wished is that I were younger. I think things get easier and I get happier as I get older.

Do you think that's about a female willingness to take on responsibility and a male eagerness to evade it?

I wouldn't say that's true of Jonathan. Both of us revel in all the little responsibilities in taking care of Gus. Not to get sappy, but they don't really feel like responsibilities. I think it's more of an abstract kind of "I'll never be that person again" thing.

So what changed about your relationship after you decided to commit for good?

I pretty much hate the way anyone chews their food. And with Jonathan I just decided: Everyone chews and I've got to live with it.

Had this chewing thing been a deal-breaker in earlier relationships?

I just hate eating noises, and it's always a problem with the person you're dating because you have to eat with them. But if you're in a relationship you want to get out of and you hate the way your partner chews, that's as good a reason as any to get out of it. But not anymore.

Colin Harrison's essay "Incision" closes "Committed." Harrison's piece is not so much an exploration of his own marriage as it is a look at the end of another. He writes about the slow and painful death of his father, his recognition of the impact it has on his mother, and the way he and his wife, author Kathryn Harrison, expand their own relationship to absorb the grief and responsibility of mourning. Central to his tale is his wife's choice to look at an unhealing gash down the middle of his father's belly, and her warning to him that he should not do the same.

Salon: Did you learn anything about your husband from reading his "Committed" essay?

Kathryn Harrison: No, I knew him in that way already. I knew he was thinking a lot about his parents' marriage when his father was dying. For better and for worse, both of us are terribly earnest people who are not at all ironic about marriage. I think we took our marriage vows very seriously and believed we were and are together till death do us part. I never went through any process of struggle or decision-making before we got married. I knew this was my husband on the first date. And at that point I wasn't somebody who was looking to get married.

How did you meet?

We met in grad school at the Writers' Workshop at Iowa. We were at a reading together briefly. Then one day we were standing in the graduate lounge at the mailboxes and he came up to me and said, "So why don't we have lunch? How about next Tuesday?" And I said, "OK, sure." And he said, "Well aren't you going to write it down?" I was a little taken aback both because it seemed weirdly bossy and also sort of sweet. As if I'd forget. So we had lunch and agreed we'd have a real date the following Friday, which we did, and on Monday he handed me his house key and I moved in and that was it. I had just turned 24. He was the same. He was a year ahead of me, so he entered a doctoral program he had no intention of completing [in Iowa] to hang around me. Then we moved to New York and got married. I was pregnant a year later with my first child.

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