Jill has a post up this week: I’m Never Getting Married. It opens
I actually don’t know if that’s true (her claim in the title of the post), but the closer I get to standard marrying age, the less I think it’ll ever happen — first because I think marriage is kind of a crock, and second because I’m becoming fairly certain that there just isn’t anyone out there who I want to be forever bound in marriage with.
It’s an interesting and lengthy post, though Jill doesn’t spend as much time on the second part of her reasoning (the near-certainty that there is no one out there whom she wants to marry) as she does on her first. Part of Jill’s criticism of marriage is directed at engagement and wedding ritual; she specifically calls out diamonds and bachelor parties. She makes some excellent criticisms of both (particularly the anti-feminist implications in the former and the horrifying behavior of many men at the latter).
Back in 2004, when I was engaged but not yet wed, I posted about diamond rings here. I noted that while I bought my wife an engagement ring, she bought me one as well. Here’s an excerpt:
…it’s important to remember that the origins of our traditions do not dictate their contemporary meaning. There is little doubt that the practice of having a father walk his daughter down the aisle to her groom (rather than having both parents escort her) is rooted in notions of the marriage as property transfer. But in the modern world, we are free to take older traditions and remake them, transforming their meaning as we please. What was once oppressive need no longer be so. I’ve known some strong women who walked down the aisle on Dad’s arm dressed in white — and they weren’t property (and they sure as hell weren’t virgins). At some point, oppression is entirely in the eye of the beholder, and these women didn’t feel oppressed by the ritual itself.
It is absolutely true that folks will make judgments about a man’s wealth and status based upon the size and perceived expense of his fiancee’s engagement ring. But again, their perceptions do not determine the exclusive meaning! For me, the engagement ring does not symbolize wealth or ownership; rather, it symbolizes sacrifice and enduring commitment. In many traditions, it is customary for a man to say to his bride “with all my worldly goods I thee endow”. In the modern world, that means he is surrendering his financial (as well as his sexual) autonomy in order to build a blended life with his partner. That’s no small sacrifice for either party when it is genuinely meant! The engagement ring symbolizes his commitment to share all that he has with her. (I suppose she could wear his 401K plan as a doily, but that wouldn’t be nearly as appealing.)
As for bachelor parties that involve strip clubs or other forms of sexualized entertainment, I’m obviously appalled by them. (I’ve had small bachelor parties before each of my weddings, though a number of them have consisted of just hanging out with a group of friends of both sexes. None involved strippers.) I’ve posted many times about the sex industry in all of its forms, and won’t repeat those posts here. I do want to offer a ringing endorsement of what Jill writes on the subject:
Bachelor parties where the boys get together and go fishing or out to a nice dinner are one thing. But the “take the groom-to-be out to watch naked women dance around” is problematic not only because of the feminist issues with paying women to strip, but because it strikes me as a direct statement of power over his to-be wife — the message is that marriage is such a burden and a bore that he has to get all of his youthful energy out before he enters into it, even at his fiancee’s expense.
There’s no question that going back for more than a century, pop culture has set men up to believe that marriage means the end of “fun”. The jokes about “the old ball and chain” go back to the furthest extent of living memory. And of course, there’s a small grain of truth in all of this ugly humor. If your definition of happiness is the pursuit of everlasting novelty, then yeah, marriage will be dull by comparison. If your definition of freedom is the freedom to sleep with as many women as you can, then yes, marriage will seem confining.
But I’ve already written my paeans to monogamy; I’ve already said (to the exasperation of many of my readers) that I consider monogamous marriage to be the best vehicle I know for personal growth. (See my marriage archive if you want more of that.) I’m not going to repeat myself here, though I will say again that I know plenty of very evolved, interesting, compassionate people who have chosen alternatives to monogamy. To paraphrase Symmachus, there are many roads…
I respect Jill’s reasons for — at this stage of her life — rejecting marriage. But in her post, I don’t read the reason I hear from many young women (and not-so-young women) for their wariness. Whenever I launch into my glowing defense of marriage as a vehicle for personal transformation, someone (invariably a woman) remarks that in most marriages she’s seen (or been in) one partner is shouldering considerably more of the burden of creating that change. Almost always, that partner is a woman.
A good friend of mine, several years older than Jill, is recently divorced. She pledges never to remarry, saying: “In the end, most men expect women to take care of them once they’re married. I don’t mean financially, I mean enotionally. I’m just tired of thinking about someone else’s needs all the time, particularly an adult’s. I’m prepared to take care of a baby. But I don’t want my first-born to be my second child!”
My friend isn’t describing every American man. But she’s describing all too many. And it’s not just a reference to housework she makes. All of the research shows, of course, that even when both parties in a marriage work an equal number of hours outside the home, the woman tends to spend more time on domestic work. But the problem my friend is really focused on is less about doing the dishes and more about emotional intelligence (what’s often called “EQ”). Far too many men fail to do adequate self-care when they are in relationship with women. Far too many men becoming enormously reliant on their girlfriends or wives to urge them to see a doctor, to be the sole source of professional encouragement, to monitor their alcohol intake or the content of their diets. Far too many men unintentionally turn their girlfriends or wives into mother figures; in a sense, they outsource their emotional maintenance.
Every romantic partnership ought to be just that, a partnership. And while the partners are rarely going to be equally adept at every physical and spiritual and emotional task, it is important that the overall psychic workload of their union be shared fairly. Too often, women like my friend feel that when they marry, they end up focusing all of their time and energy on meeting the needs of their husbands. And while there is an element of need in even the healthiest of marriages, too often many women begin to feel that they are doing for their husbands what they damned well ought to be doing for themselves. Men can wash dishes (with hot water and detergent). Men can talk about their feelings with their friends just as so many women do, and thus alleviate some of the emotional burden many wives feel to be their husband’s sole source of psychological support. Men can stay faithful in body (and in fantasy), even when their wives don’t feel like having sex every night of the week.
Of course women have a huge part in this as well. Far too many women have traditionally derived their sense of self-esteem from their skill at providing pleasure and happiness to others. Some women deliberately seek out men who will be emotionally needy; part of the “bad boy” syndrome is sometimes less an attraction to the “bad” than it is to the “boy” who, beneath his truculence and his self-destructiveness, just “needs a little special TLC”. Both women and men can be architects of their own adversity in this regard. I am not absolving women of all responsibility here.
But in the end, I’m convinced that a great many women (not necessarily Jill) are reluctant to marry (or marry again) because they believe that their are relatively few men worth marrying. Many women look at the colossal sacrifices other women make in marriage, they look at the legions of husbands and fathers who are emotionally distant or desperately dependent, and they say to themselves “no thanks.” They are legitimately concerned that when they marry, a part of themselves will disappear; they fear — sadly, often rightly — that they will be forced to neglect their own growth to focus on enabling the growth of their husbands and their children.
I am not a perfect husband. One of my most important jobs as a husband, however, is to strike a balance between genuine intimacy and interdependence on the one hand, and emotional self-sufficiency on the other. Even now, at 40, after four marriages and a decade of therapy (including two years of formal analysis), after a dramatic and enduring spiritual conversion, after years and years of serving as a mentor and a counselor and a gender studies professor, I still have work to do. I still have to be vigilant not to slip into a pattern in which my wife ends up doing for me what I ought to do for myself. It’s not my wife’s job to make sure I eat right and get enough sleep, it’s not my wife’s job to tell me that I need to cut back on the exercise. If I am to be the man God calls me to be, I cannot outsource my self-care to my spouse.
My wife and I are trying to save chinchillas, trying to bring about social change, trying to plan for our own futures, trying to be agents of justice and love in the world. And we’re trying to have fun while we’re doing it. We rely on each other for encouragement, for comfort, for friendship. We focus our romantic and sexual lives on each other, knowing that if we put all our intimate energy into our relationship, we will emerge from our private moments recharged and more ready than ever to do the important work we are called to do.
