Turns out, marrying just anybody is no longer a workable long-term solution.
Published by Kyso Kisaen June 18th, 2006 in Feminism, What Patriarchy?, Wedding-big mistake or bad idea?Damn you, Amanda, it’s midnight and I’m tired. But then you had to go and link to this
I don’t buy it that these folks who are dying their hair blue or buying fancy appliances are all that happy about their situation. I’m not saying single people are miserable, I was able to entertain myself quite well in my singleton years. But it’s malarkey to say they’re happier. A society with more and more single people living alone in their individual houses doesn’t sound like it’s going in the right direction. Not much of a future there. Who will take care of them in their old age? What will they pass on and to whom?
Advice: Singles should stop pretending they’re happy and OK with being single, admit that your life would be richer with a mate. Tell yourself that you want a wife or husband, and make that a priority.
First off, I like having my hair blue and if I still like it in two years, then my marriage will not persuade me to stop dying it. And while a good blender, or god willing, a real double boiler will not bring me eternal happiness, I do routinely derive satisfaction from using them. So fuck off.
Secondly, like Oh, mygod! I just finished a book dealing with just this topic! Susan Maushart, a twice-divorced social scientist, wrote a book in 2001 called Wifework: What Marriage Really Means to Women. And while she says a few things that Miss Modesty here would quote with glee, the major thrust of the book is that marriage is generally a raw deal for women, who are wise to be picky about who they marry and why, if they marry at all.
The first thing she did in the book was treat every marriage as three separate marriages: His Marriage, Her Marriage, and the Kid’s Marriage. Then she divided the tasks that women are expected to do, into housework, childcare and what she called “wifework.” Wifework was defined as the emotional work a woman does to maintain relationships. Work like stroking her husband’s ego, remembering birthdays of his relatives so he doesn’t have to, having sex when he wants to, serving the food he wants to, etc. She concludes that even men who think they agree to equality in their marriage feel entitled to a high level of emotional maitenence from their wives. The result is that marriage is good for kids (stability and all) and great for men, but awful for most women. Maushart feels that because marriage is generally better for kids the institution is worth saving, but it will not survive unless men examine this sense of entitlement and work to make marriage more equitable for women. It is, as Amanda would say, a harsh cost-benefit analysis of marriage.
(She doesn’t really touch the topic of homosexuality at all in this book. So when she says that being married is superior for kids than merely cohabitating in a committed relationship, I can only assume that she is talking only about couples who have the option of getting married. This book is hyper-focused on the straight nuclear family. She’s also not concerned with the health of childless marriages, seeing them as a private contract between two adults, the success or failure of which has less effect on society than a marriage in which children are being raised. Questionable? You decide.)
In the past, when gender roles were clear and women had few options outside of marriage, this sense of entitlement could go unexamined. Women needed men to provide for their children, hence the wifework was worth the effort.
But now, when most women have options other than marriage, the entitlement of their husbands - which the husbands don’t even acknowledge - is becoming an issue. Women who work outside the home and come home for a second shift of housework often begin to resent men who act like an extra child. She points to the fact that the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, and that the men they leave are generally shocked-they weren’t even aware there was a problem because up until the point where the woman stopped making the relationship work, everything seemed fine.
The thing that struck me about this book is how perfectly it described my last relationship:
-Eating the food he liked, when he liked to eat it, check.
-Having the sex he liked, as often as he (not I) chose, check.
-Having to constantly self-censor to avoid hurting his feelings, check
-Being expected to be amazed and excited about every idea he ever shared with me, check
-Giving him the final say in most decisions because he made more/paid for/said so, check
-Watching what he wanted to watch even when it sucked, check.
-Not ever making him watch what I wanted to watch, especially when it sucked, check.
-Pretending it didn’t hurt when he made fun of my extra pounds, check
-Making excuses to myself when he didn’t have time/money to come to the gym with me like he promised but could make time for expensive weekend conventions with his friends, check.
-Pretending it didn’t bother me when he’d stick his feet in my lap and go “rub my feeeet!” even when he did it in front of other people or if I had a plate of food in my lap, check
Was he entirely a bad guy? Of course not. He was very nice (a perfect Nice Guy, if you will), creative, sympathetic, courteous, successful. He was perfectly unaware these things bothered me because I never mentioned it. And the reason I never mentioned it is because whenever I timidly tried to assert my desires, there was pouting or resentment and guilt. But stifiling these misgivings was alot of work. Unpaid, unappreciated work far more tiring than cleaning the bathroom or washing the dishes after work. And my resentment of him simmered, and then boiled, and then finally reached a flashpoint. The fact that he was unaware of the demands he was placing on me made them that much more infuriating. Eventually, the dread I began to feel when it came time to entertain and serve him for another weekend outwieghed the happiness I felt when things were going well between us. And when I broke up with him, he was shocked. He thought everything was perfect-and for him, it was. He said it was my fault things got so bad because I didn’t communicate, but was it my fault that he only heard what he wanted to hear?
