If anything, MSN’s articles on love and dating have gotten even more sexist than from my heyday of reviewing them a number of times a week at Mouse Words. Recently there was the article suggesting that the key to making men’s lives better was keeping women in marriages under duress (even MRA guru Glenn Sacks doesn’t go so far as to suggest that the solution to men’s problems is to make staying in the marriage mandatory for a lot of women), and now there’s this article sent to me by Rachel. It’s 5 New Year’s resolutions for wives, who have been tasked with the one-sided job of keeping the marriage together. Sadly, one of them is not “agitate against your right to divorce your husband”, because this is a puff piece. Still, right off the bat you know what kind of article this is going to be.
Cook More Often
Put that in your pipe and smoke it! Yeah, they said it. Get your bitch ass back to the kitchen and make your man some vittles! He didn’t marry you for your sparkling wit, you know. How was he supposed to know that your huge cookbook collection was amassed because you just like the pretty pictures? Do you know what the marketing community calls that? False advertising.
There’s some weak-minded attempts to pretend this advice is all egalitarian and post-feminist, like this bit:
But it’s important (and more fun) to spend time together in the kitchen; it’s conducive to better conversations and husband-wife bonding, rather than what you’d get when plopped on the sofa eating from take-out containers in front of Top Chef.
I’m not sure, “Add nagging him to help you in the kitchen,” is actually that great a piece of marriage advice. Odds are the majority of the women who take this advice know what the general point is—you’ll be a better wife if you do more domestic labor, end of story. None of which is to say I’m anti-cooking, for god’s sake. (If I had a nickel for every time someone thought I was “anti” something because I protest the expectation that it’s both mandatory for women and gendered only female.) I love cooking, and it’s a shame to frame good advice about health, pleasure, and saving money as a feminine duty in service of the singular feminine duty of man-pleasing. Plus, cooking is actually more fraught in the pleasing department than ordering in; I’ve seen women who, in an attempt to make every person in the house happy, turned into short order cooks themselves, preparing a different dish for everyone in the house to make sure no picky eaters got fussy about what was for dinner.
Revamp Your Wardrobes
Actually, the paragraph below says to clean out your closets and throw out everything you don’t wear. This is not revamping your wardrobe, because “stuff I don’t wear” doesn’t legitimately fit into your wardrobe in any meaningful sense. I’m unsure how cleaning out the closets is a marriage-assisting device, besides the usual joy of having a more organized-seeming house. (In what case, he needs to do it, too.) It’s not like there’s many men out there who will be, “My god, Brenda, did you cut you shoe collection in half? I’ve never been so turned on in my life.” Not that I’m judging if that’s your thing.
Book a Do-nothing Vacation
The actual paragraph is about booking something affordable, preferably by going to an island that has lovely weather and a 3rd world economy. “Do-nothing” vacations that involve sitting on the beach, eating, and drinking a lot are traditionally considered more romantic than visiting major cities where you can walk hand-in-hand through museums, and do other fascinating, memorable things together. Why, I don’t know. Possibly because you get so bored that you end up having sex as a last resort? If you’re at that point, you have problems that a vacation’s unlikely to fix.
The other possibility is that the less things you have to do on your vacation, the less bickering about what to do, and less time-sucking ass-dragging getting out every day. (My rule of thumb is that the amount of time it takes to get ready mysteriously rises a lot more than it should for every person you add to a group. One person can be ready in half an hour, two people will take an hour an a half. By the time you’re trying to organize a shopping expedition for 5 women in my family, you’re looking at a 4 hour extravaganza to get out the door.) There’s a reason that I like traveling alone. If you and your spouse don’t have enough interests in common to make planning out your daily itineraries on a vacation manageable without fighting, I can see why you’d elect just to sit around drinking sugary booze.
Stop Having Sex in Your Bed
An especially doable piece of advice if you have small children. At what point the advice really can be summarized as, “Stop having sex,” and we all know how good that is for relationships, not likely to create tension at all.
All advice to spice up your sex life in family-friendly magazines is going to be lame, almost by definition. It will fail you. This isn’t nearly as bad as suggesting that you add food to the mix, but it has the same potential for backfiring on you, especially if you have a bad back. But I do understand that they can’t exactly put in advice like, “Anal beads are a cheap form of entertainment,” or “Have you ever considered teabagging?” in this article.
This next one suggests that the author has seen “Knocked Up”.
Support His Guys’ Nights Out
Sure, it’s hard not to resent the hours he spends away from you playing fantasy baseball or listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs with his buddies, not to mention the way he stumbles into bed afterward reeking. But if you consider that letting him have a guys’ night without grief may be the single biggest thing you can do to win “coolest wife on the planet” credentials, it’s really not such a big price to pay, is it? Tell him he should spend even more time having fun with his friends because he works so hard and it’s so important for him to unwind. You’re showing him that you truly care about his happiness (and accept that browsing the drawer pulls aisle at The Home Depot doesn’t cut it). That’s the sort of sentiment that will make your marriage stronger and make him eager to end those guys’ nights at a sane hour to race home to your side.
I guess she didn’t believe Leslie Mann’s character either when she said that she’d like to go see a movie by herself sometimes, too. This entire paragraph is fucking depressing, in that it paints women as these put-upon creatures with no lives or interests of our own outside of fawning over men and domestic chores, who don’t understand that going out and having fun stuff, but will, with wan smiles, tolerate our men doing these things because we understand that we must in order to fulfill our womanly duties towards men. I don’t doubt a lot of couples live like this, where he gets to have an outside life and an identity outside of the marriage, but she does not, and I suspect that women in this situation who martyr themselves by tolerating a man’s outside interests without having their own won’t last for long with all that resentment building up.
This “guy’s night out” stuff seems so harmless on the surface, but it’s really concealing how much the feminine mystique is still with us, I think. You just don’t resent someone else’s hobbies and time to himself that much, unless of course you don’t have anything of your own that he respects and gives space to (unless you’re neurotic, I suppose, but that’s probably the minority of cases when this fight comes up). Being the coolest wife in the world if your life has shrunk to the point where “wife” is all you are strikes me as cold comfort.
