Why The Time Traveler’s Wife is the book Millennials need right now

Written for the Humber School for Writers (2021)

“It’s hard being left behind.”

The opening line of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 book The Time Traveler’s Wife feels as though it was written for a life put on hold.

The whole world has felt frozen in time over the last 18 months because of the pandemic. Moving forward and yet going nowhere at all. That feeling is intensified for millennials whose lives are supposed to be taking off and becoming solid. Instead, the oft maligned generation has found themselves stuck. Waiting. Left behind.

Niffenegger’s book, already the subject of a 2009 movie adaptation featuring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, and a planned London stage adaptation, is being transformed again by director David Nutter and HBO for a small screen run later this year.

Nutter has been quoted as saying his version of the work will be a “grand, ordinary love story” centered around the star-crossed main characters, a husband, Henry, who has a neurological condition that causes him to uncontrollably travel through time and a wife, Clare, who waits for him.

As one of the many millennials feeling like I’m currently incased in carbonite, I can feel the collective eye-roll of an entire generation, uninterested in being spoon-fed another happily ever after while we wait for the thaw.

It’s a comfort that the source material, the book itself, isn’t actually a love story. Or rather, it’s not a happy one. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a text about fate, free will, and a life on hold that Niffenegger herself said was “full of monsters.” It’s the book millennials need to read right now.

It’s the book I need right now.

I’m turning 40 this year, the eldest of the elder millennials. Single, never-married and living at home, this is never where I pictured myself at this stage in my life, but I know I’m hardly alone.

According to a study conducted by Pew Research 52 per cent of millennials were living at home in July 2020. The company says this is the first time ever more than half of adults 25-40 have remained or moved back into their parents’ house, surpassing the previous high-water mark of 48 per cent set in 1940.

Pandemic job losses, closed college and university campuses, care-giving responsibilities, a crushing real estate market, and wanting to be near family during a global crisis may account for some of the jump in numbers, but in February 2020, before the pandemic truly took hold in North America, millennials living at home still numbered 47 per cent.

I moved home after deciding to leave a job in another province in early 2019. I know I’m privileged to be able to return to my childhood home, using it as a kind of weigh station for a few months at a time when I’m between apartments or travelling for work. I never intended to be here for two years.

Moving home in 2019, ‘I’m just going to be here for a few months,’ turned into ‘I’m just going to be here for a year,’ when personal health issues hit. By the Fall of 2019 I was well again, but there was no immediate rush to move out. No job in another city to move for. No partner to move in with.

This too is unsurprising for someone of my age group. The Urban Institute reported that while up to 91 per cent of Boomers and 82 per cent of Gen X’ers have been married at least once, that number is expected to dip to 70 per cent for Millennials. It’s anticipated that an increasing number of millennials will wait until they’re 40 or older to marry, and 25 per cent of the age group said they were unlikely to ever marry.

In The Time Traveler’s Wife Clare meets Henry when she is just six in the field behind her house. He, however, is 28, having travelled back in time. Nothing untoward happens, this isn’t that type of book, but Henry makes an impression and when Clare’s little girl wedding fantasies start to appear, he plays a starring role.

It might seem cute, or serendipitous even, that the two should meet in that field and she should spend her whole life wishing and waiting to be his wife. Or perhaps it’s a comment on a society that still pressures women to get married first and cultivate a life second; to have a life spent waiting for the right partner to come along instead of making one alone.

In this way, I am Clare. I wish I wasn’t, but the constant societal pressure to be partnered, and to celebrate that partnership with an elaborate party, is hard to avoid. From the time we’re little, girls and women are told that the day they don a white dress and walk down the aisle is the most important day of their life, and every other moment is just leading to that crescendo of organ music playing “Here Comes the Bride.”

That fantasy is perpetuated for a reason. In 2018 the Canadian wedding industry was worth more than $4 billion a year. That number becomes even more staggering when you consider that it is spread across about 150,000 weddings, putting the average price tag for Canadian nuptials at more than $26,000 each.

When I think about spending $26,000 on anything my breathing becomes shallow. After years of accumulating student debt and struggling to make a life for myself during not one, but two major economic recessions, I simply cannot picture any party that would be worth that much money.

And yet, when I close my eyes, there it is. The white dress, the perfect first dance, perhaps even fireworks exploding in the background. All plans unlikely to ever be realized. And not just because I refuse to use dating apps anymore.

Prior to the pandemic dating app usage had fallen off. Apps like Tinder and Bumble were reporting nearly flat growth in 2019, with less than one-sixth the number of new accounts created just three years earlier.