If I had stayed with him long enough for him to propose (which he claimed he had been planning to do) would I have married him despite these misgivings? Probably. Hey, engagment rings are supposed to do that to a girl. And would it have ended in divorce? You betcha!
So I got another guy who was less work. One who, in the absolute worst case scenario, will at least wait until after the wedding to start treating me like a majordomo.
I guess I wasn’t alone, judging from the book, plenty of women married men who turned out to be not worth the effort. Putting it bluntly, marriage offered the men more than it did to women, and at the first opportunity, women started leaving in droves. Maushart argues that if men can’t think of a way to make marriage a better deal for women (and this will probably involve *gasp* giving up the entitlements, but they’ll also probably be happier in the end if they do so) then women with children will find another method to find support for raising them, and men will be left out in the cold with no one folding their underwear or fixing their beef stroganoff just the way they like it. Maushart would also prefer we all get on this stat, since she believes that marriage as workable institution can be saved and that doing so would be worthwhile for children.
42 Responses to “Turns out, marrying just anybody is no longer a workable long-term solution.”
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Are you sure it was the guy who was the problem, and not your own expectations for yourself?
I have no way of knowing your particular relationship and its dynamics. But looking at that list, I have to wonder. Was it him forcing you to buckle, or was it your unwillingness to assert? Like the thing with who’s favorite foods get cooked. Did he actually order you to only cook the foods he likes? Or did he just not enjoy meals he doesn’t enjoy, and you reacted by not cooking them anymore?
Because if its the latter possibility, not marrying a jerk won’t help.
I’m not married, so I’m going to have to use my mother as an example.
My mother is an excellent cook. Phenomenal. The thing is, sometimes that means she makes… weird stuff. And while she may be a gourmet cook, I have not got a gourmet palate. So, if I am at home, and she cooks a meal that I do not like, I will eat very sparingly, and later make myself a sandwich or toast a bagel or something. She will notice this. At the meal she’ll notice that I didn’t eat very much, and question me about it. She will notice the sandwich or the bagel. Next time she cooks that same meal, she’ll make something separate for me only. Then she’ll complain about how much extra work it is to cook when I am home because she has to cook two meals at once.
The thing is, I was perfectly happy with my sandwich or my bagel. I do not feel entitled to this treatment, and really, kind of wish she’d stop so that she wouldn’t complain about it so much.
In a dynamic like that, am I really imposing this workload on her? Or is she imposing it on herself?
I’m open to arguments that the patriarchy teaches women to cater to men’s needs, and so forth. But I’m not sure that “don’t marry a jerk” is the solution. I mean, obviously, don’t marry a jerk. Jerks aren’t good. But even if you don’t marry a jerk, with a dynamic like the one that my mother and I have, it won’t matter. Unless I am a jerk for not enthusiastically devouring food that I don’t even like, my jerk or not-jerk status isn’t relevant.
Its about her expectations for herself in terms of how she manages the household and her relationships.
Patrick, you’re not a jerk for devouring food you don’t like. At the risk of ventriloquizing for Kyso, it seems to me the point is that if you want family meals to feature food you like, cook the meal your own goddamn self. I stress family meals; getting your own sandwich is a poor substitute, not to mention reinforcement of the right’s canard that self-actualization can only lead to atomization.
Kyso, I did read Maushart’s book and I agree that, harsh as the c/b analysis is, it remains a fine institution that will be vastly better if men followed the advice she proffers. I noticed that even Katha Pollitt, who stands foursquare for its abolishment, deigned recently to walk down the aisle for a second time. And no, I don’t mean to denigrate singles or co-habitators; respondors, please save the venom for the real marriage-fetishists.
Patrick the point of the book was that the women weren’t marrying jerks. My ex wasn’t a jerk. They were marrying otherwise nice, supportive, modern men who really liked being married to them but simply didn’t see the amount of invisible work that women are in general conditioned to do to keep a relationship going. Women themselves often not do not consider it “work” because it is so gendered that it’s just assumed that women are more nuturing, or express love through self-sacrifice of various magnitudes and men don’t.
