This was more than I can really process reading in an app on my phone but I loved it-- And admire all the thinking and feeling that went into it. I had forgotten the Tom and Shiv scene and haven’t seen the Morning Show but Maestro is fresh in my mind and those fights felt real and earned. Yes, marriage is complex! And then people change so much more than they expect. What’s tolerable or intolerable changes too. Thx for making me reflect on all this! (You should write that novel and serialize it here!)
Thank you! You’ve got me wondering (1) How many people actually do read posts like this on their phones! I’d never be able to myself. (2) Your final suggestion.
(1) I'm starting to realize I'm anomalous. I read everything on my phone. And now I'm having trouble with my eyes so maybe there's a lesson there. (2) I really think you should. I haven't read any serials here yet but I hear there are many, thriving. Remember all those multi-part articles the New Yorker used to publish? Reading in installments is very pleasurable. Look at the popularity of read-alongs too! If you find good serials to follow here on Substack let us all know--
Well, as usual you've taken my breath away, Susan. I don't even know where to start!
The cinematic fights you've described here were jaw-dropping and absolutely fascinating in a shivery way. Wow, they said that???
I'm not convinced that Shiv returning to Tom is anything more than her own need to punish herself. I don't believe she loves Tom or that he loves her. They're too broken, both of them, to ever be able to find happiness.
But I do see it with the husband and wife in "the Diplomat". (If he survived.) He is annoying as hell and a jerk, but not a complete jerk. There is some humanity there. (I never saw that in Tom.) The two of them have needs the other can fulfill and there's a comfortable 'friendship', even when he's doing something everyone around them finds despicable. I like that it's not all sweetness or all hate. There's room for some reflection there, a need to know 'the rest of the story'.
I also think Bradley and Laura are strong enough to get through that devastating argument, as well, if the storyline decides to go there. I'm not a Laura fan. I don't see the appeal for Bradley and I still want her to hook up with Corey. (Who has his own problems in the 'despicable' department)
I'm still thinking about what you said about long relationships and how those seeming knock-down, drag-out fights should be the end of it all, but I lived with my guy for more than 65 years and boy, did we have our share. You're right that it builds and builds and builds and it only takes one spark to set our entire world on fire. We've said some terrible things to each other; things that were meant to hurt, meant to slice, meant to maim... And then we got over it.
I think the thing that held us together more than anything is that we both had short memories. I have a friend who remembers to the last word, including 'the' and 'it' in every argument she'd ever had with her ex.
I remember her saying more than once, "Well, how would YOU feel if somebody said something like that to you?" And because I was bored with the conversation I wouldn't tell her how I would feel. (I'd be pissed but I'd get over it.) And I wouldn't ask her what she said in return. Because I know she wasn't consulting Miss Manners.
About a sexless marriage. It happens more than people might think. It happens to us as we get old and even if we've had decades of mostly satisfying sex, we adjust. We figure out what's most important and it usually turns out that sex is way down on the list. We've built up a culture where sex is supposed to take top billing, but what if it doesn't? Well, if it doesn't there are other things that take up the slack. No long relationship could survive on sex alone.
I think your book needs to be written and it needs to find the right person to push it. What dolts to pass that up!
Anyway, brilliant observations, as usual. I wish my comment would do it justice. I'm still in awe. I mean it. ❤️
Your comments mean the world to me. (As Biden would say “I really mean it”) So juicy and perceptive and sharing of your own experience. So generous in so many ways! Re. Sex and marriage, I suspect you’re right. There are also the examples of famous sexless marriages (e.g. Virginia and Leonard Woolf.) One of my ideas was a book that would intersperse those well-known stories with my own. And possibly add some sociology, too. And some humorous critique of commercials. My then agent was uninterested! But we’re not “together” any more, and maybe it’s time to revive some version of that book.
I forgot about 'Maestro'. That movie left me completely flat. I remember being somewhat fascinated by Bernstein when he was alive--his theatrical flamboyance, his need to be the center of attention--and when he did the children's concerts I thought it was an extremely generous thing to do.
