From Salon:
Fairy-tale weddings, searching for Prince Charming, or even for Mr. Big: It all seems so 1990s. These days, it's women, not men, who are reluctant to commit to marriage — with those who have committed regretting having done so — and they're writing about it all over the place. Earlier this summer, Sandra Tsing-Loh, in an essay about her divorce, came out against the “companionate marriage” in the Atlantic Monthly. Cristina Nehring blamed such bloodless arrangements for the bankrupt state of romance in “A Vindication of Love.” Only the profoundly unhip Caitlin Flanagan defended the institution in Time. (The upshot of her un-sexy argument? It's for the kids.)
Now “Eat Pray Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert, who has an uncanny ability to produce books that speak (however irritatingly) to deep cultural undercurrents, has written about her own marital uncertainty. A story in Thursday's New York Times offers details about her new memoir, “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,” which will be published by Viking in January. With the book's proposed print-run of 1 million copies (!), the cultural referendum on marriage we have been participating in for what feels like forever now promises not to end anytime soon. Ambivalence about marriage, you might say, is the new black. (Gilbert was not only ambivalent about marriage, she was also ambivalent about her book about marriage — she threw away a 500-page draft before, um, committing to “Committed.”)
More here.