80 Responses to “Resolve to wear aprons more often”
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I’m in a ski house with other people, including one man whose wife just had a baby. The wife used to be in the ski house as well, but wasn’t last year because of the pregnancy and not this year because of the baby. When I opined to another house member that if I’d just had a baby my husband had better be spending his goddamn weekends with the family, not off skiing and drinking, he said, “but you don’t want the baby to completely change your life, or you’d resent it.” I pointed out that the only one with an unchanged life was the HUSBAND.
Jesus, is it really that confusing?
Exactly, Mildred.
When I was married, I ‘let’ my husband have time to do the things he enjoyed. I grew resentful because the things he enjoyed never included his family. I was too nice about letting him have his time and he took more and more time to himself, to the detriment of his marriage and family. Heaven forbid I would ask him to stay home with baby so I could have a few precious hours alone-you’d think I had demanded he cut his own throat.
This article is bullshit. We all know that the more we ’selflessly’ do for others, the less they will choose to do for themselves or their families. Especially when it so neatly fits the stereotype of what a wife should be.
If he didn’t want the baby to completely change his life then the wife and baby would be at the ski house. No, he wants the old ways for him and the new way for her and he may not like the results of that attitude. He needs to share his space with the baby or he will end up with more alone time that he bargained for in his “boys’ night out” plea.
I took more nights out than my husband but then I had day duty. I love to cook while he can subsist on cheese and crackers, so I do cook more. I wish that they would just resolve these resolutions into the only one that works- I resolve to understand my partner and work out our differences in an adult manner.
I actually know a number of men who after they got married basically pulled the ladder up after them on their previous social life and let all their old friendships die out. Woman generally seem much more capable of maintaining balance in their social life between relationships and previous friendships. In at least some cases I’d bet that saying “have a guy’s night out” really means “at least try to have a social life beyond me for god’s sake.”
Basically this whole article seems like advice for couples in sit-coms, not actual couples in the real world.
Apparently, the fantasy baseball fight in “Knocked Up” was practically word for word a fight between Apatow and Mann over how he spends his time. Knowing that, I can’t help but think they’re probably going to divorce at some point in the near future. The resolution, which is that he should give up more instead of she should get out more, is just going to breed resentment. Why get married and have kids if the misery it brings outweighs the joys?
In too many MRA’s eyes, “Revamp your wardrobe” doesn’t mean clean closets, it means “Dress like a slut to entice him.” Or, “Don’t sleep in that comfortable t-shirt, put on that teddy that damn near cuts you in half. Sure, you won’t get a comfortable nights’ sleep, but he’ll ogle you lustfully, and maybe you’ll get the opportunity to give him a BJ!”
What is it with MSN lately? It’s more and more like dating advice by MRAs, for MRAs and the women unlucky enough to be with them. It’s like the anti-good dating advice site.
“Why get married and have kids if the misery it brings outweighs the joys?”
Amen to that, because I have always wondered. (According to that Stumbling Towards Happiness book or whatever it’s called, I remember the author saying that hormones and breeding trumped logic on that.)
I also agree that every time I have to read about the Apatow/Mann marriage, I think it sounds doomed. And painful. And I refuse to see Knocked Up, I don’t care if it’s the funniest movie of all time and we’re all supposed to want to lick Apatow’s socks in gratitude.
I don’t get the love for apatow and that movie–I mean, I get the adulation from guys but from women? What women was it supposed to appeal to?
All this advice belongs under the heading of “more work for mommy” since it assumes that the woman in the marriage/relationship is responsible for making everyone else happy. To those who counter “well, I’m sure if the article were directed at men it would say the exact same thing but aimed at men” and that would be true except that they *very seldom* write articles like that for men. With the exception of Promise Keepers and they aren’t doing very well at all.
I say that even though I would urge my spouse to get out there “with the boys” if he had any friends who were guys. I think this is all very much class and age related, though. I don’t know many/any adult men in their forties who have male guy nights out. They know people through work, who they are careful not to socialize with because work is such a shark pit. They no longer know their college friends because those guys live to far away. They have nothing in common with their high school friends but ditto on distance. And their friends through their children’s school set dont’ socialize outside of couple or gendered female socialization. It just doesnt’ happen.
As for their “hobbies” I suppose some guys still have expensive and single tastes from their expensive and single years but I don’t think that ought to be valorized any more than my expensive single tastes should take precedence over family stuff/needs. And time is expensive, too.
aimai
The “guys need their nights out, but women don’t” thing is even weirder when combined with the “women need emotional support/social interaction more than men, who need to sit around and grunt” meme that is also common in the Mars & Venus crowd. If women have embiggened emotional needs that men, poor dears, can’t possibly meet, don’t they need more time with their friends than men do?
My parents had a fairly traditional marriage, and were definitely in the female Betazoid/male borderline Asperger’s mold. Which meant that my mother used to go out with her friends, and with me, a lot, because she liked to have conversations. She always asked my father for “permission,” but he did the same when he wanted to go play golf with his buddies (a less frequent occurrence). It was their way of acknowledging that the marriage/family was their first priority. And of course “permission” was always granted, because that was their way of acknowledging that they were individuals, with needs that one person couldn’t possibly meet.
I wouldn’t call my parents feminists, but they were sane and decent people. It ain’t rocket science.
“My rule of thumb is that the amount of time it takes to get ready mysteriously rises a lot more than it should for every person you add to a group. One person can be ready in half an hour, two people will take an hour an a half. By the time you’re trying to organize a shopping expedition for 5 women in my family, you’re looking at a 4 hour extravaganza to get out the door.”
This is a very fascinating point as applied to extreme mountaineering.
I just read a new book about a Mt. McKinley expedition from 1967 in which a half-dozen climbers perished. One of the major causes identified by the author was that the National Park Service standards of the time considered larger climbing parties to be safer. Based on this standard, the Park Service forced two smaller parties to combine in order to allow them to attempt the summit expedition.
This larger party had too much inertia to be able to make expeditious decisions and then act on them quickly, and this was part of what led to the climbers who ultimately perished ending up in an unrecovable situation.
If women have embiggened emotional needs that men, poor dears, can’t possibly meet, don’t they need more time with their friends than men do?