As women begin to have more options (read: they don’t *have* to stroke a guy’s ego or starve anymore) we as a society are just begining to realize that all of these tiny little things that women do that add up to their dissatisfaction are not just the way women are-there was an actual goal behind it that is no longer being met, or can be met through less work for them elsewhere.
These are of course general social trends. Your milage may vary.
And yes it was the guy and not my expectations of myself. Because I also let him drag the break-up into a two month affair where he tried to get me back. He stopped talking to me the very second I stopped being supportive and kind and indulgent and told him what I really thought. The first time I put my wants in front of his was the day I told him is was over. The second time was two months later, which when I basically told him that I would not be putting up with his self-serving melodrama anymore and he needed to grow the fuck up if we were ever to be friends or lovers again. He closed the IM window and I haven’t heard from him since.
Kyso, I’ve had similar experiences with past partners, and my general thought was that I should pick my battles and not have the, “no, where do you want to eat tonight?” kind of arguments that were common in my earlier years. The little sacrifaces I made to avoid unnecessary conflict became real work and eventually there really wasn’t any incentive to continue with the relationship. They were perfectly kind people but I was unable to move freely within the relationship without being challenged for being difficult.
Nope, Patrick. That list looks like pretty much every heterosexual relationship I’ve been in and been witness to, barring a few. (Current one for me, a couple of marriages I can think of off-hand, and that’s it in the strenously egalitarian category.) On top of the list, I’ve seen men drag women away from towns and cities they love without even sitting down to discuss options first, but only one couple I know of had the woman choose the town and the man move. Unsurprisingly, they have one of the few give-and-take marriages I’ve ever seen. And I do mean give-and-take—now that her obligations are done in this town, if he got a job elsewhere, I’m sure she’d be open to moving, but they’d fucking discuss it first. (I’m bitter, yes. I moved across country based on this entitlement and hated it and yes, it ended the relationship and quickly. Unsurprisingly, the guy that I broke up with has moved yet again and his girlfriend moved with him. Fancy that.)
The “never saw it coming” phenomenon is well-noted. I’ve talked to MRAs about this and even they concede that most marriages are ended by women and the end comes as a complete fucking surprise to men. This is because part of being a “good wife” is being Uncomplaining. The word “nag” is fascinatingly effective at shutting down justified complaints.
And demanding that women are the only ones who change, that we weather through being called nags and worse (men I’ve seen who actually get confronted with their entitlement in marriage often just retaliate through adultery and then say justify it because they weren’t getting taken care of at home). Women are voting against marriage with their feet, so they’re doing their part. Men who want to actually have good relationships with women need to take responsibility. The best strategy I’ve seen straight men I know undertake is recognize that they are responsible for initiating emotional care without being asked, like women do. And being responsive to women’s requests, which is super important since most women have to work up a lot of nerve against our conditioning to ask straight up for that emotional care.
Blegh. This post was awesome, Kyso. But I’ll admit, it drudged up every nasty experience I’ve had with boyfriends when my churlish feminist self asked them to give as good as they got in terms of emotional caring—I’m a “nag” and I’m “needy”. It’s really horrible to have sexist stereotypes thrown in your face like that, especially since, objectively speaking, I’m fairly laid back in terms of needing to be cared for.
Word to Amanda’s last graph.
It’s especially hard to deal with this issue, I think, because in every other respect a relationship may be OK. If he’s otherwise a considerate guy or good provider or in any way meets the social standards for “a good catch” then most people act like you’re crazy for complaining or leaving (except, of course, for women who’ve been there and done that). When I broke up with my ex, I tried to justify myself to him and his friends (bad Kyso! Bad, bad Kyso!), and one of my points is that he would do extravagant favors for me (like cleaning my godawful kitchen) and act like he wanted nothing in return but my joy, but lo and behold, guess what was hung over my head when it came time to make the next decision on where to eat or what to see? I tried articulate this, and the response was “So you’re breaking up with him…because he’s too nice to you? You’re a heartless bitch.” It is simply not on the radar for most men.
Thanks for this, Kyso.
My last boyfriend was that way as well. He did all sorts of things for me that I found charming and amusing — like being anal enough to hang up my laundry for me and ensure that every hanger was evenly spaced — but it came to the point that that was all he did. All of a sudden it was like traditional gender role reversal. I wanted someone to talk to and make me feel good and I got a guy who would jump to do the dishes but couldn’t hold a conversation with me. But yeah, whenever I would bring up the little things that made me unhappy in the relationship, all of a sudden I’d have a fire-breathing fury demanding that his housework was enough and that I should be grateful.