So what’s the bottom line? There are many reasons not to want to marry. But one big whoppin’ reason for many women is that they’ve seen the available men. And while these lads may be cute, sexy, witty, kind, and bright, far too many of them strike the women around them as poor long-term investments. Far too many seem as if they’d end up being sons rather than husbands. And if we who believe in marriage want to see the institution thrive, we need to work on getting our brothers to grow up.
Note: This is an-MRA free zone, folks. No anti-feminist bromides permitted.
My friend’s grandmother, who was happily married all her life, told her that: a) marriage is a lot of hard work b) most of the work is done by women. She didn’t complain, but rather told that to prepare her for future married life, so that she won’t divorce. I think women, who aren’t prepared for that devision of labor & don’t get married or divorce, are considered “bad”/selfish/unsuitable for marriage [the last was what her grandmother meant] in our culture.
part of the “bad boy” syndrome is sometimes less an attraction to the “bad” than it is to the “boy”
I read a book [it’s at home now], in which a female psychologist mentions how 4-5 years old boys are socialized to dampen their softer, feeling, “feminine” sides by their parents, so that they won’t suffer afterward in the real world. May be those women are (sub)consciously attracted to the fantasy of revealing the ability to feel, openness, delicacy, which stereotypical adult men aren’t supposed to feel since they succeeded to kill it in their childhood.
There is little doubt that the practice of having a father walk his daughter down the aisle to her groom (rather than having both parents escort her) is rooted in notions of the marriage as property transfer. But in the modern world, we are free to take older traditions and remake them, transforming their meaning as we please.
I am rather skeptical in this case, Hugo. The engagement ring tradition is rooted in sexism, however if both parties exchange rings and wear them together during this period, it’s no longer sexist, imo. The same thing in this case would be or both parents walking the bride down the aisle [Even this isn’t enough, imo. Why isn’t a groom walked too for a perfect equality? Because he is supposed to be an independent person/head of the household, unlike his bride I guess. I am not a Christian and it shows in my ignorance of the traditions here :-) ] or both marrying partners walking alone. In any case I believe here, like in my example with the rings, the tradition should be remade. Saying it means something else to us isn’t enough.
It slightly reminds me of a very good post I recently read somewhere about the influence of language - words or lack of them - on our perceptions of the world. The same idea can be found in 1984. On a day against racism I saw an article, that some words [like n-word] can’t be made empowering whatever you say you mean by saying them, aka “you can’t destroy a master’s house with his tools”. The article’s aim was to educate young African-Americans not to pronounce this word. It didn’t say them “this can be empowering if you want so very much”, rather it tried to remind of the horrible history of this word. This example isn’t probably very good, so I would give another one: on feminist blogs sometimes there are discussions whether c*** can become empowering. I think the really empowering thing would be emitting/forgetting this word altogether.
In short, I believe that just as the words we choose can influence our thinking process or lack thereof, the traditions we follow, aka our actions, not words, do so too.
On an unrelated note - Hugo, did you get my letter? I had many troubles with e-mail today and am not sure it was successfully sent. I got all the time “sent with mistakes” announcement.
“But one big whoppin’ reason for many women is that they’ve seen the available men. And while these lads may be cute, sexy, witty, kind, and bright, far too many of them strike the women around them as poor long-term investments. Far too many seem as if they’d end up being sons rather than husbands. And if we who believe in marriage want to see the institution thrive, we need to work on getting our brothers to grow up.” - Hugo Schwyzer
Oh, here, here. I should add that relatively few men are really so cute, sexy or truly kind though they may be bright (at least those that I meet). This makes being attracted enough to most men to consider a long term exclusive relationship with most of them a challenge.
Some good thoughts on the state of men and marriage. I’m married to a man who is far from perfect, but does know enough to come in out of the rain, washes dishes better, is better with children and amazing with animals. I have my own strengths and weakness, and we work to balance these out with each other.
I see many men and women who fall into that passive aggressive trap of ‘not doing it properly’. You know the one…The female complains that the man does not do a chore/task properly, and thus takes it on herself. The man, who knows that whatever he takes on, he will not satisfy her, and thus deliberately fails. It’s insidious and hateful, but so many people continue to play it out, because this is what they were raised to expect.
I have to thank my mother in law who ensured that her son would know how to do domestic chores, regardless of ‘sex-role’, and never thought twice about asking the daughter to rake the leaves and the son to vacuum the living room. I wonder if in our western culture of entitlement, boys are being excluded from these sorts of lessons—there’s always a mother/ housekeeper/ teacher/ wife/ girlfriend to clean up the messes. Your post brings up so many parallels to your other posts about the unreasonable expectations set for girls—are boys being raised with too few? Is this why high achieving young women like Jill are reluctant to marry? The ‘boys’ may be making good money, but so are we women (of course, not 100%!!) and as another poster said (and I paraphrase) ‘why do I need a second child’?
Yes, elanor-X, I got your letter and will respond when I have some more time (like when this grading hell ends sometime next week).
Far too many men fail to do adequate self-care when they are in relationship with women. Far too many men becoming enormously reliant on their girlfriends or wives to urge them to see a doctor, to be the sole source of professional encouragement, to monitor their alcohol intake or the content of their diets. Far too many men unintentionally turn their girlfriends or wives into mother figures; in a sense, they outsource their emotional maintenance.
Far too many men make sweeping assertions without a shred of supporting evidence.
Heh. I had a lot of relationships get ugly, back in my single gal days, because I took the guys at their word when they complained how women wanted to “talk about the relationship” all the time. Suddenly there was nobody shouldering all the emotional work and, six months down the line, Mr. Glad You’re Not Like That would suddenly whine about how we need to talk.
Bd, observations don’t require evidence. I’m not submitting a paper to a scientific journal. Talk to a group of married American women sometime, women over thirty (or better, over forty) about their husbands. I’ll bet you a vegan donut what I say here will ring true.
Part of the chores dynamic (and it’s particularily something I’m getting firsthand now that my fiance has moved in with me) is that some guys really don’t know how to do these things. Females aren’t born with genetic knowledge of how to clean, cook, and color-coordinate. And instead of saying “move, I’ll do it” the BETTER thing to do is “let me show you how to”. Yet, that is also harder; it takes longer, you have to avoid being condescending, and this patience is supposed to appear when you are possibly stressed, or are maybe confused on why this isn’t intutitive.
Same thing with emotional work. My hunny is very, very supportive. He also is only very, very supportive when you tell him exactly how you feel and exactly how he can fix it. He has not very good at figuring out how I am feeling, or things he can do to make it better.
Damn patriarchy.
Heh. I fit this demographic. I love my spouse dearly, but we’ve been together 2 decades, and still having to tell him to brush his teeth, or put his medication on, does get old.
Having trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of a vegan donut, though:)
I work with a woman who seems positively proud that her husband can’t do various household tasks. She reports herself as saying (condescendingly) things like, “That’s OK, honey, just don’t fold the towels.” She doesn’t wake him in the middle of the night to help with their child because she’d have to explain everything to him and he’d be like “huh?”
If she were irritated by this state of affairs, it wouldn’t rankle me like it does. As it is, I can’t help thinking that letting someone feel superior to you is a pretty small price to pay for not having to do housework. And especially if the superiority comes from being able to perform rote tasks to one’s own satisfaction. Give me a break.
It reminds me of sitcoms where the women are always competent and the men are always slobs. For being slobs, the men get to spend their time watching TV and eating unhealthy food, while the “competent” women manage everything and do all the work.
I think I’d rather be the slob, thank you very much.