I thought Felicia was beautiful, long before she hooked up with Leonard. She appeared on several of the TV anthologies and was a good actress. But beyond that I didn't pay much attention to either of them.
Their story is fascinating, now that I know it, and with that kind of juicy material the movie should have come bursting off the screen. Well, it tried. Too hard, I think. It was always a movie, with actors acting and scenes being played for obvious effect. I never got lost in it, and I wanted to. I should have.
I actually felt bad about not liking the movie, given how hard Bradley Cooper and the Bernstein family worked to make it exactly what they wanted. I like Cooper and wanted him to succeed, but...
My own opinion here: He was terrible as Bernstein. His performance was just short of ludicrous. His attempt to portray Bernstein as an exact replica of Bernstein got in the way so often he lost any sense of the real person. Every word, every gesture, every bid to make us believe he WAS Bernstein drew away from creating a character who might actually have lived and breathed. It was a caricature, not a character, and when I wasn't scoffing I was bored to tears. I watched the entire movie but I could just as easily have turned it off.
The other performances were good to okay, but, since Cooper dominated, his performance is the one that mattered and I found it just awful.
Again, I'm probably alone in all of this. I really did want to like it.
You’re not alone. I agree. You read my last post on “Maestro,” right? I thought his performance ruined the movie (although I don’t say it in those words.) It was an impersonation, and didn’t get at the man at all. In this post, I was really commenting more on the Lenny/Felicia relationship. That’s why I quote so much from Jamie Bernstein. And you’re not alone at all. I don’t know many people who didn’t have problems with that movie. https://open.substack.com/pub/susanbordo/p/maestro-variations-part-1-bernsteins?r=384ha&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’ll skip the usual business of “I wish more cultural and social critics were this good” and get to a bit of my own dishy sociology inspired by what you wrote.
As awful as couples can be to each other, it’s amazing to me how unhelpful the advice of friends can be. And while I generally have respect for the therapy profession, it’s an abstract respect. Actual therapists are capable of poor judgement just like other humans are.
“A lot of the time, I’m pretty unhappy,” Tom says to Shiv at one point. “I love you, I do, but I wonder if the sad I’d be without you is less than the sad I get from being with you.” Oh, i just loved that line! On another note: Your personal story here is fascinating, i hope that's okay to admit. I don't mean to be fascinated by it, but I am. I know quite a few married couples who no longer sleep together. It almost seems like the norm at a certain point (but unlike you, they used to have a sex life--they've just gotten older and it's disappeared). I'm so interested in all of it, but I avoid asking too many questions. I so much hope another agent comes along who finds your story powerful and necessary. I'd love to read that book.
You can ask away!! I really meant “Any questions?” I think relationships are the most fascinating thing myself, and they comes in so many forms that don’t conform to the cultural scripts. It really is worth writing more about. And at this point, I don’t feel as protective of my husband’s privacy. Earlier in our life together, he would have been furious. But we’re older now—and in the end, it’s a love story. It would be a huge commitment, though. And I’m enjoying the no-deadline, write-what-strikes-me freedom of these posts.
By the way, that line of Tom’s, I agree, is from one of the most moving exchanges between them, on the beach, after the fiasco of the family cruise. I think I wrote about that episode in one of my pieces on “Succession.”
PS. I thought those repeated “Any questions?” in Maestro was a coy callout to the movie’s LB epigraph about art asking questions, not answering them. I like your reading too.
One of my favourite recent tv couples is the Jennings in The Americans. They are vicious. Reading Tom and Shiv"s dialogue though. Woah. "T: Oh, thanks! Thanks for that! Yeah, you really kept me safe while you ran off to fսck the phone book." That's a bit harsh, Tom! I would totally watch that spin-off.
