Cat & spouse games.

Safe in my bunker as a fellow "smug married," I have the calm to enjoy Elizabeth Austin's "In Contempt of Courtship" (June), but also to look back at popular culture's take on married life prior to the late 1960s and the sharply rising divorce rate.

Austin writes, "The gender roles may have been constricting and the shoes were impossibly tight across the toes, but it's impossible to deny the now-guilty pleasures [of 1950s courtship rituals] ..." But what was on TV then? "I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners," "Pete and Gladys," "The Jack Benny Program." Continuous humor poking fun at the idea that marriage was something to wish for. Fussing, fighting, and incompatibility among spouses was taken for granted. Movies going back decades featured ritual sparring between sharp-tongued spouses; men desperate to not get tied down, or resigned to nagging hectoring, or ditzy wives; and women resigned to lazy, sloppy, unappreciative husbands. By the time of "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In" in 1968-1973, America was laughing at the idea of fidelity and on his TV show, Glenn Campbell sang hit song after hit song about drifting and avoiding commitment.

How much has changed now? According to Austin, "Dating, it seems, has become a necessary chore, rather like scrubbing down the storm windows." Whatever most of us are doing, we will do badly. But somewhere in the middle of the pendulums swing, individuals who are tenacious, perceptive, or lucky may glean both freedom and wisdom from social changes. Making your most personal choices by taking your cue from those around you won't make you happy, if those around you aren't happy.

Robert Sercombe

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