As it is, I can’t help thinking that letting someone feel superior to you is a pretty small price to pay for not having to do housework
true. especially when they only get to feel superior to you, not actually be superior to you (at least in the knee-jerk, overgeneralizing eyes of society).
not that women don’t know this, though. it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of the seemingly head-scratching behavior of women who bring more work on themselves because their husbands “can’t” do it is based in two things:
a) the fact that this is the only arena of life in which society has encouraged them to be superior, and
b) contrary to standard belief, most women - even housewives - do actually want to be perceived as skilled and successful at something.
Talk to a group of married American women sometime, women over thirty (or better, over forty) about their husbands. I’ll bet you a vegan donut what I say here will ring true.
And maybe if you talk to a group of married American men over forty they will say their wives are insufferable nags who bug them to do things the husbands don’t think are necessary. Doesn’t mean either side is right.
What you view as “outsourcing their self-care” is much more likely to be a situation in which the men never did the amount of self-care that their wives think they should be doing, and wouldn’t now if they were single. Do you really think all these guys were going to the doctor, drinking less, etc., until they suddenly got married and decided they’d stop worrying about these things because their wives would monitor?
My wife and I take turns being the kid and the adult. A lot of the time we’re both kids, and a little of the time (like now, when we’re buying a house) we’re both adults. It works amazingly well.
Still, I do see some sex-based division of labor. She tends to do more mopping and sweeping; I take out the trash and fix things that are broken (as best I can). I do about 80% of the dishes (which in some of each of our relatives’ families is the man’s job) and once in a great while she folds my laundry. We split the cooking and I brew the beer (a newish hobby that I very much love).
Still, neither of us comes to this arrangement in the ordinary way. She was raised by a mom and dad, and it’s dad that’s the son of a fierce German woman who passed on to him this insane desire to clean the house. I was raised by just my mom, who made sure her two boys grew up able to cook, clean, and do laundry (though with no dad, we missed out on fixing cars and building shelves).
I think our “big secret” is about knowing when to be kids more than anything else. Any moron can wash dishes. It’s playing that can be the hard work, especially with the demands of day-to-day life constantly threatening to harden our hearts. And I have to say, it’s my wife who’s the engine of light and laughter; I’m usually the one who has to make the effort to drop whatever I’m carrying and remember to be a child again. But I’m learning fast, and sometimes we swap that chore off as well, these days.
Just some random Smug Married musings from out in Nebraska. Cheers, Hugo. I don’t miss L.A. but sometimes I miss the thought of it — and I occasionally regret never having gone out to All Saints — we were always at St. Augustine’s in Santa Monica.
It’s a paradox. It wasn’t until I finally let go of the hopes that there was a chance for some happy marriage in my future and vowed not to marry that I met a guy that actually provides genuine emotional support for my endeavors, instead of tries subtly to cut me off. I have no idea why that is, but I bet it happens to Jill. Maybe it’s because women who don’t want to marry attract good men who don’t see themselves in the leechy husband role.
I’d point out, kidding on the square, that you filled in that thread the role of the man who berates a woman for not submitting to the patriarchal institution.
I like to think that long experience in the past with roomates has toughened me up to the whole housework thing. One of the things I noticed while living with multple roomates is that he or she with the highest tolerance for grime and disorder wins.
What does that mean? It means that the person who likes to have things neat and tidy all the time gets irritated with dirty dishes in the sink, for instance, and after a short while will just wash ALL of the dishes, even other people’s dishes, for teh sake of their own peace of mind. Then they sulk and get resentful about doing all this extra cleaning. I learned that the way to avoid being taken for a ride on household chores is to just let the dishes sit in the sink until the “guilty party” washes them themselves, or at least just wash what you have used and not theirs. All it means is that you will have to wait longer before the sink is clear or at least relatively clear.
Married women have told me that this is impossible to do once you are married, that when you are married that you CANNOT not wash your husband’s dishes and do his laundry. To this day I don’t understand why. The woman can just NOT do it. If you can do this with roomates I don’t understand why a wedding ring obligates me to clean up after him. I mean, really, I truly don’t understand, it’s not just feminist soapboxing.
I also don’t understand on any level the reason why married peopel must merge all their finances into a joing account. Why would separate private bank accounts with one common account for household expenses so threatening to the bonds of marriage? Some may say I sound like a radical feminist but to me it’s just common sense.
Anyway, if the man protests about you not doing his dishes or his laundry then you can call him on his sexist and patriarchal expectations. He may very well be too embarassed to complain to your face, anyway. Moreover, lack of maid services is not a reason for divorce anymore, so basically the man will have to get up off his ass and do it himself if it’s that important to him.
Anyway, as I result, I have had a grand old time with male roomates. I just love ‘em and I think it is a feather in my cap at being able to sustain a marriage (naive as it may sound). I mean, think of all the arguments that will not happen because I would likely be as laid back about household chores as he is. People who tend to be anal retentive about things like dishes are 9 times out of 10 women because women are socialized that domestic chores are their province, that the state of the household is somehow a reflectioon of their worth as women and as people. This link has to be broken.
I also want to share something from a post on a similar subject that I wrote on my blog some 3 years ago:
“I thought about all the studies that say that men benefit way more than women do with marriage and children. I realized that I would be much more into having kids and having kids earlier if I could get them off my hands more often without being afraid they will be molested. But, if the lion’s share of the childcare is going to fall on me then I will wait until the last possible minute to do so and then have as few children as possible.” Treifalicious, “What’s In It for Me?”, 2/27/2004 http://treifalicious.blogspot.com/2004/02/whats-in-it-for-me.html
This is already happening in places like Italy and Japan. Women have changed but men have not and so people, especially women, are opting out (to use a fashionable term now in some “feminist” circles on the opposite situation) of marriage and children altogether. If it weren’t for immigration the US would be in a very similar situation.
I also mention things relative to the recent post about words like “slut” “fat” and “selfish” in the same post:
“I think more women need to be selfish - selfishness is essential to being happy. Not that it should get out of hand, as happiness also comes with sharing with people. But there has to be an equilibrium between selfishness and sharing. In many women, the scale is tilted towards too much sharing and selflessness and I think these expectations to put others ahead of themselves and think about their relationships with others is the root of women’s unhappiness. Men are taught that it is OK to think about themselves, to do things that are good only for them.”
I should also note that as friends have recently started to have children, I am starting to modify my attitude towards children. Maybe having kids isn’t so bad - as long as you can secure good daycare. As long as I stay in NYC there is a relatively large network of extended family I could possibly draw on.
But what this says is that clearly, not being anal about cleaning and having people around you that you can trust with your kids is essential to sane marriage and childrearing. It seems a basic zen message at the end of the day.
Who needs an MRA broadside when you have Trefalicious saying everything I would say, in spades. (Except that one of the biggest criticisms of me when it comes to the women who have tried to get me to marry or cohabit is how I need to stay out of “their turf.” Guess a man who is as - nay, more - competent around the house is threatening)
Just goes to show- it ain’t the message, but the messenger.
Though Bd (http://hugoschwyzer.net/2007/06/14/a-son-not-a-husband-some-very-long-thoughts-about-marriage-in-a-roundabout-response-to-jill/#comment-68094) has the right of it too.
I learned that the way to avoid being taken for a ride on household chores is to just let the dishes sit in the sink until the “guilty party” washes them themselves, or at least just wash what you have used and not theirs. All it means is that you will have to wait longer before the sink is clear or at least relatively clear.
There’s a third option besides being used by your messy roommate and becoming passive-aggressive. You could actually talk to her/him/them about how the household is to be maintained.
Kind of the same way family members, ideally, don’t use, berate, or passive-aggressively try to manipulate each other, but instead talk to each other.
I’m with Bd. Schwyzer, you might try talking to more than one gender the next time you start spewing gender stereotypes.
