Dear Cary,
I am dating a wonderful young woman who makes me laugh. All the things I hate to do, like talking on the phone, cooking, changing tires, she can do with ease. All the things I am good at -- sports, getting diplomas, reading -- she has never been naturally inclined to do. I am a 24-year-old lawyer, and she is a 23-year-old administrative assistant.
My entire family, with the exception of my sister, came to this country with nothing and worked our way up. Coming from a small family, I am torn between marrying for love and marrying for perhaps a lesser degree of love with a higher chance of survival. Being young, employed, 6-foot tall and with reasonably decent manners, I am able to meet women and get along with them very well. I predict I can probably date and marry a nice woman with a larger, more established family if I just wait.
I am afraid that if I marry this woman, who lives with her divorced parent, I will harm my future progeny's chances of success. This sounds rather cold, I know, but I feel a responsibility to establish myself in this country, and marrying a woman with no diploma and few close family members -- delightful as she is -- seems like taking a step backward. I'm not looking for a Kennedy-type clan, but I suspect that there is no natural desire for children to do well in school or to work hard. Those sorts of values are usually passed down through the generations.
There is also the networking advantage of being in a large family that stresses education. If I marry this woman -- and as I write this, I can see her beautiful eyes gazing at me and her amazing way of getting melted butter on toast perfectly, spaced wonderfully next to the scrambled eggs, done just the way I like them -- I will have a content, happy life.
If I marry someone a bit more established, a bit more brainy, I may not be as happy or as content as I am with this woman, but I know when I am 70, there will be a greater chance I will be able to flip through the family album and see a large group of doctors, lawyers, engineers, athletes and scientists.
What's an immigrant with a legacy wish supposed to do?
Old-Fashioned
Dear Old-Fashioned,
If you are only 24 and already thinking about how you'll feel at 70, you have admirable foresight. In view of your expansive time horizon, you can probably afford to wait a few more years before settling down, especially since you already have some doubts about this woman. And I think you should. I think you should hold out until you can honestly say to yourself that this is the woman for you.
I wish you luck. I do have some experience, however, with using a girlfriend to try to wedge myself into a new social stratum via her family, and I can tell you that such a strategy is fraught with peril. You sound at once quite knowledgeable and dangerously naive.
Social class is a powerful taboo in America, all the more powerful because it is taboo. So if you should find yourself in love with a woman from a large, powerful family into which you would like to marry, in whose summer houses you would like to sleep, at whose old French table you would like to stuff yourself with Christmas ham, with whose brothers you would like to play touch football on the lawn, beware. If you find that for some reason after many dinners and many lemonades on the deck you're still not married to her, you may be undergoing a secret WASP torture of silence, the exact methods of which even WASPs themselves are unaware, so sublimely subtle can be the cruelty of America's casual Brahmins.
If that happens, consider yourself put in your place. Remember, it took the Kennedys a couple of generations, too.
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Want more advice from Cary? Read yesterday's column.
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