It was really, really hard to break up with him, simply because he’d done nothing wrong. He took the advice that women like these things to heart — unfortunately he lost the rest of himself with it.
Oh, Patrick-about the food. Yeah, he basically insisted we eat what he wanted to eat. He’d even make it most of the time. But he liked heavy meals, lots of meat and protein and carbs, since he did alot of body building. And we ate them at like 11 at night, since I worked into the evening. Anytime I asked that we eat earlier, or less, or lighter caused a huge pout-fest.
Plus, we generally went 50/50 on the grocery bill, but could easily spend $70 a weekend on groceries because he couldn’t deal with less than a full meat-veggie-sweet meal every fucking time, which he deserved because he worked so hard over the week (he slept at the office where he had access to a microwave, blender, electric kettle and a hotplate and used my kitchen to make things he couldn’t make over the week.) Even though I was supposed to pay for half of it, I got almost no say in controlling what we spent, and if I couldn’t contribute he became exasperated, but any suggestion from me to cut back so I could contribute my fair share was dismissed out of hand.
So I got to be treated like a golddigger, get sick and gain weight from eating heavy meals late at night, and eat like a body-builder even though I did no weight training. So I was fucking up my health and my happiness, but hey, at least we weren’t fighting.
The weight gain thing is particularly ironic since he bitched about it and then was also feeding you fattening foods.
I’d say expressing “fire-breathing fury demanding that his housework was enough and that I should be grateful” is pretty damn bad.
Him being ignorant of assholery doesn’t make it less of a crime.
Patrick: Was it him forcing you to buckle, or was it your unwillingness to assert?
Oh, Patrick. Do read the post in full before you reply to it: dashing off a one-liner in response to a long post which you obviously haven’t read is one thing, but writing a long response to a post you didn’t read just makes you look like an asshole, and I’m sure you don’t want that. You overlooked - or possibly ignored - the key line “And the reason I never mentioned it is because whenever I timidly tried to assert my desires, there was pouting or resentment and guilt.”
Read in full, then reply, is a good rule.
It was really, really hard to break up with him, simply because he’d done nothing wrong.
I would much, much rather be with someone who bitched about having to do laundry than someone I didn’t think I could talk to. Making it unnecessarily hard for the person you’re with to connect with you is as hurtful as anything else you could do to them, as far as I’m concerned.
I got a feeling of deja vu reading all this, and was wondering where it came from. You guessed it: it’s the MRA sites. Don’t marry, no marriage, MGTOW and so on. You know the routine, marriage is a terrible deal for men, women have a huge sense of entitlement, you’re better off without them, and so on. Don’t marry - or be very careful who you do marry.
With feminists and MRAs making the same attack from opposite directions I can only conclude marriage is probably doomed as a institution.
As a newlywed I try really hard to let my wife know that things should be equal. Whoever fixes dinner, the other has to clean it up, etc. I consider both of us laid back and willing to do what the other wants most of the time.
But, I wanted to say that women seem to fall into to gender roles and men tend to let them.
Truthfully, I’m a little lazy, and I’ll let chores kind of pile up before I get to them. She’s a little more fastidious. But instead of asking me to do something (which I would gladly do) she tends to just DO them.
I want things to be equal. Everytime I feel like she’s doing too much I tell her to stop. But as time goes by, the “roles” seem to reassert themselves.
I am curious. I don’t think anyone has really answered Patrick’s point about his relationship with his mom.
So…
Patrick, have you told your mom that she should make the meal she wants and you making a sandwich is not a request for her to make a second meal?
As for this list of unnoticed entitlements, is this really common and normal?
I look at those, and I like to think I don’t do any of them (OK, there are a couple I *know* I don’t do.) but the fear is that if someone is so socialized to be uncomplaining that I wouldn’t know about it until it is too late, how would I know?
LC, I’d say the most of the things on my list are fairly normal. Especially the “letting him have the final say” about stuff-especially important stuff. The whole point of the list is that you don’t have to “do” anything. It’s all taken care of for you. The lady of your life could be doing most of the things on this list without a second thought - one of the points of the book is that this work is largely invisible to men and to women. Women just happen to figure it out first, and they’re likely to find it easier to leave than to attempt to change the dynamics of the relationship.