Oh, and Trefalicious, the next time a woman stops working full-time and starts sponging off her man, I hope you’re there to kick her in the ass and insist she no longer submit to the patriarchal stereotype of not pulling her weight financially.
There’s a third option besides being used by your messy roommate and becoming passive-aggressive. You could actually talk to her/him/them about how the household is to be maintained.
Not cleaning up after a man = passive-aggression.
Wow.
This is fascinating — the script is so entrenched that you didn’t even notice that Treifalicious wasn’t mad: there was no aggression there. Not passive aggression, not aggressive aggression. None. She just didn’t. clean. up. after. him.
And to you, that’s manipulation. Wow.
The other problem with not cleaning up is, if you are tidy, that you have to LIVE IN THAT MESS. I tried that with one of my old roommates: the result was that my places started to smell and I was embarassed to have people over.
Let’s take gender out of it, since it makes the MRAs go crazy-insane. Person A and Person B are married. Person A is more neat than Person B. Person A either has to live life cleaning up after Person B, or Person A has to live with a level of filth that s/he finds uncomfortable. Person B either gets to either be comfortable with the level of filth that s/he is willing to work for, or gets to benefit by everythinb being tidy and very presentable. Person A loses every way, and Person B wins every way.
Putting gender back INTO the equation, when I have mutual friends over of my fiance and mine, and the place is messy, it’s not my fiance that looks bad, it’s me. Because it’s supposed to be my responsibility to keep the house clean, not his.
Marriage is a compromise, and I think that Person A is probably going to have to resign herself/hisself with more mess or work than s/he’s comfortable with BUT, Person B should have to do more work than s/he would normally do. That’s the way to have a healthy marriage, I think.
Parson Jim, may no woman ever marry you (possibly again). If they are so distasteful to you, may you never have to be around them.
Parson Jim’s comments are being deleted; I’m leaving his first two up but all others will be removed. I’m not going to let the trolls play here.
Person B either gets to either be comfortable with the level of filth that s/he is willing to work for, or gets to benefit by everything being tidy and very presentable
An anecdote: I heard about some persons B, who complain “So many women in the house [working full time earning more than him wife+10 year old daughter & his wife’s old mother, who cooks] & the floor isn’t clean”.
The female complains that the man does not do a chore/task properly, and thus takes it on herself. The man, who knows that whatever he takes on, he will not satisfy her, and thus deliberately fails. It’s insidious and hateful, but so many people continue to play it out, because this is what they were raised to expect.
I don’t believe that it’s insidious and hateful, it’s more a simple outcome of different expectations. It’s not as though there is some platonic ideal of how the chores ought to be done, after all, and reasonable people may very well disagree about (e.g.) how shiny the sink needs to be or how much dust is permissible under the sofa following a vacuuming session.
One of the things I noticed while living with multple roomates is that he or she with the highest tolerance for grime and disorder wins.
In one sense this is the fairest solution - the person who wants the place to be a certain way is on the hook and responsible to make it the way they want. It works best when the parties are more or less on the same page - e.g. A wants the apartment to be clean, B sort of wants the apartment to be clean; A leads and B is willing to do a bit of work to keep the place clean. On the other hand, if their idea of acceptably clean is truly that different, B is unlikely to maintain things to standard (even if bullied by A).
elanor_x
Your friend’s grandmother’s husband, what did he do for a living? I always cringe when I hear about people complaining how bad our grandmothers had it. They had to slave over a house, stove, children, etc. And the men - they contributed nothing to their families… except their paycheck.
Consider what it took to get that paycheck in those days. My grandfather worked in a brewery before there were unions in his country. He worked a seven day week, all day. My dad didn’t know him. My grandfather’s best friend fought in WW2 and ended up in a camp for it. Neither of their wives had to sacrifice anything like that. Think about it - how many women died of black lung? I’m sure your friend’s grandfather felt the same way - I’m sure both of them worked to the bone for their family, and neither saw the labour the other did, only it’s fruits. The women were powerless, and the men were expendable. Those were the times.
Even today, that vast majority of workplace deaths are men.
So don’t piss and moan about the lot of our grandmothers - it insults our grandfathers, many of whom gave their very lives to provide for their families.
I’m not going to argue that old sexist attitudes were right - far from it. The patriarchy of the times was hideous, and the women were in a subservient role. I’m not arguing that point.
But to try and belittle the sacrifices of one half of the parental team is disgusting.
In one sense this is the fairest solution - the person who wants the place to be a certain way is on the hook and responsible to make it the way they want.
This makes sense if you believe that all standards of cleanliness are basically equal, and that differences in this arena are only ever a matter of opinion. If you’re talking about a person who does the dishes once a week versus a person who does the dishes every night, you’re quite right. Neither person is “right,” it is truly only a matter of preference.
But when one half of a couple does the dishes so infrequently as to attract ants, flies, mold, and foul smells, they have entered the realm of the objectively wrong, and it is no longer remotely fair to expect the person who objects to noxious filth to be the one responsible. (If this seems unrealistically awful to you, well, you haven’t had the roommates I have.) There is a minimum standard of decency which everyone sharing a household can be expected to meet, whether or not they personally care about meeting it.
I didn’t want to “piss and moan about the lot of our grandmothers” Foo and am sorry if it came out like that. Btw, that specific couple in USSR both worked full time and the husband often did the dishes and otherwise helped his wife. [They were children in the WW2.] When I gave this example I didn’t think it would come out as if I talked about previous generations [now I see it did] - I only wanted to show how such attitudes are alive to this day and I don’t talk only about older people here. It was just the first example, which jumped to my mind, but I have read/heard much younger people express the same idea.
Yeah, that was my roommate too, sophonisba. Now that we don’t live together, his place seems like a hazard.
sophonisba, not to spam Hugo’s blog, but :
From my own bitter experience: it is enough to leave dishes for a night to attract cockroaches and a couple of hours (!) during the day to attract numerous flies. I live in Israel, where a climate is warmer, but sure the matters aren’t so different in US during very warm summer days. I agree with Antigone that:
My father is a wonderful person, and certainly one of my favorite people in the world, but he’s guilty at being lazy about the house cleaning and normal upkeep as well. Mom does the laundry, the shopping, the cooking, and a lot of the cleaning. Sure, Dad mows the lawn and polishes the wood and lifts heavy stuff, but mom does the bulk of the day-to-day stuff. My mom is also a very devoted teacher, works longer hours, and makes more money than my dad, by a substantial amount. My parents have a good — hell, above average, I’d say — relationship, but my poor mother having both my dad and brother, who are incapable of driving a mile to the little grocery store when they’re out of bread. FWIW, I used to go grocery shopping for my mom when I lived at home many years ago, but I was too picky to eat much of anything anyone else was eating, so I was mostly absolved from the “finishing something and then not getting more” thing. This still makes me a little mad, to the point where I’ve suggested that my mom hide secret stashes of food in case she runs out because one of the boys finishes what’s in the fridge.
Unfortunately, when I was there, *I* was Person A, and I lived in a house full of Person Bs. I’m the one who wished for the clean houses of my friends instead of messy bathroom drawers, rings around the tub, and stacks of things on the stairs Dad hates clutter and occasionally vacuums, but in the dirty bathroom, he doesn’t seem to see dirt, which is my impression at most male-dominated households, one of which I lived in myself … so Dad tends to just put things in piles.
This all said, since my brother has moved back in, and rent-free, he’s been relegated to cleaning tasks he was “inept” at while we were both young and living there. And the little bastard knows exactly how to freaking clean bathrooms. He got away with not doing it when we were kids because he “couldn’t do it” and I could, but he was just faking so he wouldn’t have to do the minimal chores we had to do in the first place. That damn kid.
I have made a conscious decision to NOT learn how to cook and clean to proper female standards.