Shh! You’re thinking for more than a second about stupid gender stereotypes. They only work if you don’t look at them too carefully.
Of course men need emotional support, just as women do, and women need “time off,” just as men do…and only someone completely delusional and/or writing for MSN about love advice thinks otherwise.
Did you ever see Everybody Loves Raymond? I hate it, but my parents watch it, my mother totes it, and I’m waiting for the day she has a certifiable mental breakdown instead of the usual neurotic fits she thrust on her children as oppose to her husband ‘the boss’. She might as well start calling him Uncle.
This stuff always perplexes me.
I’m married, and the two of us *do* enjoy cooking together. It’s fun because it involves no nagging on my part. We save money, get to be all impressed when something turns out well, giggle when something turns out poorly, and enjoy healthier, tasty meals in our own home.
I’m about to have a baby, and the comments have gotten hilarious. Folks are *bowled* over that he’s taking paternity leave, attending baby care basics classes, and generally planning to be equally involved in care of the little one. (I work fewer hours, so I have no doubt I’ll do more work, but I don’t want to be the only one who “knows how” to do something in the house!) I don’t get why they’re so astounded. He wants to be a Dad. Being a Dad involves care of children and interaction with them. He’s lucky to have a job that gives him flexibility and time, and he’s using it. He likes spending time with me, and anticipates enjoying spending time with the little one.
Why the mantle of Sainthood?
And when do I get one because I’m taking some time off, planning to breastfeed, planning to continue working, and caring for the baby? Oh, right. I don’t. Because I’m female I won’t be doing any of it “well enough”. Bah humbug!
Being in a same-sex relationship we get to divide labor and indulge interests for reasons other than gender stereotypes, but we do always “ask permission” about making solo plans — and as you point out, it’s not “you get to say what I can and can’t do” but is more “is this going to interfere with something important family- or home-related? and if so I’ll find some other time to do it because our home and family is important to me.”
Also, given the way my memory seems to be going as I get older, I usually don’t trust myself not to have forgotten something else , so “checking in” helps me avoid creating schedule conflicts.
Resolve not to read advice columns or self-help books.
Also, given the way my memory seems to be going as I get older, I usually don’t trust myself not to have forgotten something else , so “checking in” helps me avoid creating schedule conflicts.
Indeed! One of the things I always wonder about with all that “Surrendered Wife” sort of nonsense is that one of the small, but real, benefits of marriage (used as catchall for all committed relationships) is that you have someone around who can remember stuff you don’t, catch your mistakes, help you find things, etc. Why would you want to give that up? It’s like having an extra brain around.
Even if my boyfriend liked to cook, it would be out of the question to do the shared cooking thing. I have a one butt kitchen. I like cooking and do basically all the cooking in the house because of it, but I won’t lie—it creates a weird gender Republicanism that’s best addressed and not left to fester. One huge benefit is that I office in the kitchen, and he uses the actual office, and that affords a reasonable amount of privacy and solitude, which I think is mandatory when you both work at home.
Regarding the wife who doesn’t ski when her husband does, now that she has a baby — that may be her choice. The effort of going out with a baby is sizable, but there is fun to be had in having the house all to oneself except for your baby. You can cosleep with the baby and snuggle them wihout other peopl bugging you to get up, you can sit around and watch whatever TV you want without caring about others’ tastes, you can read without someone pestering and trying to talk to you. I am more introverted than my husband, and I admit I use my babies as a excuse to get out of social engagements I’d realy rather *not* join him on, and get to have the house to myself.
Of course, as the only driver, I get to go out whenever I want, wherever I want. My husband depends on others to drive him when the weather’s too hot or too cold for him to walk or take public. So in his case if he doesn’t get friends to take him on a guys’ night out, I have to attend his social occasions with him, and more than half the time, I don’t want to.
it seems to me that the “men need time with their buddies and women don’t” stereotype is rooted in a particular ’50’s style family structure. Specifically, the family structure where women are staying at home, and therefore get to spend time during the day hanging out with their friends and chatting over baby/child things, while men have all that hard, manly work to do in the world, or something.
In this paradigm, the time women spend with their children AND other adults is somehow supposed to count as social hour even when the baby/kid is around. It’s sexist on many levels because it assumes that a) women aren’t working b) women don’t need time without children or responsibilities, per se, just “a sense of emotional connection to other people” c) the time women spend with their children during the day isn’t really work, and therefore counts as social or ‘free” time.
It also peddles the “women are no fun anyways, don’t like to have fun, can’t possible have fun idea”—or why else wouldn’t they be the stumbling into bed reeking of alcohol?
Ugh, the implication here is totally that the wife is so unpleasant (or so incapable of fun) that the man can’t unwind unless he gets away from her. Why not unwind together? For my fiance and I that usually involves a bottle of wine, the couch, and a video, because we’re both homebodies, but it could also involve going to a movie, or a concert or a bar (yes, women drink too… I’m actually the drinker in my relationship, and him the one who doesn’t appreciate me “stumbling into bed reeking of booze”). Not that we begrudge each other our seperate nights out either, but we don’t need to get away from each other to unwind. After all, the reason we’re getting married is because we enjoy each other’s company.
My mother was a professional caterer. Her answer to fussy eaters was “There is bread and peanut butter in the kitchen.” Also cereal, milk, cream cheese, and jelly. If you wanted to fuss, you knew where the kitchen was.
Tell him he should spend even more time having fun with his friends because he works so hard and it’s so important for him to unwind.
And she, of course, doesn’t work hard at all and never has to unwind.
Barf.
What I hate most is that these articles take advice that BOTH partners should use and apply them strictly to one sex. The more self-sacrifice and attention to another’s needs required, the more often it is specifically addressed to women; the more independence it encourages, the more it is directed to men.
Spending more time cooking together (in our house, it’s one of us cooks while the other watches the kidlet but we’re all together), revamping your wardrobe (how about just updating it periodically? gets rid of that nasty sexism and it’s something both partners should do), scheduling ANY vacation (especially a kidless vacation on occasion), keeping the sex life interesting, and giving each partner regular time on their own (each of us has our one night each week to go out alone, but often we choose to spend it together anyway) is not inherently bad advice. But leave it to MSN to make it all about the menz.