While lockdown orders and closed bars have seen that statistic reverse — more people are using dating apps than ever before — studies conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and others have shown that dating apps actually make users feel lonelier.

And lonely is what I feel as I scroll through the same pictures of men holding fish or standing in the sun in their suits. ‘When were these pictures taken?’ I think. When was the last time anyone wore a suit?

Looking for a partner in this way has always made me feel like I was buying something. As if, in this age of intense capitalism, I could just approach a counter and ask for someone who makes me laugh, can cook, doesn’t judge my bad habits too harshly, likes to talk politics, runs and has read at least one book in the last 12 months. Throw in some spontaneity on the side too, please.

It feels almost crass. Dates have become job interviews that will never go well, as we’re all inundated with the paradox of choice.

Perhaps then, a little bit of romance, where a partner just appears in a field, is required after all. A small taste of a sweeping love, epic and meant to last forever; something not even the boundaries of time can stop.

When you look closely at the novel there’s a little of that, but mostly Henry seems like a normal guy in a normal relationship. He’s not really into the romantic gestures, after all nothing says love like a man who can’t keep a date because he may leap through time at any moment.

I’m not here to unfairly malign men. I can neither remember anniversaries nor be on time for a date. But the challenges of calling this book a “grand” love story are many, leaving just the ordinary.

Reading about Clare’s waiting in the context of Niffenegger’s not-quite-a-love-story provides a kind of solace. I feel her pain, wanting something that will never exist, and I feel a little seen too, the kind of seen you don’t get from Zoom calls and virtual coffee dates.

Clare’s knowledge of her own future prevents her from having the kind of love that surprises and excites. She’s known Henry her whole life and nothing about him is new, but she wants so desperately to have the kind of grand love Nutter’s adaptation wants to give her. Many of us want that – or think we do.

Netflix’s most popular adult program for the first quarter of this year was based on another romance novel — Bridgerton. The Shonda Rhimes’ adaptation of the Julia Quinn novels about marrying and scandal in the regency-era set people’s hearts aflutter and gave the show a number one spot on the streaming service’s platform until April 2021. It’s no wonder HBO wants a piece of that market share.

Even the mostly ordinary kind of love The Time Traveler’s Wife offers has been put on hold for many, and not everyone is wishing for more. A survey conducted by Tinder’s own researchers showed 25 per cent of women and 17 per cent of men asked preferred being single.

When I think of how my last relationship ended, and the months of heartbreak and grief that followed it, I almost prefer being single too.

Still, despite my age, stubborn refusal to use the technology and contentment with my own wildly independent streak, I feel as though there is likely to be a wedding at some point in my future. Maybe.

But planning anything is hard now.

When the pandemic hit the uncertainty of it eliminated any plans I’d once had. Although “where do you see yourself in five years?” is still a question favoured by both professors in the classes I’m taking and in the jobs I’m interviewing for, I no longer have an answer.

While waiting for Henry, Clare says, “Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass,” and I know what she means. These last two years time has had a clear elastic quality to it. It stretches out forever and I can see so many possible futures lined up before me; all of them just out of reach.

It’s difficult to plan a future when everything feels stalled, especially career growth. Prudential’s Pulse of the American Worker survey earlier this year showed 80 per cent of millennials were concerned about their career growth. That concern has led 26 per cent of the age group to plan to change jobs as soon as the pandemic is over, in a move the media is dubbing ‘the great quit.’

With the cost of living out-pacing wages, changing jobs or even careers may seem like a necessary move to get us out of our childhood bedrooms and into homes of our own, but even those moves have been put on hold while we wait for an end to the crisis.

Clare never knows when Henry is going, but more than that, she never knows when he is coming back. Waiting for him through holidays and special occasions, through date nights and every day occurrences is exhausting and maddening and frustrating for Clare. I understand what she’s going through. I too am exhausted and frustrated with this waiting.

I am one of the workers determined to make a career change. Having spent 15 years as a journalist, I decided I need a change. Or rather, the industry decided it for me.

With publications closing left and right over the last decade there is a flood of talented, respected journalists in the job market, but there aren’t jobs available for all of them. I’ve been one of the lucky ones able to remain employed in my field, but wages in that ten-year period have remained stagnant while the hours required of each reporter have gone up.

When I realized I was doing the job of three people for the same salary I made ten years ago, with housing and rental markets that haven’t yet found a ceiling, I knew I needed a change, but a global pandemic seems like hardly the time.

Instead, I’m doing what many in my shoes are, cobbling together online classes and workshops with a part-time job or two and Zoom meetings with recruiters. Boosting my resume and making work to figure out how to get more work.