I’ll give you a super-extreme example of this sort of thing that I saw this weekend at a graduation party. I went to a friend’s party, and it was mixed relatives and friends, backyard type party in a small farm town. One guy there dominated the conversation and everybody, men and women, were effusive in their praise for what a card he was, and how funny and shocking he was. Well, it turns out he was a huge bigot, and he starts talking to us college kids about how the city sucks and people from the city suck in the normal coded “whitey vs them” language. Then he just dropped “I hate going to the city cause all you get is n-gg-rs askin’ for dollars!” and no one at the table but us heard him say that-every one else chose to not hear.
So at that point I said while there was a large number of panhandlers in the city (I had in that city been repeatedly asked for dollars, rolling papers, and my phone number, sometimes by the same person) I lived in the city and moved to a smaller town, and in the small town I had a problem with white guys in trucks being threatening assholes for no reason, and given the choice I’d rather deal with a black panhandler than a white assailant. Even this weak challenge was more than he was used to. So now this racist guy doesn’t like me anymore, because I prefer a request for a dollar (Got a dollar? No? OK.) to being called a fag for being a pedestran.
The guy’s wife sits down, and he points me out to her and in a hurt, accusing voice says “She likes the city better than the country!” And his wife turns to me, and in the nicest, softest voice imaginable, says “Oh, don’t you just love the museums and restaurants?” And begins talking about restaurants. A few more women show up, begin talking, everything smoothed over, racist guy leaves, rest of party is delightful.
So this guy is such a bastard than both men and women collude to buffer his way through life and he doesn’t have a fucking clue. They’ve ego-stroked him, kept an eye on him, came up to any situation he created and smoothed it over for him, apologized for him afterwards. It’s a close family that considers him an important member even if he is embarassing, so unless something drastic happens, he’ll live his whole life unaware of the amount of work that everyone put in on his behalf to keep his opinions from turning into problems. Even encouraging him to be a clown gave them the opportunity to pass off any remark they couldn’t ignore as a joke.
This, of course, only works because they have like no black or hispanic friends or nieghbors to offend. As long as he’s fully contained in their whitebread farm town, then it’s far easier for them to conspire to ignore his worst qualities and over-emphasize his good ones than to change his opinions; which everybody knows you can’t change a person unless he or she wants to anyway. Not that they haven’t tried.
That’s the sort of thing, on a lesser scale, that the book is talking about. If you asked your wife/girlfriend for examples of times she did any of the things on the list for you, she’d probably have to think about it for a minute because most of the time people who do this sort of work don’t keep score, they just do it.
I’ve been married for a decade to a man who is worth the effort, and for the most part, our partnership is as egalitarian as any relationship I am personally aware of…including the parenting and house-keeping duties.
But entitlement issues do crop up — on both sides. (That was especially true when we first married; we’ve managed to iron most of that crap out at this point.) For example, he did assume at first that I would keep up with his relatives’ birthdays, and I stupidly did so for the first couple of years. But when I began to resent it, I said so, and we agreed that it would be a joint responsibility, which has boiled down to this: I keep up with my relatives’ birthdays, and he keeps up with his. Or we both forget and piss everyone off.
The key thing for us has been communication. Maybe I’m just fortunate in that he isn’t generally whiney and pouty about it when I call him out on stuff, and he’s lucky that I am usually open to hearing his concerns without getting my feelings hurt.
What makes it work is that we are both willing to compromise or strike a deal to resolve the issue. Example: when our daughter was a baby, hubby was annoyingly reluctant to bathe her — mostly because he was afraid he’d drop her. I understood that, but it pissed me off since bathing a baby, though necessary, is a pain in the ass, and I didn’t think it was fair that I had to do it all the time. So we made a deal: I would be in charge of bathing our daughter if he would always bathe the dog (a chore I particularly loathed). It looked like a raw deal for me at first since the kid needed bathing far more frequently than the dog. But she has been capable of bathing herself for a few years now, and he’s still stuck bathing the dog.
Should I have just forced him to equally shoulder kid bath duties? I guess you could make that argument. But this compromise worked for us, and there’s no resentment around it. (Unless he is now silently resenting my dog-and-kid-bath-free lifestyle.)
Bottom line: I agree with Maushart’s thesis: men need to give up their entitlements. But I think women have some responsibility to speak up about what pisses them off. Should men recognize inequities without their being pointed out? Sure. But that doesn’t relieve women of the responsibility to call a partner out rather than stewing in silence. It’s up to all of us to overcome outdated gender roles.
Nik: Difference is that feminists have social science to back up our claims.
I’ve been wondering for some time exactly what emotional work was, now I know. Anyways, reading this once again reminded my how absurd most relationships seem to be. Two people playing a game by two separate set of rules, and usually not aware that the other doesn’t have the same rule book, or knows its different and thinks they know it as well. More and more I think if people would actually talk and be straightforward a lot of these problems wouldn’t crop up and everyone could just get on with their lives, either by working things out together or realizing things aren’t going to work.
