My conspiracy theory is that elite institutions take in the best and brightest of the non-upper class as a form of neutralization. Not on purpose, obviously. But they entice us with (true) visions of wealth and power, with the belief that this is a form of philanthropy. They take us away from our communities and call it social mobility.

At my last job before grad school, my supervisor - the child of a teen mom who attended good public schools, then Middlebury, then Harvard - warned me that getting this degree would make me more conservative. She was half-right; the institution tried its best to make me so. It might have succeeded, if not for my earlier experiences in similar institutions that incited my deep and burning skepticism toward them.

One of my friends - the child of Chinatown workers who attended the most prestigious private school in their city on scholarship, then Yale - has shared their strong disgust for institutions like our graduate school. Both of us must admit that we have benefitted greatly from our association with them. But at what cost? My mental health was never worse than when I was in grad school; not because of the coursework but because I was constantly resisting the call of taking the easier path, taking the riches and leaving my people behind. (I also had many bitch-ass classmates who were extremely annoying, classist, and racist, while assuming they were wonderful people who could do no wrong except for earning poor grades.) For some of my friends, taking that path was a given, because they saw no other way of alleviating their families' suffering. For someone of my socioeconomic standing, this reasoning did not exist.

On the one hand I get that it's hard to take me seriously when I say to discard marriage as a dream, considering that I have a fiancé. On the other hand, I had and have already done what I am advising other women to do.

I get why women love the idea of romantic love. In a way it's like a perversion of the social order, in which men range from being thoughtlessly inconsiderate to outright cruel toward women. Instead of being treated horribly by a man, he'll care about you instead :) How sweet.

But what I've always hated the most about this romanticization of romantic love is the way it suggests that other forms of love, especially platonic love between friends, is somehow insufficient. Implicitly I think a lot of women feel this too, like when they complain about their girlfriends no longer wanting to spend time with them after they begin romantic relationships with men. But still, very few women I know are willing to explicitly view romantic love as being on the same level with platonic love.

I recently tried to encourage my friend to consider marriage as something optional to her happiness, as in, she could be just as happy unmarried/uncoupled as she could be in a marriage/couple. The more I tried to make my point the more upset she became. Through the conversation, it seemed that marriage/couplehood represented something more than it was for me. Some sense of care and intimacy, more elevated and eternal than one could have with a friend? As though so many marriages between men and women aren't horrendous, slow-working death traps for the wives.

I do not think one can decenter men until one decenters couplehood and marriage as well. I get why people would want to be married. I myself want to be married. But that doesn't mean I need to believe that marriage/couplehood is a prerequisite to the best live I could have.