Why Marriage Is Indefensible

I don't know anyone who wasn't in some kind of a fog during his or her own wedding ceremony. Till death do us part? For richer or poorer? Promises that came effortlessly and joyfully in the middle of the night become paralyzing when stated before the unblinking gaze of an officiant and your new in-laws. Most of us tune in only enough to perform simple verbal repetition.

We get married publicly so that other people are there to witness our vows. To hear the words along with us, if not for us. Even people who get married drunk by an Elvis impersonator have a witness. We get married in view of a community. Marriage is a public act.

And so is the end of a marriage. The breakup of a marriage can send a ripple effect of devastation and fear through the surrounding community, causing everyone in its path to recontemplate what it is that marriage means or doesn't mean to them.

In "Dinner With Friends," when one of the husbands leaves his wife for a younger woman, his act sends another couple reeling as well.

Donald Margulies searingly depicts this very phenomenon in his play "Dinner With Friends," which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama on Monday. The play focuses on four friends--two couples, both married for about 12 years. When one of the husbands leaves his wife for a younger woman, his act sends the other couple reeling as well.

Some months after the breakup, the two men meet for a drink in a Manhattan bar. Gabe, the faithful husband, notices that Tom looks well, that he's lost weight. Tom is happy, eager even, to offer his diet tips, which of course he attributes to his new 24-year-old girlfriend. "Nancy and I, we get up at six, run four or five miles, come back, make love in the shower," he says. "That's my new regimen. And let me tell you: It's totally changed my perspective on my day!"

Tom goes on. He wants Gabe to know about Nancy's sexual imagination, daring, and wisdom. His former wife "was never at home in her own body," he says. "And then once the kids came...well, you know how that is."

Continued on page 2: »