Particularly I’m reminded of a story involving a coworker. Her boyfriend lived with his parents, post-college and despite making more than enough to cover for himself. She didn’t like it one bit and let him know by timidly asserting her desires as Kyso put it, or directly ridiculing him. Of course he didn’t response well and never realized that it was actually an important issue for her and not just some little thing she wanted to nag him about. It was important though, such that she wasn’t willing to stay in the relationship with him if he didn’t move out. For better or worse, she finally got over hang-ups with not playing games and directly confronted him, telling him point blank that she didn’t see a future with him unless he started living independently. That pissed him off such that he walked away from her in anger. But ten minutes later he came back, thanked her for opening his eyes and apologized for being dense. And they lived happily ever after… to date… as far as I know.
It’s right to say men are in part responsible for bad relationships for being clueless, but women are also responsible for being clueless. Of course, that’s why you all are working to educate people.
Ouch. So many memories of my ex there. I used to sneak out of the house and buy food on my own, just because I didn’t want to go through the tedious negotiations necessary to buy food he wouldn’t have bought for himself. We got into a fight once because he demanded to know why I was looking so upset, and when I told him it was because I felt a tiny little bit taken for granted, he accused me of thinking I was better than him.
It was him that broke up with me, but I knew I wasn’t going to get into another messed-up relationship in a hurry. But he wanted me to find someone else so I would be happy. Hah. I told him relationships wouldn’t make me happy, and his response - I kid you not - was, “Why? They always made me happy?”
When I first started living with my fiancé, we were like that: he was happy to do whatever chores I asked him to do, but I had to ask. All. The. Time. He never pouted, did everything I asked very cheerfully, and did take the initiative in some parts of the house (living room clutter, mostly; the kitchen and bathroom somehow became my domain) but I still felt like a horrible nag. I resented the role of Filth Management Coordinator much much more than any actual imbalance in chore time.
He also told me that I didn’t need to be doing so much, and I should ask him to do more stuff. That was nice, and all, but did absolutely nothing to address the root problem of how much I hated being “management”. When you’ve got two lazy slobs in a house, the management work is significant; things only got better when we formalized the chore roster and started to notice and divvy up the supervisory stuff. Not that our standard of housekeeping improved, but we both felt better about the way in which it was unkempt.
Nick- yeah, my ex fancied himself a health nut, which he was more than I was but he was always able to convince himself that the things he wanted to eat were healthier than they were. Once, we got a pre-made rotisserie chicken and some canned veggies (we were going back to his place, where cooking equipment was scarce) and I peeled off some skin and ate it because that’s the best fucking part! Mmmm, salty rotisserie….
Anyway, he was appalled, absolutely horrified. He told me not to eat it, and I was like, why? So for a few minutes it was a game, him asking me not to eat the chicken skin and me eating the chicken skin. I thought fuck, I’m an adult, I’ll eat what I want. Then he blocked my access to the chicken, de-skinned it, and threw the skin away rather than let me eat it.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but now I date the begining of the end of our relationship to that act. The fact that for the remainder of the relationship if he caught me eating something not up to his standards he’d grab the pudgiest part of my stomach and go “chiickeeen skiiin!” didn’t help matters.
I haven’t seen one aspect of this male relationship entitlement/obliviousness discussed, so I thought I’d bring it up. In addition to being unwilling to do and unaware of domestic work like cooking cleaning, many men have never learned how.
My parents are pretty egalitarian people but it didn’t dawn on me until I moved out of the house that I, as one of the sons, had never been taught how to clean a bathtub, mop a floor, or cook anything but the most rudimentary meals. That period in my life coincided with a long romantic dry spell (being poor and overworked didn’t really help me meet women). So, faced with the prospect of surviving on oatmeal and scrambled eggs in an increasingly pestilent apartment, I, through a sometimes hilarious process of trial and error, taught myself how to cook, started experimenting with new dishes (I make a mean smoked trout in tomato and cream sauce on rotini pasta now), bought cleaning products and figured out how to keep my place livable. I got healthier, happier, etc. It got to the point where I actually enjoyed doing these things, and when I met my current girlfriend I could tell she appreciated it.
Part of the entitlement folks are describing here comes from men who never really learned to take care of themselves and are dependent on a woman to feed, clean, and generally mother them. It’s a bad system for all involved, and men would be well adviced to get acquainted with these tasks for their own sakes.