Preemptive edit: some other people posted similar comments while I was typing this; I’m not trying to steal your thunder!
I agree with a lot of the criticism of the guy’s night out part — particularly the ideas regarding the unfairness of gender norms and stereotypes.
That said, I think that there is some actual good advice buried here. I think that in an ideal relationship, both partners will support the other’s social live outside of the relationship. Depending on the couple, this may involve taking on extra responsibility for kids or what not from time to time. And yes, this *absolutely* includes men pitching in to enable their partner’s social lives.
That said, it is extremely common for couples who self report as having significant problems to have some sort of “pursuer/distancer” dynamic. Among heterosexual couples, it is far more common for the woman to be the “pursuer” — I believe this is due in large part due to cultural gender stereotypes, institutionalized sexism and such, but nevertheless the statistic is there.
If you happen to be a pursuer, then one of the worst things you can do is devalue, disallow, or otherwise try to eliminate the distancer’s outside social activities. Generally, the more you pursue the more the distancer tries to distance. On the other hand, explicitly respecting the other’s desire for a (partially) independent social life can be very beneficial.
So, in a certain way resolution 5 is both useful and targeted toward an audience that statistically is more likely to directly benefit from it.
However, I think we can all agree that the media’s horrid tendency to gender this advice stuff is a huge problem. As the feminist criticism of couple’s therapy suggests, it is ultimately unhelpful to try to improve individual relationships while simultaneously reinforcing the overall social norms that help create the problems in the first place.
There is absolutely no good reason why this column should be titled “resolutions for wives.” Resolutions 1 and 5 are good advice for just about everyone. Resolutions 2 and 3 might be good advice depending on your situation, but if they apply then they certainly apply to both genders.
I totally agree with your criticism of resolution 4, but you’re pretty much right that any mainstream media outlet can’t really give good sex advice. A more constructive suggestion might be something along the lines of: “Work on your sex life by trying to break patterns. Be more open about your desires and encourage your partner to do the same. Indulge them within reason and expect the same consideration.”
All these are advice for women? Most of them would work much better with the genders reversed…
(Of course, we had the luxury of building a new kitchen and specifically tweaking the design so both of us would fit.)
“All these are advice for women? Most of them would work much better with the genders reversed…”
paul, as a man, I would think you should understand that men only GIVE advice. They certainly are not expected to TAKE advice. That’s just crazy talk…
Michelle, I have a six month old, and the adulation my husband gets for each contribution to her care is really, really beginning to wear on my nerves. I mean, hey: I only work a full time job and bring in nearly 2/3 our income, take care of baby in the afternoons, do all the doctor’s visits and research on care, pay most of our bills, do at least half the housework and almost all the cooking, and run almost ALL our errands. Apparently, I’m asking too much of him if I think he should change a diaper now and then.
I should add that this doesn’t come from him at all, but from people outside of us.
Michelle, I have a six month old, and the adulation my husband gets for each contribution to her care is really, really beginning to wear on my nerves.
I can understand that, but realize that the compliments have a hidden dagger in there, aimed at your husband.
“You’re doing so much women’s work! Such a good job at women’s work! Raising the kids, which is women’s work! Isn’t he just a girly girl?”
Understand: your husband is not welcomed by society as a caregiver, any more than you are truly welcomed by the workforce. Men are not supposed to be caregivers. Men are supposed to produce and work.
The compliments may in some cases be legit, but in many cases they function as a subtle reminder, to you and to him, that he’s out of his box, he doesn’t know his place, and he needs to get back to the business of working hard and providing for his family — so you can get back to the business of taking care of the kids. The praise he gets for parenting is like the praise some women get for being “take-charge,” or the praise Joe Biden gave Barack Obama about being “clean and articulate” — it’s not a compliment. It’s a criticism. And it serves to enforce gender norms.
Eventually, the hope is that you’ll do more because you are sick of hearing him praised — and sick of feeling undervalued. And he’ll do more working, and less parenting. And then, when you’re both safely back in your boxes, society will move on to torment other people who make nontraditional choices.
I think in the end, I’ll probably rather marry a woman than a man, though I’m attracted to both. The gender bs I’ll get as a man’s wife who doesn’t fit the role, would likely vastly outweight the amount of bigot homophobe bs I’ll get from being with a woman.
That crap like that is still being written in this day and age pisses me the hell off. On the plus side, I know the only time my daughter ever even sees articles like that are when she’s referred to them by a feminist blogger.
My boyfriend and I have a very egalitarian relationship, and we are both independent. We don’t live together.
A couple weekends ago we attended a wedding that was also attended by a bunch of old friends. After partying at the ceremony we all headed to the hotel bar. I got sleepy after a half hour or so, so I told M I was going to bed: “Night! Have fun!”
He got back to the room a few hours later and that was that.
In the morning he told me that one of our friends, T (a guy), told him how jealous he was of our relationship. “She got tired and went to bed by herself, without pitching a fit and dragging you along. If it were D (his g/f), she’d make me go back to the room with her no matter what.”
Gag. I can’t even imagine. What would I gain from “forcing” my boyfriend to put down his drink and go to bed when he wasn’t ready? He wouldn’t expect that of me, either. We do our own thing. We’re from the same hometown, so over holiday breaks he’ll go out with his friends while I go out with mine, and if we all meet up at the same bar at some point, great. If not, no big deal.
That makes us the envy of other couples who suffer needlessly in miserable, jealous relationships.
in their life and is fairly responsible about it and we have a pretty good/amicable relationship. That being said, he gets on my ever-loving nerves sometimes when he is with them for a few hours and says he has to get away and have a break because they are driving him up a wall. They are good kids, but they are three. I have them 85% of the time to his 15, but he needs a break because they are driving HIM up the wall? It’s like because I’m a woman and I’m with them all the time, I am immune to the nerve-wrackingness of them? Yeah. Convenient.
The other thing that bugs me is that he never takes any…what shall I call it?…mental responsibility for them. As far as decision making, disciplining, planning meals, keeping track of doctors appts. and immunizations, whatever. Because I just know so much more about it all and I’m the expert because I’m the mom. I have a lot of background with kids because I’m a teacher, but I know a lot of other moms who didn’t know thing #1 about raising kids until theirs was plopped in front of them. So, what did they do? They LEARNED. They read books, researched online, talked to other moms, talked to their pediatrician, basically put themselves through their own “college of parenting” to learn how to parent. But father’s are not expected to do that. They are just supposed to be clueless. It’s so convenient, isn’t it?