It’s not quite busyness for its own sake, but some days it’s starting to feel that way.

Employers are stuck waiting too. Waiting for lockdowns to end. Waiting for the market to rebound. Just waiting.

The inability to make stable career choices is another reason millennials are holding off on marriage and kids.

In a 2019 Merrill study 73 per cent of respondents said finances played a part in their decision to have children or not. Four in 10 parents said they had at least partially financially supported an adult child in the past 12 months.

In a similar New York Times study 64 per cent of child-free respondents said they chose not to have children because childcare is too expensive.

I don’t feel the baby crunch in the same way many of my friends do. Childless by choice I nod sympathetically when they relate how frustrating it is to have to wait and weigh all the choices about when and how to have children, but I don’t need a baby in my life.

In The Time Traveler’s Wife having a child provokesanother period of waiting for Clare. Another hurdle Henry must overcome.

Even though I don’t crave a child the way I crave a lovely home I’ll never have, or a stable career that doesn’t seem in the cards, Niffenegger’s writing is so beautifully in tune with what this kind of loss feels like that it pinches a nerve somewhere deep inside me. I feel the pain she feels.

Fictional or not it is good to commiserate with someone who empathizes with you. It makes the journey less lonely. For all its heartache and despair, this book knits together all the parts of life you may desperately want but can’t control.

Henry’s jumping back and forth through time started as a stress response to witnessing his mother’s death. The passing through time, the jumps out of oneself, his medicating with alcohol, are clearly an allusion to a post-traumatic stress injury. For all this, perhaps I am a little bit Henry too.

Every generation has its stresses. Victims of war, of tragedy, or circumstance, but this generation seems to be more stressed than previous ones.

A decade ago, just 3.2 per cent of the population reported having anxiety, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In 2015 that number jumped to 11.2 per cent. Millennials have been called the most anxious generation.

Reading about Henry’s struggle to control his own mind feels familiar. Watching him learn that alcohol makes it worse, that learning to breathe and medication helps, will seem like a familiar path for those who have been working to control their own anxious minds.

In the past several years, rounds of therapy combined with meditation and yoga classes have marked my own journey to quiet my mind. I eagerly swap tips with friends about which counsellors are the best or which home remedy helps with sleep. We are all anxious together.

While the book vividly details Henry’s struggle with his anxiety in the shape of time travel, in a much quieter voice it shows Clare creating a life for herself.

Henry’s inability to be reliable or present means Clare’s plans must necessarily exclude him much of the time. Readers follow her as she – spoilers — finishes school, builds a career and eventually raises a child — all without Henry.

She must assess her situation and work within it to create a life that’s meaningful, and here’s where the book may help my generation the most.

We’re all waiting for the storm to pass, but looking at the statistics, the world was headed in this direction long before the pandemic froze it over. The numbers tell a story of a generation buried under massive amounts of debt, with stagnant wages and rising costs, choosing to have a life they can’t afford full of the things they want, or to live without the things they want and afford the life they have.

Living with this kind of existential dread day after day, bouncing between the reality you want for yourself in your head and the one that’s available to you, has been called ‘Millennial Ennui’ or ‘Millennial Angst.’

Re-reading The Time Traveler’s Wife I take careful note of the title. His story is told the loudest. It’s the boldest and most present, but hers is the story that matters. In the end, Clare’s love story is not with Henry, but with the life she can create even when he’s not there.

Niffenegger’s book is a lesson in quietly and persistently playing the hand you’re dealt. Getting lost in its pages I watch Henry get mad that Clare is going about her life, working and doing the things she needs to do to create a life that makes her feel whole without him. I hear her ask, “What did you expect me to do?”

‘What are we expected to do?’ I think. It’s a valid question. What does the universe expect from millennials right now? It seems that if we wait for all the things we’re supposed to want, we’ll be waiting forever.

If the last year of lockdowns has taught me anything it’s that there is only so much pacing you can do, only so many virtual yoga classes you can take, to fight back the anxiety. Reading is like a deep breath in just when you think there are no more breaths to be had.

Instead, perhaps we should do as Clare does and piece together a life we can be happy with now. Not rejecting the things we’re told should be ours, but not tying ourselves to them either.

Living in the big, Instagrammable moments will only make the small, quieter moments seem smaller. It stretches out the waiting and the wanting.

Clare makes her life in the quiet in-between. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a kind of guidebook in this way, a case for creating a life you’re happy with, even while you’re waiting. A way to fall in love with your own life as it is.

And maybe that’s the love story Audrey Niffenegger wanted for us all along.