The quality of wifeness
I have been married, been a wife, for over 10 years. I still start when my spouse refers to me as "his wife" sometimes, although that is the easy shorthand, and I refer to him as "my husband" just as often. I think that the state of being one person in an intimate joint venture is interesting, crazy, oppressive, liberating, and almost anything else you can think of.
Over 10 years, and not one of them has been like another. There is always something new and hard and interesting that we are doing, together. The first few years, it was negotiating our power dynamic, our finances, our time, our fights. Then when we had that sorted, we upset it all by having kids. More negotiation, more work on the structure of what we had together. We've moved. We've been variously employed. This year, he is finishing college, and starting a new career. We will have to re-evaluate our assumptions and habits all over again.
I did not expect it to be this much work, you know. We were young when we got married, and my parents have been doing their renegotiations for so long they can do it without people in other counties knowing about their drama. It is WORK. It is work to love him (and a joy), it is work to live up to the goals and roles we have set, it is work to parent. Somehow, I knew it would be work, but I didn't understand how much of my life it could consume.
The important thing to know about this work is that it feels good. At the end of the day, I don't feel as if I have strained or stretched myself. I don't feel injured. I feel tired, and my emotional muscles rejoice at having done what they were made for. I hardly notice anymore, anymore than a kid catalogs all the adventures they have in a day. They're just happily tired, ready to go to bed at bedtime.
The times I have felt most like giving up, walking out of the job, have been the times when I felt like Sisyphus, rolling a brutal stone up a hill, and then having it crush me over and over again. Like it didn't matter what I did. Like my stubbornsess was only hurting me. Those times I stayed, tooth-gritted. But I think if you are not in Hades, and the rock keeps rolling over you, eventually you lose your will to push it up the hill ever again.
If you had asked me before I got married what it meant to be a wife, I think my answer would have looked something like this.
"A partner in a mutual enterprise, valuing the relationship's health and sometimes sacrificing to ensure its continuity. A person who agrees to a certain share of the domestic maintenance." That's what I might have said out loud. Of course, there is also a cloud of attributes and tasks that floated around me, so invisible that I probably could not have articulated them. I perform many of them, because it's important to me that they happen, and I am socialized to it. I write everyone's Christmas wish lists. I teach my children how to clean. I take them to church, and make sure they are ready for pictures. I organize most of our social hosting events. I clean if there's company coming.
This is not to say he doesn't do a ton -- he does. Most of the childcare, cooking, shopping, and car maintenance fall to him. We have actually talked, using words, about our chore allocation, and we adjust it to account for our different load levels. And I have deliberately divested of some things that my mother did. But I still have that cloud, the one that says "Did you give the guest a towel?" and "What will people think of that?"
So if you asked me now, what it means to be a wife, my answer might be more like
"An individual who has chosen to be in partnership, and who continues to choose to sustain that relationship and her partner. A person who negotiates a mutually acceptable lifestyle with her partner."
Ours is not a marriage overburdened with tradition, in pretty much any direction. We have gotten here on purpose, by making choices we can both live with. I have high hopes that it will continue to work for us. I am happy to be his wife.
Over 10 years, and not one of them has been like another. There is always something new and hard and interesting that we are doing, together. The first few years, it was negotiating our power dynamic, our finances, our time, our fights. Then when we had that sorted, we upset it all by having kids. More negotiation, more work on the structure of what we had together. We've moved. We've been variously employed. This year, he is finishing college, and starting a new career. We will have to re-evaluate our assumptions and habits all over again.
I did not expect it to be this much work, you know. We were young when we got married, and my parents have been doing their renegotiations for so long they can do it without people in other counties knowing about their drama. It is WORK. It is work to love him (and a joy), it is work to live up to the goals and roles we have set, it is work to parent. Somehow, I knew it would be work, but I didn't understand how much of my life it could consume.
The important thing to know about this work is that it feels good. At the end of the day, I don't feel as if I have strained or stretched myself. I don't feel injured. I feel tired, and my emotional muscles rejoice at having done what they were made for. I hardly notice anymore, anymore than a kid catalogs all the adventures they have in a day. They're just happily tired, ready to go to bed at bedtime.
The times I have felt most like giving up, walking out of the job, have been the times when I felt like Sisyphus, rolling a brutal stone up a hill, and then having it crush me over and over again. Like it didn't matter what I did. Like my stubbornsess was only hurting me. Those times I stayed, tooth-gritted. But I think if you are not in Hades, and the rock keeps rolling over you, eventually you lose your will to push it up the hill ever again.
If you had asked me before I got married what it meant to be a wife, I think my answer would have looked something like this.
"A partner in a mutual enterprise, valuing the relationship's health and sometimes sacrificing to ensure its continuity. A person who agrees to a certain share of the domestic maintenance." That's what I might have said out loud. Of course, there is also a cloud of attributes and tasks that floated around me, so invisible that I probably could not have articulated them. I perform many of them, because it's important to me that they happen, and I am socialized to it. I write everyone's Christmas wish lists. I teach my children how to clean. I take them to church, and make sure they are ready for pictures. I organize most of our social hosting events. I clean if there's company coming.
This is not to say he doesn't do a ton -- he does. Most of the childcare, cooking, shopping, and car maintenance fall to him. We have actually talked, using words, about our chore allocation, and we adjust it to account for our different load levels. And I have deliberately divested of some things that my mother did. But I still have that cloud, the one that says "Did you give the guest a towel?" and "What will people think of that?"
So if you asked me now, what it means to be a wife, my answer might be more like
"An individual who has chosen to be in partnership, and who continues to choose to sustain that relationship and her partner. A person who negotiates a mutually acceptable lifestyle with her partner."
Ours is not a marriage overburdened with tradition, in pretty much any direction. We have gotten here on purpose, by making choices we can both live with. I have high hopes that it will continue to work for us. I am happy to be his wife.