Anyway, the need for me to have a break/night out from the kids is so far above his he cannot even see it. The kids are too busy getting on his nerves.
Gag. I can’t even imagine. What would I gain from “forcing” my boyfriend to put down his drink and go to bed when he wasn’t ready?
I’ve had similar conversations before. Once, a friend and I were studying, and another guy came around just as we were ready to take a break. We invited him to get some food with us, but he declined because the girlfriend had just summoned him. He shrugged and said, “well, you know, girls have all the control” and male friend and I just burst out laughing, because we couldn’t imagine.
The only huge fights I ever had with ex-fiance were when I told him how things were going to be. Turns out, that doesn’t work so well. He never tried that crap with me because he’s apparently smarter than I am. We’re still great friends and roommates, which boggles our friends and families minds, but then they know we’re weird and are well past commenting on it by now.
Yeah, Kyso - it just makes me think… if you’re unhappy with your controlling, jealous, dependent girlfriend, the solution might be to start dating feminists.
Seriously. Right now, I’m spending the afternoon in pajamas, writing fiction, listening to Tegan & Sara at a volume of about 4 million decibels. My husband is at his friend’s house, recording some music (they have a project together.)
Alone time is precious in any relationship- for both partners.
What I hate most is that these articles take advice that BOTH partners should use and apply them strictly to one sex. The more self-sacrifice and attention to another’s needs required, the more often it is specifically addressed to women; the more independence it encourages, the more it is directed to men.
Bingo!
And I love seeing from the comments that everyone’s relationships are DIFFERENT (imagine that!) and that there are lots of ways of handling them lovingly and respectfully. I’m the much more social half of the pair of us, and I go out with friends (and without the BF, with whom I live) quite frequently. I always check in with him first, just to make sure he wasn’t planning on doing something together that night, but he almost never has any conflicts with it. He gets his alone time; I get my social time; we’re both happy. There are huge benefits reaped by not being the jealous and/or clingy type(s). And whenever he does want to spend time alone with his friends, I’m delighted - I like seeing him go out and have fun. I don’t want him to be socially dependent on me - that would be way more pressure than I need!
“Alone time” has definitely helped our 20 yr relationship/ 15 year marriage… we’re far better friends because of it. And gee! Happy parents are better for happy kids!
Jeff: even when those comments don’t have a hidden dagger aimed at the husband for doing women’s work, they still have a terrible sting because of what they say about the husband’s gendermates en masse.
I used to be fascinated by the fact that a baby/toddler was a complete chick magnet at the grocery store or the mall, but after a while it got kinda creepy to think that I should be considered special for having him along.
Yes, that is the truly absurd thing about it. By changing about 5 words total it could be easily directed at both sexes. (And still make perfect sense) I wasn’t even sure it *was* aimed at women until “Support His Guys’ Nights Out.”
But I guess only women benefit from stuff like saving money and eating healthier…
The observation that different kinds of advice are directed at the two sexes/genders is an important one in all fields. A friend of mine once pointed out to me something that I had totally missed–being in the thick of it–books on childrearing *for mothers* like “what to expect when you are expecting” and “what to expect in the n+1 years” are full of admonitions and explanations to help you with the *work* of raising a child. Books that are aimed only at men/fathers are all about *the fun* you can have with children. The books aimed at women are full of warnings; if your child hasn’t done X by week three you need to see a doctor. The books aimed at guys are a) quite a bit dumbed down and b) try not to scare them off by framing anything as problematic. If there’s a chapter on month three it is all “cool stuff your baby can do now!”
That’s because the real work that fathers do–staying up nights with sick children, calling the doctor, etc..etc…etc…is just dissapeared socially and culturally. Its left to women to *manage.* This reminds me of an important observation in Worlds of Pain (Lilian Rubin’s book on working class marriages in the 70’s). It turned out that as long as the family had almost no money all the bill paying was done by the wife. The husband “turned over his paycheck” to her and she had to figure out how to allocate scarce resources. He was lauded for this gesture but the women universally described it as a huge burden because, in effect, it made the women responsible for managing a working class family on wages that were actually too impoverished to maintain that lifestyle. It effectively hid from the men just how badly they were doing. As soon as the men, or the women, earned enough money to make some discretionary spending possible the men would take back the bill paying/control of the money and dole out pin money to the wives while allocating to themselves the right to determine how the majority of money is spent.
That is kind of a long digression but I think the whole situation with children and with marriages is analagous. As long as its work it is assigned to women, as long as its fun, or can be described as fun, it can be offered to men as a treat. Of course in reality men and women have to raise both kinds of kids–the problematic and the unproblematic and have to both deal with money issues. But magazines and newspaper writers continue to push the gender divide as natural and inevitable when its really wholly culturally constructed.
aimai
Scorpio,
I was (and am) a picky eater. There are just certain foods that I have never liked (and I have tried them as that was one of the requirements in my family. But your mother’s response would have been fine with me as I always loved peanut butter and Cheerios.
But my folks also made sure that I knew how to cook and take care of myself which I have done for years. I figure that’s one of the reasons I’ve never married as I’ve not needed to have a cook or maid or cleaning woman since I am quite capable of doing all those things for myself without whining about it.
if you find this horrifying, never, EVER venture in to the message boards on MSN.
MRAs are everywhere…i do believe they run the joint.
for what it’s worth, i get along much better with my husband now that we are separated than i ever did when we were married, because we couldn’t mesh our “alone” time concepts without separate apartments. so sad. i think he kind of gets it now…but i really, really like my new apartment.
What’s with the MRA MSN?
I still use hotmail, anyone else? It’s different management than the news eh? Or is it time to switch to something else?
Cooking is a skill everyone should know. I don’t mean gourmet cooking; I mean knowing how to feed yourself without resorting to takeout. Even dumping jarred spaghetti sauce over cooked spaghetti, and bottled salad dressing over salad mix, is a decent, filling and well-rounded meal that costs a lot less than takeout.
