love across ambition

This was supposed to be July’s post, but this summer has been a doozy for personal reasons (which I go into a bit at the bottom of this newsletter). Apologies for the slight delay, and don’t worry—there will also be an August post! Thank you for your grace and patience <3

About two months before I graduated from college, “Princeton Mom” published a letter in The Daily Princetonian urging the women at her alma mater to “find a husband on campus before you graduate.” Her rationale was anchored in market logic: for Princeton women, “there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are;” the supply of such men would decrease post-graduation; therefore, college was the best time to lock it down. (The original letter is no longer hosted, alas, but there is a PDF of the letter and plenty of commentary articles still floating around.)

At 22, I read the letter with a deep sense of dread. Not only had I not found a husband in college, but I didn’t even get close! As much as society—and my mother—would’ve liked me to commit, it was impossible for me to view commitment as anything besides an anchor that would hold me back in life. I had big dreams for myself—Harvard Law School, making fuck-you money in New York, maybe even a few years in London—and the thought of a man sniveling to me about moving closer to his family in the suburbs or taking a job in South Dakota filled me with nothing but disgust.

There are, of course, so many problems with that attitude: it’s clear to me now that I wasn’t looking for a true partnership, nor would I have been ready for one if it hit me over the head. At the same time, it’s an understandable perspective if your success was never guaranteed, if you felt the weight of your parents’ and grandparents’ sacrifices on your shoulders every day. As if you’ve swam five miles from a shipwreck to a lifeboat, only to find yourself clutching the edge of the vessel. Getting hitched, under those circumstances, seemed downright foolish.

Nevertheless, I still felt some type of way about Princeton Mom’s letter. She was only saying out loud the societal expectations that I had internalized, even if I didn’t want to admit I’d internalized them. At graduation, I watched with envy as the college sweethearts of our class took photos together in front of Sterling Memorial Library in their caps and gowns, sat with both their families at grad dinners at Union League Cafe, made promises to each other about how they would find an apartment together or handle long distance in the upcoming months. Gross, I thought, head and heart hot with jealousy.

Recently, a friend was telling me about one of these couples. They stayed together after college, got married, had several kids. They lived in a Midwestern city—Kansas City, Missouri, or somewhere like that—and were in couple’s counseling.

I shrugged. So what? Any family system should try counseling. I readied my monologue about how all relationships could be improved through counseling, how we really should stop judging people for being in therapy because there was no shame in seeking help. Stop the stigma, already.

My friend continued. “Then she”—referring to the wife—“admitted that her career was the most important thing to her. More important than her marriage or her children.”

I closed my mouth. Part of me rushed to condemn her—how could her career be more important to her than her children!—but another part of me shuddered in recognition. She was who I would’ve become, had I found a husband in college. Trapped between the economic sphere and the domestic sphere, never having the time or space between crying babies and yelling bosses to truly determine for myself what I wanted, what I was choosing for myself instead of for others.

It is impossible to live for others without becoming resentful of them. Without experiences and intermittent periods of quiet to reflect on those experiences, it is impossible to figure out who you are, how to live for yourself. And while trad systems and capitalism will provide you with plenty of life, they will not provide you room to contemplate those experiences. The next child, the bigger house, the bat mitzvah. The big raise, the promotion to become an exec, the big-fish client. Go, go, go, don’t stop, don’t look back, keep going. Until, like Ballerina Farm, you “get[] so ill from exhaustion that she can’t get out of bed for a week.”

Is it really so terrible to prioritize your career over your marriage, your children, everything else in your life? Conventional wisdom would say yes. The classic Hallmark movie revolves around a career gal who goes back to her podunk town and discovers that maybe what she was looking for was the peaches and berries farmer down the lane all along. Charles Dickens’ classic holiday novella A Christmas Carol ends with the wealthy but miserly Scrooge inspired to donate to charity, support his neighbors, spend time with his nephew, and become a father figure to the sickly Tiny Tim.