Okay, that’s not quite true. I know the very bare minimum that I can get away with so that the house isn’t filled with roaches, but I refuse to say, learn how to cook a full-on meal for a family of four and things like that, and I am a born slob anyway. I clean on a weekly basis, and I’m fine with that. My mother TRIED AND TRIED AND TRIED to get me to live up to her standards of 1950’s perfect housewife cleaning, but it didn’t work. I know enough for my own comfort, but do I live up to anyone else’s standards? Probably not.
Honestly, I do not WANT to have those skills and be able to take charge of a household of people and cook dinner every night for them. If I’m able to do it, I’ll never be able to avoid doing so. Right now, saying, “I suck at cooking” gets me off the hook for a LOT of things (plus there’s always purchasable takeout every time someone forces me to get potluck). If I had that ability and used it, and was romantically involved with a man, I’d end up de facto household caretaker. Right now, nobody can make me act like a proper woman in the house. Yes, my exes have complained, but as far as I’m concerned, whatever it takes to keep me out of the traditional woman role.
Plus I hate cooking anyway, so to me it’s no big loss.
“There’s a third option besides being used by your messy roommate and becoming passive-aggressive. You could actually talk to her/him/them about how the household is to be maintained.” - Noumena
Yeah, like that ever works. At best, the “guilty party” changes their behavior for about a week after which things go back to normal. Hence a cycle starts where one person bitches about the situation and gains temporary change and when teh change wears of the bitching starts again. WHy waste your time and energy bitching? Just leave the dishes in the sink. Wash what you want to use and leave the rest there. Again. Just let the man get up off his ass and do what he needs to do.
Again, most men nowadays can be made to feel ashamed if they say anything like “that’s your job” regarding household chores. Even if he does say this you can say, “No it isn’t.” And again, actions speak louder than words. You CAN just leave teh dishes there. He can’t MAKE you do the dishes. Moreover, he most likely won’t divorce you or refuse sex over it. So basically, a woman that leaves the dishes in the sink for her husband to wash without complaint is home free.
“Oh, and Trefalicious, the next time a woman stops working full-time and starts sponging off her man, I hope you’re there to kick her in the ass and insist she no longer submit to the patriarchal stereotype of not pulling her weight financially.” - Parson Jim
Well actually, Parson Jim, I BELIEVE in women working even when children are small so that it will be easier to leave your asshole husband should you need to. I think this “opting out” of the workforce, while a woman’s choice, is a BIG MISTAKE. I was taught never, ever to depend on a man. Reason being is because a man, once you start having sex with him (not to mention once you two are living together), often starts taking you for granted and acting an ass, so a woman must always have leverage to leave him when necessary.
Maybe people think I am like these gender studies professors around here that review books about feminism and deal in abstractions in many cases, but believe me when I tell you that I am NOT. Some women/gender studies professors may say that I am denying women choice, yadda yadda yadda but this is not a perfect world and power in general (not just in a relationship) is often dictated by who has the most resources or access to the most resources. For relationships to be equal, women need as much “fuck you money” as possible so that should the relationship go bad (i.e., she gets tired of thanklessly cleaning up after his lazy ass), they can leave their husbands without ending up on food stamps afterwards. Leaving the workforce to raise kids for 5 and 10 years or more does NOT accomplish that.
One last thing, sometimes “passive-aggressive behavior” is really just the most effective course of action.
“From my own bitter experience: it is enough to leave dishes for a night to attract cockroaches and a couple of hours (!) during the day to attract numerous flies. I live in Israel, where a climate is warmer, but sure the matters aren’t so different in US during very warm summer days.” - elanor_x
I spent several years living in Tel-Aviv. There were times when I washed dishes once a week even in the summer. I often had friends over for Shabbat and this made a lot of dishes. If i had chicken one Shabbat and I still didn’t feel like doing the dishes by the time the next Shabbat came around, I STUCK THE DISHES IN AN EMPTY CABINET and we had lasagne for Shabbat.
How did I do this without having all kinds of ants and roaches (especially in the summer, when all the waterbugs/jukim came out)? I hid the smells by effectively sealing the dirty dishes inside of a large pan that usually had been used to cook the main course and closing the lid. If something was soaking in water I changed the water every couple of days (often adding soap or spraying some chlorine based cleaner into it). I wrapped all organic waste in plastic bags so that the garbage wouldn’t smell. I had special meat dishes for Shabbat so it’s not like I would need the dishes during the week (and there were many times when I only ate meat on Shabbat - another reason why I did not really need my meat dishes during the week). My girlfriends and I got kind of a laugh about this.
I like cooking and can do it fairly often in order to have good food and entertain, but I loathe and detest any kind of cleaning and will think of ingenious ways to avoid it.
Hugo,
What exactly do you consider trolling and MRA bromides?
Because I think that if you exclude the entire perspective of one sex that does not conform to feminist dogma you won’t really advance the debate very far – in fact, you’ll most likely just ossify some rigid feminist frames that do not really explain Jill’s situation at all. In truth, I find the dichotomy that women don’t want men who are men, and do not want men who are boys rather frustrating. As long as you see the division of household labor as a dominance/submission paradigm where when a man fills a “dominant” role, he is unacceptable because this presents an anti-feminist condition, but when women are in the “dominant” role, the men are unacceptable because they are not pulling their weight, you are necessarily bound to reject marriage as generally unacceptable for women, and perhaps Jill in particular. You can see that for men (like me) there are some serious questions raised as to how to possibly please someone who holds this view. I think that the solution may lie in not importing the war against the patriarchy into personal relationships, where normal skirmishes between people get interpreted in such a way that blame for “x” includes blame for all of the oppression of men visited upon women for so many thousand years, etc. I do not mind being dominant or submissive/acquiescing when necessary for someone I love – it carries no political implications in my personal relationships, and I do not keep a tally or nurse grievances.
I don’t know Jill, so for the purposes of this discussion she is an abstract woman with feminist commitments, but I remember a certain speech Steinem made to a group of Ivy league women regarding “opting out,” a phenomena which she was wholly against, even as an expression of female choice. Her rationale was that until highly educated men with careers began to “opt out” in similar numbers, these women should pursue careers, because not doing so was reinforcing sexist paradigms that deprive women of power. But at the same time a question occurred to me quite naturally – and one that Steinem did not raise and perhaps hadn’t thought of – would any of these women even consider marrying a cop, plumber, or bartender? Or even someone who went to a state school? I think not – they all probably (based upon the opinions of so-called “highly educated women” that I have known) want to marry surgeons, investment bankers, and law partners. But the same does not obtain for “highly educated men” (I suppose I am one in that sense, but I would never define myself as such or permit it to substitute for a personality) who are open to a broader range of women, from the “highly educated” to the waitress at the diner – while the waitress at the diner can provide as much or better emotional support, love, and fun as anyone, and perhaps leave some of the dominance/submission baggage at the threshold of marriage, which is what a lot of us seek in a partner.
Speaking for myself, I come from a working class (as I’ve stated on Feministe) so I absolutely refuse to see myself as something better, or other, or above the cute waitress who grew up two neighborhoods over by virtue of my being a high-fallutin Commercial Litigator, and the fact that her parents fell between not being poor enough for significant college aid and writing checks for tuition outright. Nor would I consider marrying such a woman “settling” if we met one another’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. Perhaps the man who won’t stifle Jill’s personality or career isn’t the eighty-plus hours a week surgeon, investment banker, or law partner? While I’ll readily admit that men, myself included, maintain a calculus where a woman’s physical beauty is weighed quite heavily, I believe you are insufficiently critical of modern (even feminist) women’s standards of acceptability of men in which male career status is a sine qua non.