Ditto knowing how to dress yourself. Again, this isn’t about designer duds or being in fashion - it’s about wearing clothes that are clean, in good repair, and appropriate for the occasion.
And ditto, again, on knowing how to amuse oneself and be happy alone. I don’t know if this comes from being an only child of parents with a low tolerance for noise and disorder, but I early on learned to amuse myself in introverted and self-sufficient ways. Point me to a bookstore and I’ll be happy for hours.
This article is evidence, yet again, of how much MRA’s really hate men. Women are the only ones who can cook, dress ourselves, and devise our own amusements? Silly me. I thought all this was part of being a grown-up. I don’t want to marry a man who relies upon me to feed, clothe, and amuse him 24/7. If I wanted such, I’d have had a baby.
It strikes me that the uber-manly men of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring novels would howl with derision at the notion that men are overgrown babies who cannot care for their basic needs. When at sea, manly men cooked, cleaned, sewed, tended the sick, and amused themselves. They had no choice. You’d get your bee-hind flogged for saying “I won’t do that sissy girl stuff.” Not that I’m at all nostalgic for the “good” old days which were terrible for everyone, male and female alike; but the idea that there’s “men’s work” and “women’s work” is just preposterous.
It’s funny: just the other day, I was observing how often I was seeing men with babies and small children at the grocery, almost more than I was seeing women with them. And then I wondered: am I really seeing more men with small children than women with small children, or is it just that I notice it more because it’s not the norm.
And I’m sure there are hidden slams in the adulation my husband gets, but I have to say that in the moment, it’s really hard not to focus on how he gets praised for what I’m just expected to do, especially when no one’s praising me for, oh, supporting my kid financially. Which, I know, is exactly the point, but man, given how little praise mothers get, it’s hard not to feel it that way.
I ‘let’ my husband have time to do the things he enjoyed. I grew resentful because the things he enjoyed never included his family.
Absolutely!
I too…made this mistake…but was fortunate that the BH got it together pretty quick once our “stairsteps” were all walking and talking. And admittedly, it took going out the door with a packed overnight bag as he was coming in, and spending a blissful weekend an hour away at a hotel in Ann Arbor. Brought the whole imbalance out into the light right quick. Also…the real issue was more my need for some solo time.
And we were incredibly lucky in that the things we all enjoy are right out our back door…there are some real perks to rural life. From the ponies to the canoes to the cross country skiiing, family outings never required much lead time.
Yeah…I do think the guys get too much of a pass here. The idea that men are more entitled to solo time needs to recognized as the dirt from which resentment grows.
Cook more often
He works part-time and here and there. I work full-time. While I will cook more often when all those lovely cabinets are in and the stove is in place, and we have countertops, etc. , there is an issue of who is home when to contend with.
Revamp your wardrobe
I’d love to, but that involves more shopping and unnecessary expenditure than I can stomach. I also fall directly between womens sizes and standard sizes, for added challenge.
Book a do-nothing vacation
He doesn’t travel well to begin with, let alone without plans to do something. I’d go NUTS.
Stop having sex in your bed
Okay … younger son’s loft bed or older son’s upper bunk?
Support his guys’ nights out
Always have, always will. How else would I ever get a night out for myself if I didn’t trade off? Then again, I’m much more likely to be out late than he is.
Part if this is fundamental stupid. Part of it is just good sense so long as there is equity involved (cooking, nights out, etc.). Part of it is bullshit and bullshit for youngsters without kids at that!
When I was married, I ‘let’ my husband have time to do the things he enjoyed. I grew resentful because the things he enjoyed never included his family. I was too nice about letting him have his time and he took more and more time to himself, to the detriment of his marriage and family.
That’s when I implemented a “leisure log”. I was getting resentful and pissed off, but I didn’t want it to be a huge fight because I knew he wasn’t paying attention and is basically fair minded. So I simply put up a chart, showed it to my husband, and began marking off hours. I didn’t ask him if he wanted to do that, I just pointed out that I felt a bit put upon, and wanted to keep score.
It was an extremely civilized mechanism of enforcing equity. He would think twice about his demands because he knew he would have to pull an equal shift. I would typically run an excess of hours owed, which made me far more likely to use them because I could confidently say MY TURN and not feel the least bit guilty about it.
My husband works overnight, and with his schedule of meals, it wouldn’t be practical for him to cook for the whole family. My new year’s resolution last year was to cook more, and I really enjoyed it, so I’m keeping it up.
Due to his work schedule, it also makes time along pretty easy. He has a standing get together with his best friend every Friday - they meet for a late lunch and a movie or hanging out a bookstore/cafe. This happens while I’m at work and the kiddo is at school.
I have a full-time job, a part-time job, and I go to school, plus I just added another part-time job, but both of the part-time jobs are really social events for me - I’m a professional singer, and I love paying gigs, and I love the people I sing with. It’s just a bonus that I get paid to do something I do happily for free.
What happened to make him a sandwhich, play with his balls and don’t talk so damn much?
Or is that coming in part 2? (To be fair, they did cover the sandwhich part I suppose)
I don’t even really understand marriages that aren’t egalitarian. Both my husband and I are ferociously independent. We do have the consideration necessary to not just disregard the other, but we’ve learned we’re both happiest when we’re autonomous. We split up our money seven years ago and that made us extremely happy. Been married 17 years this month! (We married young, too.)
He doesn’t give a crap if I cook or not, my wardrobe isn’t much of his business (and vice versa), we’re not really into vacations (we’d rather make improvements to the house–we love to DIY), we don’t take suggestions from articles for our sex life, and we both have an active social life. He doesn’t “allow” me to go out with my friends any more than I “allow” him to do the same. Like I said, we do ensure our plans don’t mess up any other plans (we have one teenage son), but other than that, we’re adults and we treat each other as adults.
You’ll love this old movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9lz-iCePBM
Stop having sex in your bed
Okay … younger son’s loft bed or older son’s upper bunk?
Definitely upper bunk: ‘WAY more kinky.
Being the coolest wife in the world if your life has shrunk to the point where “wife” is all you are strikes me as cold comfort.
well said.