Oh wow, thank you for this. I resonate so much with the way you deconstruct these depictions of coupledom, and I've absolutely experienced the kind of eviscerating fights that emerge, as you said so beautifully, with a partner "with whom we feel the safest, the most known-by, the most comfortable with..." Fundamentally, I know that all judgments are projections of my own fears/insecurities/disowned and rejected parts of myself; but of course it's incredibly challenging to actively sustain that awareness within an intimate relationships when core wounds get activated, vulnerability is high, and my ego feels threatened. My partner and I have a wonderfully resonant, mutually supportive, playful relationship, and we have been "trying to make it work" sexually for a long time, with various levels of experimentation, growth, failure, hurt, betrayal, separation, etc, and I would LOVE to read the book you pitched. I've been writing on and off about my own experience and honestly feel like these perspectives from women are sorely needed. There's so much in popular culture about women being the one in relationships who no longer want sex, while men are often represented as the forever horny and rebuffed partner, and there's definitely been a part of me that feels defective and 'too much' for not only wanting sex, but wanting to experience sex as a vehicle for transcendence and surrender and relinquishing control and letting go of fear and breaking through trust barriers and experiencing an intimacy that approaches merging, in addition to straight up physical pleasure and adult play and release. So, thank you for re-sparking my own inspiration to explore this topic through writing, and I hope to see your version in some form soon.
You so much for becoming a paid subscriber! I have more to say in response to your wonderful comment but I’ve got to do this week’s stack first. I’ll be back!
Also-- unrelated-- did you ever watch or write about Killing Eve? I’d be interested to see what you thought about it. I’m only just now watching it, halfway through.
Susan, I am so grateful to you for talking about this, the disconnect that emphasizes sex as romantic love, the tropes we are so often sold and conditioned to accept and prioritize. The fights where we are told there is no coming back from, that ignite in a flash after years of staying together, changing or not changing, of being partnered. I suspect that there are many people whose marriages look far different than what therapists advise a marriage *should* look like. I would love to read that book, and I second the suggestion to serialize it here--that's one of the most frustrating aspects of the book world, of agents being gatekeeper and telling us what is good, and brilliant, important ideas being left unprinted.
This was more than I can really process reading in an app on my phone but I loved it-- And admire all the thinking and feeling that went into it. I had forgotten the Tom and Shiv scene and haven’t seen the Morning Show but Maestro is fresh in my mind and those fights felt real and earned. Yes, marriage is complex! And then people change so much more than they expect. What’s tolerable or intolerable changes too. Thx for making me reflect on all this! (You should write that novel and serialize it here!)
Thank you! You’ve got me wondering (1) How many people actually do read posts like this on their phones! I’d never be able to myself. (2) Your final suggestion.
(1) I'm starting to realize I'm anomalous. I read everything on my phone. And now I'm having trouble with my eyes so maybe there's a lesson there. (2) I really think you should. I haven't read any serials here yet but I hear there are many, thriving. Remember all those multi-part articles the New Yorker used to publish? Reading in installments is very pleasurable. Look at the popularity of read-alongs too! If you find good serials to follow here on Substack let us all know--
Well, as usual you've taken my breath away, Susan. I don't even know where to start!
The cinematic fights you've described here were jaw-dropping and absolutely fascinating in a shivery way. Wow, they said that???
I'm not convinced that Shiv returning to Tom is anything more than her own need to punish herself. I don't believe she loves Tom or that he loves her. They're too broken, both of them, to ever be able to find happiness.
But I do see it with the husband and wife in "the Diplomat". (If he survived.) He is annoying as hell and a jerk, but not a complete jerk. There is some humanity there. (I never saw that in Tom.) The two of them have needs the other can fulfill and there's a comfortable 'friendship', even when he's doing something everyone around them finds despicable. I like that it's not all sweetness or all hate. There's room for some reflection there, a need to know 'the rest of the story'.
I also think Bradley and Laura are strong enough to get through that devastating argument, as well, if the storyline decides to go there. I'm not a Laura fan. I don't see the appeal for Bradley and I still want her to hook up with Corey. (Who has his own problems in the 'despicable' department)
I'm still thinking about what you said about long relationships and how those seeming knock-down, drag-out fights should be the end of it all, but I lived with my guy for more than 65 years and boy, did we have our share. You're right that it builds and builds and builds and it only takes one spark to set our entire world on fire. We've said some terrible things to each other; things that were meant to hurt, meant to slice, meant to maim... And then we got over it.