Scipio, your comment did not constitute an anti-feminist bromide. I didn’t talk about “careerism” here because I didn’t think that was an issue either for Jill or for me. I didn’t see any class issues emerge in Jill’s piece, nor do I hear them often from the women I work with.
Hey, I know what plumbers make (some make, ahem, more than college professors). I don’t see the widespread rejection of men who work with their hands; I do see a desire on the part of many women to be partnered with someone whose work ethic and ambition matches their own.
Treifalicious
The reason most married women feel that they can’t just not do it, is because every person they come in contact with pretty much feels it IS the job of the wife to make sure the house is clean.
Of course, they don’t say that, but what is unspoken is often more powerful than what is.
Regarding cleaning, I’m a big fan of the “three strikes and you’re out” policy. Three warnings, then the offending item(s) goes in the trash, no matter what it is. Gets a person’s attention real fast, and presto! After they’re finished digging through the dumpster, they pay more attention to what’s on the floor.
Sounds harsh, I know. But it’s no worse than treating someone as your personal servant, and turnabout is fair play.
Yeah, like that ever works.
Well, I would imagine that if you start out with the assumption that your roommates/spouse are the enemy and your job is to stick them with unpleasant work, and your roommates/spouse feel the same way, it sure wouldn’t work.
I solved the issue early on in our marriage by sitting down with my spouse and asking two questions: Do you feel that it’s fair that I am doing this share of the housework? If not, what are you going to do to change that?
Hugo wasn’t really posting about the housework wars, though, but about caretaking, especially the emotional kind. “Who does the laundry” isn’t quite the same question as “Who makes sure that everybody has clean clothes for tomorrow”. It’s not merely the grindwork; it’s the management, the mental space of keeping track of others’ needs and how to fulfill them.
Wow, I started to read all of the responses, but I got tired. I think you are on to something.
Once, after a break up, I told my great grandma that I had given up on men. She took me at my word, “Good,” she said, “It is the rare man that actually improves the quality of a woman’s life.” True words great-grandma- that’s born out by statistics- how long you live and how happy you are.
Yes, the person with the highest tolerance for grime wins. It’s just that when I get married, I don’t want it to be a war. And I think that is a crappy excuse for letting someone else do the dirty work: “You are the one who cares about it! I don’t care!” That is the kind of person I am most afraid of marrying and so I find your last paragraph spot on:
“So what’s the bottom line? There are many reasons not to want to marry. But one big whoppin’ reason for many women is that they’ve seen the available men. And while these lads may be cute, sexy, witty, kind, and bright, far too many of them strike the women around them as poor long-term investments. Far too many seem as if they’d end up being sons rather than husbands. And if we who believe in marriage want to see the institution thrive, we need to work on getting our brothers to grow up.”
Luckily I have seen my auntie and my mom in a happy marriage with GROWN men and I know that if you determine to only choose a grown man and not a boy, he CAN greatly improve the quality of your life.
I’m still looking!
Mythago - I say that talking to the person doesn’t really work because I have seen it over and over again where one person says, even nicely, “please change this behavior” and at best teh person changes temporarily. Now while I have never been married or lived with a boyfriend, I hear things from women who are or have. What I hear often leads me to question whether these women are getting out of the situation, if what they are getting from the relationship in question is worth everything they are putting up with in order to stay in it.
Moreover, I understand how women are made to feel like they are the managers of the inner household. I once worked for a professor whose wife also had a feminist-oriented internet magazine she was starting up. We all worked from home and I often had to go to my boss’ house for meetings and assignments. On my visits to my boss I would observe his family dynamics. I did notice that despite the wife being a card carrying feminist with a career of her own she was still the one hiring and managing the nanny and housekeeper. She was still the one picking up their 3 year old daughter from school most of the time. I even did a little work for here and she said, “His work is more important than mine”, which granted, as her husband’s work was paying most of my salary thsi might have been true to ME in a strictly monetary sense but I can’t imagine how much it must have been painful for her to say that sometimes. Sometimes my boss would slip up and his wife would be angry with him and I would sometimes end up in the middle (he actually had me apologize for him to his wife for some slip up he made - unbelieveable).
I looked at this situation and ask, “How does a woman have a romantic and sexual partnership with a man living in the same house with her AND avoid thsi situation?” Perhas the only solution is not not live together. I have heard of some people getting married but living in separate apartments. This kind of arrangement may be WAY too cutting edge for most people, though.
Yes, folks — can we move off the housework thread? That is NOT what this post was about. It is about emotional maturity, and the tendency of many men to “outsource” relationship maintenance and their own self-care.
I think we focus on the housework, because it’s easy to point to and say “There! That’s the work I do and you don’t! And have people actually believe it’s work”. Mr. Bad up there is saying that he sees “Emotional work” as talking about one’s feelings, but that really isn’t the end all and be all of emotional work.
Off the top of my head, the things I consider emotional work include
Thinking “would he like me in this”?
Knowing what to do when he gets angry (related, without asking him, and without him telling me he’s angry)
Knowing what to do when he’s depressed
Knowing that when he says he wants to be alone, it doesn’t mean he’s angry or depressed, just wants some time alone, and trying not to be offended (everyone has their introverted moments)
Knowing that when I want to be alone, I have to massage his ego so he knows that I’m not angry or depressed, or upset at him, I just want to be alone.
Directing conversations when with his family so that we don’t have a verbal confrontation, since I know that upsets him.
And my relationship is healthy, and pretty egalitarian.
My parents’ relationship was even worse (and it was UNhealthy). My mom had to everything I have to do AND:
Watch what she said at all times so my dad wouldn’t get angry
Figure out ways so she could go spend time with her friends without a) dad knowing or b) having to lie to him
Make excuses for friends, family, and work on why he wasn’t available to talk that were better than “he’s drunk”
Take responsibility for everything: every argument was her fault
Be the one who was upset when dad wanted to be upset
And so on. That is all labor, but of course it’s the “touchy feely” stuff, and of course guys DON’T NEED it (rolls eyes heavily) so it’s not thought of labor.
Oh, and Mr. Bad knows perfectly well that all of his comments are banned until Independence Day.
Antigone, that’s a perfect list — I can think of a lot of women I know who will nod vigorously when they read it.
Allright then – I had always assumed that in conversations with committed feminists suggesting that women were better at negotiating their emotions and helping men negotiate theirs was verboten. I know that stating something like “yeah, but men complain about doing all of the financial worrying” or some such would not be greeted well, despite this being my experience. You should all meet my sister in law, who is a lovely, warm, wonderful person but hemorrhages money faster than my brother can make it. It’s annoying, to a degree, when a woman doesn’t really care or concern herself with where the money comes from or how it is earned, but to me this is certainly forgivable on balance. Some might say they turn men into substitute fathers, to mirror your analogy. But I don’t want to be someone’s father, or to find a new mother, and I surely wouldn’t mind someone drawing out more of my emotional life or parting with my money, not the least because I sure have more than I really need, and if material things make someone I care about happy, so be it. I think that this is the heart of marriage for more traditionally-minded people – viz, the union of complimentary individuals (I suppose you can’t really see this if you are a non-essentialist), and it is also the tacit kernel at the heart of the homosexual marriage controversy that both sides don’t talk about.
Augghh, why did all this marriage discussion have to pop up three weeks after I got married? Now I’m second guessing all my decisions! Well, not quite - I’m happy that we’re married (and that now he’ll finally have health insurance!), but I thought things would get easier now that the wedding’s over and, well…I’m still waiting for that to happen.
He did have a bachelor party, which consisted of him and his friends going out to play disc golf. Actually, his stepdad asked if he and his friends wanted to come over and watch “nudie movies” afterwards; to his credit, Josh and his friends thought this was rather weird and weren’t interested. We had a UCC wedding without the away-giving, obey-swearing and name-changing.