“Perhaps they’ll bring another couple home with them — that would be fun.”
Indeed.
in the moment, it’s really hard not to focus on how he gets praised for what I’m just expected to do, especially when no one’s praising me for, oh, supporting my kid financially. Which, I know, is exactly the point, but man, given how little praise mothers get, it’s hard not to feel it that way.
Parents never get the praise they deserve.* Especially mothers, who are absolutely expected to do the most mundane, backbreaking, soul-crushing menial tasks for years on end and for a reward get an occasional half-hearted salute to motherhood in general and a lot of MRA-types bitching about alimony.
I don’t know you, but I’m willing to bet you’re doing a bang-up job. You and your husband sound like two people who care about your family and are doing what’s best for it. You — and the other parents out there, doing the actual job of parenting — are keeping it real, the wind beneath your kids’ wings, and whatever other metaphor you wish to use. And I mean that in all sincerity — I never appreciated the difficulty of being a parent until I was a parent, and my daughter isn’t even in her teens yet. Men get fake praise, and women get no praise, for doing that work. I’m not sure which is worse, but neither is very good.
(*Non-parents, you don’t get the credit you deserve, either — for entirely different reasons. But right now I’m praising the parents of the world. Some day, you’ll get your turn when I praise you in a comment at Pandagon. Until then, simply know I hold you in the highest regard.)
Yeah…I do think the guys get too much of a pass here. The idea that men are more entitled to solo time needs to recognized as the dirt from which resentment grows.
Absolutely — although do know that there are relationships where the resentment is justifiably running the opposite way.
But yes, the “men gotta golf” meme is stupid. I speak from personal shame when I say I abused “free time” when I was married, and I’m not proud of that. But I had gotten the message — and my ex had too — that men just “needed” more free time. Hokum. Men and women both need some free time, and both need to be fair about it. One of the reasons I hate the MSN dating/relationship sites is that obvious truths like this (”Both of you need free time, but both have to be fair — what’s good for one is good for the other”) become gendered (”He needs free time, so give it to him”) and in the process, become bad advice (”And I’m sure he’ll probably give you free time, if he remembers to, but why would he? Does any article tell him to?”). Again and again, find your box and get inside, and don’t, whatever you do, act outside what you’re supposed to do.
“Stop having sex in your bed”
“Okay … younger son’s loft bed or older son’s upper bunk?”
Definitely upper bunk: ‘WAY more kinky.
I dunno, Eric. I think either option is pretty hard on the kids…
Completely off topic, but I thought you’d be interested in it - Australia’s NSW is putting “affirmative consent” laws into effect January 1.
Tougher Rape Law: No means ‘no way’
The Curvature: In 2008, A Fresh Start for NSW Rape Laws
Ok, I hope my comment got eated by the spam catcher there and wasn’t lost as a result of my inept linking skills. I know everyone says it, but we could really use some kind of notice that we’re being placed into a holding pattern.
No, no- bad, PR! You wait until AFTER the kids have gone to school, not while they’re still IN the beds!
my husband has some weird hangups with cooking. he’s utterly terrified that he’s going to ‘ruin’ a meal. and he was never taught how to handle things, like meat.
so, we’re picking single recipes and working on them together. the end goal of him being comfortable enough in the kitchen to throw together a meal. without me hovering.
My girlfriend of three years could take that cooking advice to heart. I’m not making any kind of statement about gendered work, I’m being frustrated that, in three years, she has prepared exactly one meal for the two of us. I cook us dinner two or three times each week. That means I cook three hundred times more often than she does.
We’re both college educated and employed full time. We don’t live together so there’s virtually no common domestic responsibilities. Am I asking too much by wanting her to cook once in a while, monthly, perhaps or does that make me part of the male oppressor class?
A couple of family anecdotes showing how people cope:
My aunt got married in her mid-30s and had two boys right away. She really wanted to be a stay-at-home mom but being stuck home with the kids was making her crazy. So, as soon as her husband got home she handed the kids off to him and went out for an hour or so. This was before the wave of Starbucks, etc., so sometimes she would just go to McDonald’s for coffee and read for that hour.
But one thing I noticed about my aunt and uncle’s division of child-rearing labor: to make it work there needs to be consistency, which means there has to be one policy setter and scheduler. My aunt set the policies (she must have read 50 child-rearing books) and scheduled the appointments. Otherwise the kids will play one parent against the other, and two events will be scheduled for the same time. Her husband followed the policies and kept appointments as necessary. He had a narrow sphere of authority which was sports, so he was the one who pitched the wiffle ball endlessly, taught them how to pass a football, etc. My aunt had authority in the realms of schoolwork and household chores.
We kids all learned to cook for ourselves at a young age. There was no gender stigma, because my father had been a cook in the military, and, as the youngest kid, had been the kitchen helper growing up. So he would make Saturday dinner, Sunday breakfast, and family specialties.
Am I asking too much by wanting her to cook once in a while, monthly, perhaps or does that make me part of the male oppressor class?
No, and maybe.
No, because wanting balance in a relationship is reasonable. If you feel like you’re being “taken advantage of,” you’re not going to feel good about it. That holds no matter your gender.
I say “maybe,” though, because it’s important to be honest with yourself about why you want your girlfriend to cook more. Is it because you want domestic chores to be shared equally? Or because you feel she isn’t “domestic” enough?
Most important is being honest about it. If it bothers you, you need to be honest about that — but you also need to be sure you’re being fair to her, and recognize that cooking might be a task she really despises, but that she may be shouldering other burdens for the two of you that you’re not considering.
Thomas, perhaps if she takes you out to dinner instead, you have no reason to worry about it?
Or if she makes up for it by doing more of the other household chores? I’m all for fair division of labour in the home, but that doesn’t mean every individual task has to be divided equally, for example I’d be more than happy to do all the cooking if my partner did all the vacuuming and cleaning of the bathroom!
Having said that, cooking - not necessarily a gourmet feast, but a basic nutritious meal - is a pretty important life skill, and I do find it a little strange when an otherwise intelligent and capable adult seems unable to do it at all.
Flipping through this month’s Self magazine, I came across this little quickie in the Happiness Update section:
Grrl power! Men in relationships with feminist women are more satisfied with their love lives, the journal Sex Roles notes.