It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but now I date the begining of the end of our relationship to that act. The fact that for the remainder of the relationship if he caught me eating something not up to his standards he’d grab the pudgiest part of my stomach and go “chiickeeen skiiin!” didn’t help matters.
Answer: “My boyfriend with the big cock likes my belly just fine.”
Good answer.
I kind feel bad about going on about one ex like this, but is there anything more enjoyable than complaining about an ex?
Besides sex, food, roller coasters, waterslides, fast cars, travel or foriegn movies, that is?
Reading the original post and the author’s comments, the problem really seems to be one of the dynamics in that particular relationship where (a) they were incompatible; (b) he didn’t like her that much; and (c ) she didn’t want to acknowledge either fact, and thus avoided engaging in the communication that would have made (a) and/or (b) explicit.
It’s a bit of a stretch to blame that on gender dynamics, other than to note that women are more likely to be socialized to be passive about speaking out. But that will depend on the individual, rather than the gender. As will other stereotypes: my stay-at-home ex-wife cared not a whit for housekeeping, and I was the one who found the household less clean than I would have liked.
I’ve been in relationships in both the role of the person who always gets his way, and the person who always quietly yields to the other’s wishes to avoid confrontation; in the role of having my needs and wants utterly ignored, and in the role of being less than willing to respect the other’s preferences. It had nothing to do with gender. In each case, it was reflective of the underlying politics of the relationship, where one person wanted the relationship much more than the other one, and the party with the power in the relationship was able (consciously or obliviously) to dictate the terms of engagement because the other yielded rather than upset the (unhealthy) equilibrium.
I had one relationship where I was quite blunt about the fact that I liked aspects A, B, and C, had no intention of engaging in aspects X, Y, and Z, and was willing to have the relationship on the former terms, but not the latter, and that I wasn’t going to lie to her to keep her in the relationship if she wasn’t happy with that structure. Because my partner wasn’t honest with me (or perhaps with herself) about really wanting X, Y, and Z, or perhaps because my partner didn’t believe my forthright statements, we stayed together unhappily a couple of months longer than we should have, until she insisted on X, I refused, and we broke up: we weren’t compatible after all. Of course, if I liked her more, X wouldn’t have been an issue at all. This model fits within the “wifework” scenario of the female always yielding, but I don’t think it was an issue of gender, rather than the fact that I found the relationship more pleasant than not having a relationship, but not pleasant enough that I wanted to work for it.
Because I’ve definitely been in the reverse scenario where I compromised on every aspect: those relationships ended when I asserted my needs/wants or when the partner decided that even getting her way on everything wasn’t sufficient. Sometimes there were great fights that I yielded rather than face the realization that there was fatal incompatibility; sometimes I had been emotionally trained to not challenge her preference for fear that I’d lose the relationship that seemed tenuous.
Where there’s compatibility, communication, and mutual love (which is, perhaps, just another form of compatibility), there’s no reason for these issues to exist. Kyso’s relationship seems to have lacked the first two, and probably the third. (Her protestation that he was a “Nice Guy” is belied by her comments about his bullying in the comments section.) If her boyfriend cared about her, he would’ve found it less important to get his way on every issue.
When I first started living with my fiancé, we were like that: he was happy to do whatever chores I asked him to do, but I had to ask. All. The. Time. He never pouted, did everything I asked very cheerfully, and did take the initiative in some parts of the house (living room clutter, mostly; the kitchen and bathroom somehow became my domain) but I still felt like a horrible nag. I resented the role of Filth Management Coordinator much much more than any actual imbalance in chore time.
I’m still working on this, and you’re absolutely right. It’s the whole, “Oh, I didn’t even notice!” or, “Why didn’t you tell me to do that?” stuff that drives me crazy sometimes, not his reluctance to do it (I am faaaaaar more whiney and reluctant about actually DOING housework than he is). I didn’t tell you to do it because it means I’m “nagging,” dammit!
Er, that’s not to imply HE would call me a nag. It’s more that internalized fear of being a nag I think most of us probably have.
I got here along a long, wandery trail of links through feminists blogs, which is why I’m posting a comment so late. But I just *had* to say that, OMG, this is so exactly my current relationship right now that I’m near tears faced by the realization that I’m not alone in this. I don’t know what I’m going to do with this relationship; I know it has to end eventually but right now I’m so psychologically frail I don’t know if I could handle the emotional fallout of the event.
What drives me crazy is that he just *expects* me to do all these things — it’s just assumed that I’ll cook and wash dishes and tend to him emotionally or give way when he pouts *just because*.