I think the thing that held us together more than anything is that we both had short memories. I have a friend who remembers to the last word, including 'the' and 'it' in every argument she'd ever had with her ex.
I remember her saying more than once, "Well, how would YOU feel if somebody said something like that to you?" And because I was bored with the conversation I wouldn't tell her how I would feel. (I'd be pissed but I'd get over it.) And I wouldn't ask her what she said in return. Because I know she wasn't consulting Miss Manners.
About a sexless marriage. It happens more than people might think. It happens to us as we get old and even if we've had decades of mostly satisfying sex, we adjust. We figure out what's most important and it usually turns out that sex is way down on the list. We've built up a culture where sex is supposed to take top billing, but what if it doesn't? Well, if it doesn't there are other things that take up the slack. No long relationship could survive on sex alone.
I think your book needs to be written and it needs to find the right person to push it. What dolts to pass that up!
Anyway, brilliant observations, as usual. I wish my comment would do it justice. I'm still in awe. I mean it. ❤️
Your comments mean the world to me. (As Biden would say “I really mean it”) So juicy and perceptive and sharing of your own experience. So generous in so many ways! Re. Sex and marriage, I suspect you’re right. There are also the examples of famous sexless marriages (e.g. Virginia and Leonard Woolf.) One of my ideas was a book that would intersperse those well-known stories with my own. And possibly add some sociology, too. And some humorous critique of commercials. My then agent was uninterested! But we’re not “together” any more, and maybe it’s time to revive some version of that book.
I forgot about 'Maestro'. That movie left me completely flat. I remember being somewhat fascinated by Bernstein when he was alive--his theatrical flamboyance, his need to be the center of attention--and when he did the children's concerts I thought it was an extremely generous thing to do.
I thought Felicia was beautiful, long before she hooked up with Leonard. She appeared on several of the TV anthologies and was a good actress. But beyond that I didn't pay much attention to either of them.
Their story is fascinating, now that I know it, and with that kind of juicy material the movie should have come bursting off the screen. Well, it tried. Too hard, I think. It was always a movie, with actors acting and scenes being played for obvious effect. I never got lost in it, and I wanted to. I should have.
I actually felt bad about not liking the movie, given how hard Bradley Cooper and the Bernstein family worked to make it exactly what they wanted. I like Cooper and wanted him to succeed, but...
My own opinion here: He was terrible as Bernstein. His performance was just short of ludicrous. His attempt to portray Bernstein as an exact replica of Bernstein got in the way so often he lost any sense of the real person. Every word, every gesture, every bid to make us believe he WAS Bernstein drew away from creating a character who might actually have lived and breathed. It was a caricature, not a character, and when I wasn't scoffing I was bored to tears. I watched the entire movie but I could just as easily have turned it off.
The other performances were good to okay, but, since Cooper dominated, his performance is the one that mattered and I found it just awful.
Again, I'm probably alone in all of this. I really did want to like it.
You’re not alone. I agree. You read my last post on “Maestro,” right? I thought his performance ruined the movie (although I don’t say it in those words.) It was an impersonation, and didn’t get at the man at all. In this post, I was really commenting more on the Lenny/Felicia relationship. That’s why I quote so much from Jamie Bernstein. And you’re not alone at all. I don’t know many people who didn’t have problems with that movie. https://open.substack.com/pub/susanbordo/p/maestro-variations-part-1-bernsteins?r=384ha&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I did miss that post. I don't know how I did. Thanks for the link. I really needed to read that!
I’ll skip the usual business of “I wish more cultural and social critics were this good” and get to a bit of my own dishy sociology inspired by what you wrote.
As awful as couples can be to each other, it’s amazing to me how unhelpful the advice of friends can be. And while I generally have respect for the therapy profession, it’s an abstract respect. Actual therapists are capable of poor judgement just like other humans are.