The grrl power thing is annoying (and misleading?) but it was cool to see that reported in a mainstream women’s magazine.
When I was growing up, on a Saturday here and there, my dad would occasionally announce to me and my older brother (the only two kids) that we were going to the beach or the local forested area for some R&R. We were overjoyed, of course, and I always fondly thought of those times with my dad.
I found out years later that the only time that stuff happened was when my mother was reaching her limit and NEEDED the house empty for a couple of hours so she could regain her sanity. She’d essentially order my dad to take us and get the f*ck out of the house.
So those beach trips were actually indicative of something other than what I assumed. Who knew?
Am I asking too much by wanting her to cook once in a while, monthly, perhaps or does that make me part of the male oppressor class?
I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call you oppressive or anything, but yes, it is too much to ask.
I hate to cook. Anyone I have a significant relationship with is going to learn about this right away. They can shoulder the burden of cooking if they want to, and I’m willing to be flexible if the person in question also hates to cook.
And of course I’m happy to do the cleanup, and if that didn’t make up for it, I’d be happy to do other household chores to settle the score (for instance my current roommate and I have an arrangement where in exchange for him cooking for me, I tend to do more of the hardcore cleaning like bathrooms, floors, etc).
But the second anybody asks me to start cooking for them, because they cook for me, and it’s just NOT FAIR, wah wah whiny whingy, that’s the second I have no desire to even bother. Anybody who is so petty as to want to force me to do something I hate, just because it’s “fair”, well, I just don’t have room for that in my life.
If it’s really that big a deal for you, just stop inviting her round for dinner. If there’s another issue at the core, like grocery money, resolve that. But don’t be a petty and controlling asshole.
Congratulations — you now understand how most women feel about their spouses when it comes to household chores. Please keep this feeling in mind when you have children and are having a standoff over who’s going to change that stinky diaper or who’s going to get up for the midnight feeding.
One of the stupidest memes to emerge from *Knocked Up* is this idea that “fantasy baseball” or other hobby constitutes some kind of guilty pleasure. If your love for internet sports geeking or the Grateful Dead are things you have to pursue with the kind of secrecy usually reserved for extramarital banging, then guess what? Your relationship sucks.
I’m also amused by the idea that “listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs with buddies” is an act so aien to women that they must approach it like Margaret Meade in Samoa. I, a mere female, have quite a tasty archive.
And no, the bf doesn’t much care for the Dead.
ummm…typo. that’s “an act so ALIEN to women…”
When did MSN hire Eric Cartman to write their relationship-advice columns?
speak from personal shame when I say I abused “free time” when I was married,
I too felt that the BH abused “free time” early in our marriage, and truthfully, his interest and participation in our sons grew as they did. There was plenty of resentment, but forgiveness came easy when the scales balanced, and his enjoyment in his time with our sons was so obvious. (again, with 160 acres out the back door, Dad-kid activities were easily had).
Mythago long ago pointed out that our circumstances reflected a traditional pattern…”men just aren’t that into babies.” She was right. But given that our own sons are far more involved with their own infant and toddler daughters, I’m pretty sure that the BH’s hands-on approach is what our boys remember…and it just translated well into modern “Daddyhood.” (That, and our DILs are career oriented. ;-*)
The world is changing, Jeff, so take heart…even out of traditional patterns…if Dad is involved from a son’s earliest memories, then paternal participation from Day 1 WILL become the norm.
So there are no regrets. We may not have fit the egalitarian ideal…but apparently our attempts have sent the concept downrange.
Or if she makes up for it by doing more of the other household chores? I’m all for fair division of labour in the home, but that doesn’t mean every individual task has to be divided equally, for example I’d be more than happy to do all the cooking if my partner did all the vacuuming and cleaning of the bathroom!
That’s pretty much our division of labor. I cook, clean the kitchen, and do laundry. And I take care of all the secretarial work–making and keeping track of appointments , dealing with the kids’ schools, paying bills, etc. He cleans the bathroom, declutters things, does all floor related cleaning, and gets up with the kids in the mornings and in the middle of the night. We share yardwork–he does the grass and I garden and rake leaves in the fall. It works out pretty well for us. And I regularly kick him and the kids out of the house for some peace and quiet, and he takes them and goes wherever they go quite happily.
My mom thinks I take advantage of his good nature by “not doing my part and being a good wife”, my dad likes him but thinks he’s a “pussy” for doing “women’s work”, and my sisters think I’m really lucky to have found a man who doesn’t mind ‘helping me’ with housework and the kids. I just feel like he lives here and they’re his kids too, so why wouldn’t he pull his weight around here. I’m not his mother or his maid. Plus I work more hours than he does (for less money, but still, more hours), so it just seems like the civilized thing to do for him to take up the slack around here. If I could just get him to grow up about keeping track of stuff, then I’d be set.
Am I asking too much by wanting her to cook once in a while, monthly, perhaps or does that make me part of the male oppressor class?
I’m going to assume for the sake of argument that this is a good-faith question, and not sarcastic trollbait:
Have you tried asking her why she doesn’t cook?
It’s possible that she’s selfish and is chortling over how she’s gotten you to do all the cooking. Here are some other possibilities: She hates cooking. She never learned to cook. She had a jerk ex who saw cooking as a woman’s duty and a feminine submission ritual. She prefers eating out. She prefers cuisine she doesn’t or can’t cook herself. She would be just as happy to eat out as have you cook. She does some other domestic, relationship-maintaining thing you’ve never noticed, and she thinks of your cooking as the equivalent. Since you don’t live together, she doesn’t see cooking as an obligation of the relationship, but as something you do because you think cooking’s fun.
But I dunno. Have you asked? Have you sat down and said “I do all this cooking and it’s starting to bother me”?
Jeff Fecke, the MSM has become more and more MRA and far right since 2002.
SarahMC, thanks for posting piece in the bold print.
And speaking of someone who want to put “uppity bitches” in their place, I came across this article yesterday about Misogynist Mike Huckabee wanting to force women to submit to their husband’s every demand without question.
So if Huckabee gets in, do I HAVE to stop domineering my husband? His heels are too big for me and he can iron far better than I can…