THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF THE BREAK UP
New book examines the history of romantic partnership and the future of dating
While the choice to end a relationship is rarely an easy one, it’s a choice that women haven’t always had the opportunity to make. No-fault divorce is still less than half a century old, which leaves little historical precedent for leaving a relationship that just doesn’t feel right.
Journalist and cultural critic Kelli Maria Korducki turns a Marxist lens on the history of romantic partnership and the socio-economic dynamics between men and women in her new book, Hard To Do: The Surprising, Feminist History of Breaking Up (Coach House Books), out this month. Korducki spoke to the Star from New York about pop music and her hope for the future of dating.
How did you decide to write a book about the politics and economics of breaking up?
I looked for this book when I was going through a pretty life defining breakup, and the book didn’t exist. Basically the dissolution of this relationship forced me to be real about my financial situation. I had kind of been safety-netted by my partner, who had a stable job. I was freelancing and not exactly the most motivated, or organized. Then I started to reflect on the ethical weight of the break up. I guess I wanted to think about how my freedom was so new and maybe the reason it felt so scary was because I didn’t have much of a model from my own life, or in history. So I wrote the book that I think a lot of women could benefit from reading. And I hope that it’s interesting and helpful.
The book notes that the decision to leave a stable relationship haunts mod- ern advice columns. What’s your best piece of advice for these women?
I would say do whatever you can to make it logistically possible to have the kind of life that you want and don’t stress out about what that means for other people in your life. I think that that’s definitely one of the hardest things: managing other people’s expectations.
You make a few pop references in your book. What messages do you think we’re getting from pop culture about breakups?
I feel like the prevailing message we get about breaking up falls along the same lines as the relationship books on Amazon’s self-help category. It’s a lot of: “he’s a loser”; “I don’t need him”; “I’m better off without him.” A lot of empowering f--kboy recovery songs, which is an oversimplified message and it’s not really helpful. The truth is that elements of romantic relationships and what drives them is more material than pop songs reveal. That’d be a not fun song.
If relationships have evolved alongside the market, how do you think advances in technology and the gig economy will affect marriage?
I don’t know how it will affect relationships, but I can definitely tell you how I hope it affects them. Something I go into in the book is how the rise of industry and market economy drove this idea of romantic love and of the nuclear selfcontained family unit, which Marxists have not so subtly linked to the psychological effect of urban capitalist alienation. We lose our communities and become completely fixated on ourselves; the nuclear family is a salve to that, but also the optimal social structure to encourage people to make money.
My hope for the future is a more collectivist approach to community and family formation, one that doesn’t place so many demands on a single relationship or a single person, and that distributes support, emotional resources, material resources and child-rearing duties within a community of people.
I think of building familial networks of extended communities that are maybe not biologically related, but are all in it together. I think that would be great, and I’m beginning to see it happen with some of my generation. With my under or precariously employed, student-debt burdened cohort of friends who are beginning to have kids and beginning to do the family thing. I’m seeing some strides in a more collective approach to that, versus the whole fantasy of the CEO-boss-mom-lady who does and has it all. I think that we’re beginning to look at these expectations a bit more realistically.