These feel-good tales assume a binary: relationships, good; career, bad. As with binaries, however, this media family-washing obscures reality. Not all relationships—particularly those with narcissistic, emotionally immature family members—are worth sacrificing one’s ambitions for. But not all careers—particularly those working for toxic bosses who praise and reward overwork—are worth sacrificing one’s relationships for. Careers and relationships both exist on spectrums.

A good relationship is more important than a dissatisfying career, but the opposite can be true: a good career is more important than a dissatisfying relationship. It is catchy to throw out these edicts of absolutes, but sometimes you really do have a shitty spouse and a great job, or vice versa.

Let’s not ignore the gendered aspect of moral opprobrium, either. Plenty of men will say they place their family first, then use it as a means to justify why they work all the time. They’ll send the nanny in their stead to school pick-up, trading emotional provision for economic provision. Due to the gendered stereotype of men as breadwinners, it is easier for them to mask their actual priorities: they can like the idea of family more than being with their actual family, covering it all in a lovely frosting of I work so much because I love my family. When the truth is that they work for themselves, because it is easier than loving one’s family.

It’s a clever sleight—and one I would’ve certainly used, because I saw my parents protest the same. We are all excellent liars to ourselves. It is, in fact, more convenient to engage in economic work than it is to spend time with humans who do not yet understand the invisible hand of the free market, who only see that Daddy or Mommy is not there, again.

But can we blame them? Give me 24 hours at an investment bank over feeding, bath, and nap time with a two-month-old, any day. At least the humans throwing tantrums at the former understand language.

One would think, à la Princeton Mom, that a paramour from the same elite institution, of all people, would understand their partner’s ambition. But while shared matriculation at an Ivy League school can say a lot about similar levels of ambition, it says very little about compatibility of said ambitions.

As between two ambitious people, who will move for the other’s job opportunity? Who will handle more of the domestic tasks, such as cooking and cleaning (or hiring and managing those who cook and clean)? If a relative gets sick, who will step back from the formal job market? Or if a child has special needs, who will lean more into one’s career—but unwillingly, selling out for a highly-compensated but soul-sucking job with great benefits?

I know the healthy answer is: in a true and equal partnership, the couple would discuss each issue as it comes up and figure out what is equitable. But particularly in a heterosexual union, I can’t help but simmer at the idea of negotiating my ambitions. Men have attended Yale for over 300 years; women have been admitted for less than 60. Men and women endeavor to share domestic labor, but only women can carry children to term and breastfeed. Men and women both work, but women are still more likely to quit their jobs to engage in childcare. Hundreds of years of negotiating ambitions, and yet more negotiations to be had.

It may be well and true that a Princeton woman will never be surrounded by a greater number of smart, ambitious men than when she is at Princeton. And it is true that smart, ambitious individuals are likely to be intellectually compatible with other smart, ambitious people. But how do you expect someone so smart and so ambitious to so easily give up on their envisioned future when asked? How many hours of introspection and therapy and self-acceptance are required to avoid resenting one’s partner for the sacrifices and compromises inherent in a relationship? It’s a lot easier to love someone in sickness and in health than after giving up my dream career for your master’s program.

Nowadays, I’m glad I didn’t find a husband at Yale. I was too hungry, too ambitious, and too angry for a healthy relationship. For me, that type of assortative mating would’ve only been a recipe for eventual resentment and divorce.

But maybe that was true for Princeton Mom, too. She is, after all, divorced.◆

And now… some personal updates!

• Resisting: One of my former mentors gave me the best piece of advice for navigating my despair about the world right now. She told me to do what I had to do to live my life, and then pick one daily act of resistance. In that spirit, I’d like to begin highlighting acts of resistance, however small or large, that we can engage in. (If you have any you’d like me to highlight in future newsletters, reply to this email or shoot me a message at cecexie[at]substack.com.)

  This time, I’d like to feature PauseAI, an international group advocating for slower AI development so that existential risks can be evaluated and democratically managed. Its website features several bite-size actions you can take today: emailing your representative about AI risks; setting up a lobbying meeting; or signing an open letter urging for an international AI treaty.