In some ways we’re the opposite of the normal gender roles; I’m the slob and I’m trying to bring my cleanliness up to a level where my husband is at least not being driven crazy. (We’ve been living together for about 6 months, and I’ve made a little progress…) But I do a lot of second guessing - is what he expects of me just pulling my weight as an equal member of the household, or is he expecting me to do more than my fair share?
I guess, if anyone’s taken a “parental” role in our relationship, it’s my husband. I’m slowly emerging from clinical depression, and while I’m so very grateful to the support that I’ve received from him, I get afraid that I’m leaning on him too much, expecting too much of him.
On the other hand, I’m worried that he expects me to be more than I am - I’m not sure what’s rational for him to expect, and what’s not. I’m willing to make compromises. I can understand that it would be nice to have things in their places, so I don’t have to search half the house when I need something, but I’m probably always going to leave some responsibilities until the last minute. I’m a “so long as it gets done, what’s the problem?” person, while he’s a “get it out of the way ASAP” person.
Scipio, I don’t think that women are naturally better at emotion work than men; I think that they are socialized to be so virtually from birth. Complementarianism feels right because it plays right into our cultural expectations; we like to avoid responsibility for our own destiny by attributing to our nature what is actually brought about by nurture.
Becky, please know that I, for one, don’t think that you have to be completely 100% together in order to get married. As one of my favorite advice book writers, Davd Schnarch puts it, “only marriage makes you ready for marriage.”
He’s right; we grow and change through the marriage crucible. Expecting to have all of our wounds healed before we walk down the aisle is a bit unrealistic.
Hugo,
I’m going to have to part ways with you on the matter of women not being naturally more emotionally sophisticated than men, exceptions noted, of course. For example, women I know and have dated have needed to cry from time to time for no apparent reason – I actually had a discussion about this with a group of women once, and they all agreed and basically said “sometimes you just need a good cry and afterwards it feels good.” Now, this may be indelicate, but they said it had nothing to do with their cycle. I have no personal experience of ever feeling the need to cry for no reason – as an emotion, it should just occur to me whether I would try to fight it or not – it just hasn’t ever happened. I always supposed that this was a more refined and nuanced if cumbersome emotional life that women led.
On your final point, that you’re not ready for marriage until you are, in fact, married, I’d have to agree one hundred percent. A lot of life is like this – my experience in the Corps comes to mind – or the first time I stepped into a courtroom on my own motion hearing. There is no preparation, only the doing. And like you, I truly think that the growth takes place when we first stretch our limits beyond what is comfortable, familiar, and within our known sphere of competence.
“women I know and have dated have needed to cry from time to time for no apparent reason”
Scipio, there’s always a reason. It may not be just one reason - it may be a buildup of stress from work, home, family - but it never happens for no reason. Please cease and desist with the “women are mysterious creatures who need to leak periodically in order to not spontaneously combust” rhetoric.
The question is not about the frequency of women crying but why men don’t. Don’t forget all those years of telling a boy to “don’t cry! That’s being a sissy!”
In all of this, I don’t know a single woman, no matter how feminist they are, who respects a man who is a weepy and indecisive puddle of goo.
“don’t cry! That’s being a sissy!” Is a great oversimplification and straw … well … man. “Deal now, feel later” is more of the truth in how I, and countless of my peers were raised, to act in a decisive manner, and to remove the emotion from an issue in order to deal with it rationally and not make the mistakes that arise when you “feel” the world ought to be other than what it is.
I know of few men who don’t have a story that goes along the lines of “So the feces hits the fan, and then there’s Jane, a weepy mess, so I’m dealing with this - because of course, I need to “Do something” - and then after all is said and done she’s dead into me for not being “upset enough” about it. I mean, what does she want? I can either fix things, or sit there and cry with her. Pick one.”
I’m willing to bet a lot of my relationships have similar complaints. Okay. I have one - someone has to be the calm center in the face of emotional incontinence.
And Antigone, I will answer your questions:
Thinking “would he like me in this”?
He married you. Trust me, he’d like you in a burlap sack. And once it is thrown into a corner of the bedroom, it is immaterial to him if it is a desoigner original or bargain basement. He’s probably prefer bargain basement. Designer originals tend to get fuissed over and ruin the moment.
Knowing what to do when he gets angry (related, without asking him, and without him telling me he’s angry)
If he’s not angry at you, why do anything? Let him vent or stew for a while. He’s working it out for himself, and trying to banish the negative feelings so what he thinks isn’t tainted by them.
Knowing what to do when he’s depressed
I will assume you mean “the blues.” (I hope you do, if it’s anything like my depression I’d not wish it on anyone else, and you’re probably not qualified to help him.) A drink. A snack. Sit next to him. Put your head in his lap. He’ll open up soon. He’s sorting it out.
Knowing that when he says he wants to be alone, it doesn’t mean he’s angry or depressed, just wants some time alone, and trying not to be offended (everyone has their introverted moments)
Knowing that when I want to be alone, I have to massage his ego so he knows that I’m not angry or depressed, or upset at him, I just want to be alone.
Sounds like you both have work to do there - cancels each other out. (Trying not to be offended is your own ego there, A.) Hell, I have to do this with my employees or they worry about whether I’m about to fire the lot of their sorry asses. (HUMOR ALERT! Jest!)
Directing conversations when with his family so that we don’t have a verbal confrontation, since I know that upsets him.
Mmmm. So he NEVER, EVER runs interference for you in situations that put you out of sorts? And that’s a serious question - Never?
I have no personal experience of ever feeling the need to cry for no reason
Uh oh. Me either. Do I have to undergo a mandatory sex change?
Gonzman, do you know any men who respect a woman who is a “weepy and indecisive puddle of goo”? Hell, from your posts I get the impression you don’t know any women you respect, period; I can’t imagine your respect would be heightened if said woman was the aforementioned teary, wavering goo-puddle.
Treifalicious, it is a very common dynamic, and it’s not one that’s easy to solve. (IME, progressive men are not all that good at getting out of it, either, since on top of getting over gender issues they would have to admit that they’re not Mr. Nonsexist Egalitarian Guy to quite the degree they pretend to be.) The solution, to me, has always been to make it clear that I need an equal and need fair treatment more than I need a partner.
Gonzman, do you know any men who respect a woman who is a “weepy and indecisive puddle of goo”?
More to the point, I know countless both male and female who indulge and coddle such behavior. A great deal of them feminists, for that matter. “Can’t you see she’s upset?!” is one of the more common phrases.
Hell, from your posts I get the impression you don’t know any women you respect, period; I can’t imagine your respect would be heightened if said woman was the aforementioned teary, wavering goo-puddle.
Well, I suppose demonizing me is easier than thinking. I’ll be happy to phjotoshop a picture of me and add cloven hooves if it will help.
Gonzoman, I love my fiance for a great many reasons; his ability to know what I’m feeling, or his ability to run interference are not two of them.
No, I cannot say in the entire time I’ve known him, that he has been able to run interference. It’s not his skill, and I accept that.
I could answer to your responses on my particular situtation, but the general point of that list is that I do do the emotional “heavy lifting”, and I doubt, strongly, that I am near the only woman who does in a heterosexual relationship.
I admit that I have never been in a relationship longer than about 5 or 6 months, so I am not so familiar with all the emotional work of being in a relationship that people say is so expected of women.
What I will say is that one could just:
1) Try to select, BEFORE you get serious, a man that does not need you to “take care” of him and shoulder most of teh emotional work of the relationship. If you feel yourself being cast into a mommy role, leave the relationship (after, say, a three-strikes-you’re-out policy). Talking won’t really solve anything anyway because behavior like this is likely to be too ingrained.
2) As Mythago said, make sure it is known that it is more important to you to have an equal and be treated fairly than it is to have a man in your life.