“A lot of the time, I’m pretty unhappy,” Tom says to Shiv at one point. “I love you, I do, but I wonder if the sad I’d be without you is less than the sad I get from being with you.” Oh, i just loved that line! On another note: Your personal story here is fascinating, i hope that's okay to admit. I don't mean to be fascinated by it, but I am. I know quite a few married couples who no longer sleep together. It almost seems like the norm at a certain point (but unlike you, they used to have a sex life--they've just gotten older and it's disappeared). I'm so interested in all of it, but I avoid asking too many questions. I so much hope another agent comes along who finds your story powerful and necessary. I'd love to read that book.
You can ask away!! I really meant “Any questions?” I think relationships are the most fascinating thing myself, and they comes in so many forms that don’t conform to the cultural scripts. It really is worth writing more about. And at this point, I don’t feel as protective of my husband’s privacy. Earlier in our life together, he would have been furious. But we’re older now—and in the end, it’s a love story. It would be a huge commitment, though. And I’m enjoying the no-deadline, write-what-strikes-me freedom of these posts.
By the way, that line of Tom’s, I agree, is from one of the most moving exchanges between them, on the beach, after the fiasco of the family cruise. I think I wrote about that episode in one of my pieces on “Succession.”
There are so so many reasons to stay together. And friendship is so important
Yes, yes, yes.
PS. I thought those repeated “Any questions?” in Maestro was a coy callout to the movie’s LB epigraph about art asking questions, not answering them. I like your reading too.
I think they are both in there. He’s trying to be super clever!
One of my favourite recent tv couples is the Jennings in The Americans. They are vicious. Reading Tom and Shiv"s dialogue though. Woah. "T: Oh, thanks! Thanks for that! Yeah, you really kept me safe while you ran off to fսck the phone book." That's a bit harsh, Tom! I would totally watch that spin-off.
Wow, I would too!
Oh wow, thank you for this. I resonate so much with the way you deconstruct these depictions of coupledom, and I've absolutely experienced the kind of eviscerating fights that emerge, as you said so beautifully, with a partner "with whom we feel the safest, the most known-by, the most comfortable with..." Fundamentally, I know that all judgments are projections of my own fears/insecurities/disowned and rejected parts of myself; but of course it's incredibly challenging to actively sustain that awareness within an intimate relationships when core wounds get activated, vulnerability is high, and my ego feels threatened. My partner and I have a wonderfully resonant, mutually supportive, playful relationship, and we have been "trying to make it work" sexually for a long time, with various levels of experimentation, growth, failure, hurt, betrayal, separation, etc, and I would LOVE to read the book you pitched. I've been writing on and off about my own experience and honestly feel like these perspectives from women are sorely needed. There's so much in popular culture about women being the one in relationships who no longer want sex, while men are often represented as the forever horny and rebuffed partner, and there's definitely been a part of me that feels defective and 'too much' for not only wanting sex, but wanting to experience sex as a vehicle for transcendence and surrender and relinquishing control and letting go of fear and breaking through trust barriers and experiencing an intimacy that approaches merging, in addition to straight up physical pleasure and adult play and release. So, thank you for re-sparking my own inspiration to explore this topic through writing, and I hope to see your version in some form soon.
Kaleigh, First of all, thank
You so much for becoming a paid subscriber! I have more to say in response to your wonderful comment but I’ve got to do this week’s stack first. I’ll be back!
My question is, when is this book coming out?
Also-- unrelated-- did you ever watch or write about Killing Eve? I’d be interested to see what you thought about it. I’m only just now watching it, halfway through.
https://susanbordo.substack.com/p/weekend-binge-recommendation-killing
Couldn’t find your comment, Lin, though I got an email about it. If you read my first post on “Maestro” you’ll see I discuss that.
Susan, I am so grateful to you for talking about this, the disconnect that emphasizes sex as romantic love, the tropes we are so often sold and conditioned to accept and prioritize. The fights where we are told there is no coming back from, that ignite in a flash after years of staying together, changing or not changing, of being partnered. I suspect that there are many people whose marriages look far different than what therapists advise a marriage *should* look like. I would love to read that book, and I second the suggestion to serialize it here--that's one of the most frustrating aspects of the book world, of agents being gatekeeper and telling us what is good, and brilliant, important ideas being left unprinted.