I love when journalists write honestly about themselves, acknowledge their humanness, abandon their role as invisible writers of our realities. I’ve never liked the word unbiased, and I don’t believe words without bias exist, in whatever medium. Saying we can remove bias from our stories–it’s like trying to tell ourselves we don’t have toes, or something.
That’s why I love Elizabeth Weil’s NY Times take on her marriage. As I read her article I was completely sucked in, inevitably looking for myself in her story (I found it, in her worries about having her individuality enveloped in a big relationship cloud) and wondering how a good person who likes to win stays good through daily tug o’ wars.
She reminded me of something I’ve often thought when watching sitcoms like How I Met Your Mother and Little Mosque on the Prairie (what can I say, I love Canadians and Muslims). In TV-style “good marriages” problems are often solved by saying everything that should be said. “Honey, I’m angry about this…” “But sweetheart…okay here’s what we’re going to do…” People say they’re sorry, and they listen right there, standing there, having an argument. It sometimes makes me wonder if it would be so bad to, when we fight, say it like a sitcom.
