Blog > reMarriage Blogs > Eat, Pray, Love…then Marry
January 13, 2010

Eat, Pray, Love…then Marry

Kathy Ely

OK, I have to admit it. I was pretty annoyed at the whole Eat, Pray, Love phenomenon.

For those of you who missed it, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote a book back in 2006 about chucking her fabulous life in New York—bored with husband and all—and traveling the world in search of herself. Yes, yes, I would love to spend months in Italy eating my way through their amazing culture, not to mention the pastas and wine. I would be fascinated by the spiritual and intellectual practices of meditating for weeks at a time at an Indian ashram; perhaps I’d learn something amazing. And I know I would thrill at more than a vacation’s worth of days in such a laid-back place as Bali, even if I didn’t find the next love of my life. But the experience and her writing about it felt totally self-indulgent in a way that seemed, at the time, elitist, something only a well-heeled modernist could accomplish. (Of course, it could just mean that I would never have the guts to head out of my comfort zone, but that’s another column.)

But I do think I want to read her latest, a more thoughtful, if still personal, take on how she came to a second marriage. This is remarkable only because she became the patron saint for the strong single divorcee (that word isn’t used much anymore, but her independent, freedom-seeking spirit did define her), and after stating blatantly that she would never enter the state again, here she is, another married lady.

Her  book, Committed:  A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage, explores not only her reasons for taking the leap (more practical than romantic, in some ways), but also the diverse cultural approaches to the whole notion of marriage around the globe. Americans, it seems, have this fetish about marriage in ways that others do not, which is perhaps why we fail at it so often. She also talks about how much more she brings to this union at this stage of life that she couldn’t possibly have contributed to her first, as a rather silly, naive twenty-something. (Hear her interview with Diane Rehm on NPR for more food for thought.)

She gives us lots to think about…I’ll write more once I read it!

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4 Responses to “Eat, Pray, Love…then Marry”

  1. Dee Brown Says:
    January 19th, 2010 at 11:56 am

    In my hunt for blogs about re-marriage, I came across this site and read this commentary on “Committed” by Elizabeth Gilbert. I have read “Eat, Pray, Love” and find that I must respond to your first paragraph.

    Until you have pondered whether your life is worth living any more (as Elizabeth Gilbert did) because your marriage has ended, been unable to eat, to sleep, and to see any shred of a future, I wonder if you are able to read that book with the same eyes.

    To say she was lucky (or elitist) to be able to travel to three such amazing places, on her road to recovery, is almost an understatement. However, to say she was “bored with husband and all”, leaving her “fabulous life in New York” either means you didn’t really read the book or have never been divorced, or both.

  2. Kathy Ely Says:
    January 25th, 2010 at 7:32 pm

    Actually, I have been divorced. I have questioned whether I would be able to go on, whether I was truly lovable, whether the very earth I had learned to walk on would ever be stable again, or continue to crumble underneath me. All I was saying is that there are those that manage to make it through much worse situations with little more than secondhand clothes and nary two cents to rub together. Perhaps I did minimize her pain–which was, no doubt, real–but when I see extreme suffering in the world, in Haiti and beyond, I try to put it in some perspective. I do believe we have the right to find happiness, however it is we individually define it. I also believe that these days, and with Ms. Gilbert, it is surely a luxury.

  3. Maryellen Smith Says:
    February 17th, 2010 at 3:40 pm

    Hi Kathy,

    I think it’s refreshing to hear that you found Eat, Pray, Love self-indulgent. Although I do my best to look at life positively, the book seemed tedious to me and I didn’t like it. I had to wonder about her revisiting the concept of depression so many times. I kept thinking: I got it the first time!

    Although I can empathize with the getting divorced part, almost no one gets any luxury when they get divorced. The process of discovering who you are without your mate is generally long and painful. That puts Eat, Pray, Love in the category of a divorce fairy tale.

    I think I’ll skip the second book.

    Thanks for the post!

    Maryellen

  4. Kathy Ely Says:
    February 19th, 2010 at 8:43 am

    It’s funny, and perhaps I am perverse in my thinking, but I find myself wanting to read the second book. Perhaps I want to hear how she worked through her aversion to the state of marriage (or did she), and most important, how different our view of the goal of happiness in marriage is simply not shared by much of the world.

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