I am seriously thinking of swearing off men completely after this relationship and fostering my latent attraction to women, because I’m sick of having to deal with men always coming into relationships from this position of privilege. At least with another women we’d start off equal. . .
HI, I found you on Stumble. Boy, did this post resonate.
I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching, trying to work out why my relationships thus far haven’t worked out. It boils down to: Man asserts needs. I meet them. I assert needs. Needs go ignored and unacknowledged.
When it comes to asserting what I want from a man, I don’t mince words - but I’m no battleaxe. I ask nicely. I communicate. I don’t expect the moon on a stick. And still… nothing. I leave the relationship, and the guy hasn’t taken any responsibility - in fact, he’s SHOCKED.
Anyway, men need to get with the program: if you don’t want to be nagged, don’t wait to be asked the 6574th time to put out the rubbish. If you and your partner both work outside the home, get your head around doing your share of the housework too. Long story short, look up ‘equal’ in the dictionary, and make it your business to treat your woman like one.
Breakups hurt, divorces cost a lot of money; get your head out of your backside and realise that you have a good thing. Don’t wait until she’s out the door to make things work. It’s too late. She’ll be happy without you, you’ll be crying into your beer. Is that what you want?
What is stumble?
stumbleupon.com. It’s linksharing type site that works through a browser toolbar. Click button, get cool website. I “stumbled” your post just now. Somebody must have recently posted it to the site.
As long as I’m commenting, let me say thanks for the post! I work harder than I have to in avoiding taking my wife and my privilege in our relationship for granted, and it’s good to get reminders that “working harder than I need to” pretty much means nothing. It’s setting the bar *way* too low for myself if I hope to do my part.
Reading this post and the following comments gave me a eureka moment. I know this post is about marriage, but it really applies to all relationships. I’ve been co-habitating with a guy for several years. He is a great person, so I have been confused at my surges of anger and resentment. Lightbulb!! He expects all his needs to come first, and whenever I assert myself, it’s just like the original poster mentioned: pouting, resentment, guilt, and even worse, anger. It has gotten to the point where he really assumes that’s just how it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t help that he makes more money than me, because that just increases his entitlement exponentially. Then he feels magnanimous when he offers, once, to let me pick what to eat. Even then he pouts if it’s not to his liking. I get that fire-breathing fury sometimes too. I moved to be with him, twice. I have finally got tired of having my needs shoved in a corner, but like others, fear the emotional fallout. I am emotionally fragile too. I used to give way all the time to avoid conflict and guilt, but the work I put into it is just not worth it anymore. It’s nearing the end, heralded by the comment (this is verbatim by the way) “I only want you to be happy — as long as it doesn’t interfere with my happiness”. I don’t want him to be miserable, but it would be nice not being the only one compromising.
Kyso makes some good points — men do need more emotional support than women (partly because men are socialized not to seek emotional support outside of the home), and men are socialized to expect things from women and from marriage. However, in almost any situation involving more than one person all the people contribute to the situation.
Case in point: Kyso says
And yes it was the guy and not my expectations of myself. Because I also let him drag the break-up into a two month affair where he tried to get me back.
Here, the guy acted like a jerk, and Kyso LET HIM. Maybe because it was easier, or maybe because it was the pattern she was used to. The point is, yes it depends on the guy, but it also depends on the dynamic.
Marriage, both in a legal sense and in a practical and emotional one, is a contract (except for the legal issues, any relationship is a contract). You can negotiate expectations and consequences.
And yes it was the guy and not my expectations of myself. Because I also let him drag the break-up into a two month affair where he tried to get me back.
You know how I retracted permission for him to treat me like that? I was a ball busting superbitch. The guy was so persistent, and not listening, that he didnt leave until he pentulantly whined “I guess I just loved you more than you ever loved me” and even though this was probably not true, seeing as I was the one who inititated the relationship and I spent months trying to adapt or fix it even when i knew it was doomed, I just said, “Yeah, guess so”.
If that’s what it takes to negotiate and reason in a relationship, then fuck that shit.
I must say… I really don’t think this is a gender-specific thing. I am the child of two married parents, and my mother is the one who decides what we eat and when, what we do, who we talk to, when someone gets special treatment (like foot rubs), where we go and when, etc.
Feminism so often points toward the evils of men, but it doesn’t always have to be that way and I don’t see this as an ‘oppressed women’ issue. All people in a coupled relationship should have enough respect for their other half to be considerate and understanding, and if it takes a little extra effort, so be it.