Gonzoman, I love my fiance for a great many reasons; his ability to know what I’m feeling, or his ability to run interference are not two of them.
No, I cannot say in the entire time I’ve known him, that he has been able to run interference. It’s not his skill, and I accept that.
Obviously, then, there are other things in there that are his strengths that you feel the trade off is worth it; and have chosen to accept. He brings something to the table, no? Provides some complementary strengths you may lack?
I could answer to your responses on my particular situtation, but the general point of that list is that I do do the emotional “heavy lifting”, and I doubt, strongly, that I am near the only woman who does in a heterosexual relationship.
Nor is it a universal. Nor does it mean that there aren’t a great many men who do it, people’s ancedotal evidences aside. Nor does it mean that the ones who do do it are necessarily having a problem with it.
As the Late, Great Ann Landers said, “Nobody can make a doormat out of you without your permission.”
Gonzoman, this isn’t about trade-offs: the point is that both should be doing this relationship work, and it ends up they don’t, because I don’t think men are taught this. Nothing in the media suggests that guys learn this stuff, and our cultural script doesn’t include it. I am sure there are men who are very aware of their partners emotions, and know how to help without manipulating, and I’m sure there are emotionally ignorant women. But this isn’t about the out-layers, this is about what is encouraged by our society, and the effect it has on relationships.
Yes, there are trade-offs. But wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t have to trade: we were both capable and the trade-offs happen when one needs it and the other doesn’t? You have complained about women taking advantage of men financially: wouldn’t it be nice if women’s work was compensated like men and men and women were encouraged to go into fields not because of their gender but because of their strengths?
The financally thing is one of the few things me and my fiance are not going to be overly concerned about (both pilots, both have student debt up to our eyeballs, and then will both make ABOUT the same amount). But, emotionally, I think I’ll be doing most of the work, not because he’s lazy or malicious, but because his ignorant of it, and I don’t know how to teach him.
On interdependence:
Far too many men unintentionally turn their girlfriends or wives into mother figures; in a sense, they outsource their emotional maintenance.
OK, but if we were fiercely self-contained and do all this completely for ourselves, why be married at all?
What if, as Robert Bly points out, that our ability to do this emotional work will never be as advanced as women’s ability is because of differences in brain structure? Oh, I know that there is a strong desire for all the differences to be applied to socialization. Unfortunately, I’ll have to defer the financial decision on nature/nurture until more decisive evidence is published.
So, what can men do to improve their emotional maintenance? I’ve heard about writing, meditation, reading poetry. All these things do help, but there is something special and subtle that a woman’s presence can do for a man that these other outlets cannot.
All right - I’ll come out and say it. I think men and women are different. And no amount of socialization will make women into Joanna Russ’s Female Man.
Thus there will always be an emotional need of men for feminine comfort. I don’t see what’s so horrible about that.
Crapola….in my last post:
final somehow turned into ‘financial’. applied should have been ‘attributed’.
Time to take a break…sigh. I’m losing it.
More to the point, I know countless both male and female who indulge and coddle such behavior.
Again: you wrote “I don’t know a single woman, no matter how feminist they are, who respects a man who is a weepy and indecisive puddle of goo”. I asked you if you know any men who respect a woman who is ditto.
I didn’t ask if you knew people who put up with, coddle, or make excuses for such behavior–I’m sure all of us do.
Well, I suppose demonizing me is easier than thinking.
I suppose pouting is easier than actually answering. Am I incorrect in thinking that you have no respect for women? Not as a class of people, I mean, or in the sense that women are supposed to be “better” and thus entitled to a higher degree of respect than men *eyeroll*; but you seem to think of femaleness as something that automatically makes a fellow human being a pain in the ass, and you’ve posted at least once that you do know people who are smart, good at their jobs, etc. (I’m paraphrasing as I don’t recall the exact positive adjectives you used), and “they’re called men”.
I think I’ll be doing most of the work, not because he’s lazy or malicious, but because his ignorant of it, and I don’t know how to teach him.
You could stop doing most of the emotional work. It will be rough for a bit while he figures it out, but you know, he’s an intelligent, mature adult, right? He’ll figure it out. If he doesn’t, no loss in the long run.
Michael:
I think you posit a false dichotomy between dependence and independence. Interdependence is choosing to blend your life with someone else; it’s choosing to make yourself vulnerable; it’s choosing to see your partner as your co-laborer in life. It’s about being willing to let go of some of your assumptions about what a man’s role or a woman’s role generally is in marriage.
I did not marry my wife for feminine comfort. I married her because I was in love with her, and far more importantly, saw someone I wanted to build a life with. Women are not the only source of emotional comfort in my life; I have cried in the arms of men as well as women over the years - and I’ve learned that I have depths of tenderness within me that are as strong as any woman’s. I am no less a man for it — biology is not destiny.
Re: men’s emotional investment?
Please don’t get me wrong…celebrating thirty years.
But marital intimacy, way back when, may have been on the back burner, but it was there, in varying degrees.
In terms of emotional investment, I’d have been happy with better kidlet effort in the earliest days of “family making.” BH didn’t really get it together until #3 son was speaking in complete sentences. Yes, I was responsible for greasing the paternal wheels.
That said, the boys are tight with their Dad, and always have been, though the father-son gig occurs much less frequently since the arrival of grandkids.
What kills me is how relaxed and confident and happy the BH is with his infant-toddler grandaughters. “Grumpy Grampy” is the sitter of choice these days, and while I admit to a twinge of jealousy…I can’t help but snark internally about the pass he got so long ago, from time to time.
Thankfully, the world is changing, and our sons are not given the option of manly passive resistance. (DILs wouldn’t put up with it.) But the pleasant truth is…our sons are into being the Dad to their daughters, right out of the chute.
I don’t think it’s a small point on the opposite side - that if women are going to expect “equality” in a marriage then they better also bust their butt with regard to money. That doesn’t mean working part time at a fun job for your own spending money (and sticking the husband with the responsiblity for everything, just like daddy had). That means thinking ahead about how to make more money, avoiding financial problems because of the loss of a job and generally putting a great deal of your time into that aspect of life.
The answer here may well be that women also provide half of the income for the family today or some such response. No, that’s not what happens in the real world, it really isn’t.
The other idea is why not just let people do what they want? Some marriages stay together in which the man plays the daddy role and the woman plays the mommy role.
If a guy wants a mommy, I also find that a bit silly, but I’m not sure it’s worth the bits and bytes being expended here.
The answer here may well be that women also provide half of the income for the family today or some such response. No, that’s not what happens in the real world, it really isn’t
We sure communicate with completely different kinds of people, J, since in every couple my family knows both partners work. And I have never heard of “working part time at a fun job for your own spending money” except of in a cheesy movie. I personally have seen enough couples, in which a wife earns more than her husband, yet for some reason many people tend to expect her to do most of the homework too! Imo if both partners work full time, they have to help each other around the house, not counting who earns more or less! Isn’t marriage supposed to be about Partnership and Friendship?
Btw, “avoiding financial problems because of the loss of a job”? How can it be done exactly in your opinion? Everybody can get fired. Men too. If one of partners looses a job & is unemployed for a while, the other should support him both financially & morally. Otherwise what sort of marriage is it? Unfortunately, sometimes financial problems are unavoidable.
OK, elanor_x, women earn equally with men, except when they earn more. Men don’t do any housework, even when the women earn more than them.
But then I get to this point:
Why is what people consensually do really any business of people here or feminists? I kind of touched on that above in one of my posts.
The reason I say that is: People are not forced to get married. If you don’t want a spouse who smokes, and it’s really really important to you, then marry a non-smoker. Kind of a straightforward concept.
I personally suffer under the delusion that it’s difficult to find a woman who earns as much as me. I have run across a number of women who earn less, who want to do an “instant