Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

"A grim picture. Not all marriages are like that...What did I know? I wanted "total mutuality," "companionship," "equality." Did I know about how men sit there glued to the paper while you clear the table? How they pretend to be all thumbs when you ask them to mix the frozen orange juice? How they bring friends home and expect you to wait on them and yet feel entitled to sulk and go off into another room if you bring friends home? What idealistic adolescent girl could imagine all that as she sat reading Shaw and Virginia Woolf and the Webbs?

I know some good marriages. Second marriages mostly. Marriages where both people have outgrown the bullshit of me-Tarzan, you-Jane and are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other, doing the chores as they come up and not worrying too much about who does what. Some men reach that delightfully relaxed state of affairs about age forty or after a couple of divorces. Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway."