Deep thoughts on modern wifehood.
How can we squeeze in romance when our emails and dishes are piling up?
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know this is a free newsletter but I’m working hard to evolve and bring you more ad-free and agenda-free content on the complexities of motherhood. If you value my work, if it helps you feel connected, if you save it to read later or forward it to friends and talk about it – please consider becoming a paid subscriber. For this essay I thought I’d try something new – and record it. I figure, not everyone has the time or brain capacity to sit and read an essay. But it comes with a disclaimer – this is very much out of my comfort zone but if it allows one mother to feel connected then I’m willing to keep on recording.
Once our toddler was down, my husband and I broke our usual evening routine of late-night emails and mindless doom scrolls before sinking into the lounge, zoned out while watching Better Call Saul, to talk instead. The topic was not exactly an unusual discourse, but something felt different. The sentiment was different. The topic was; us. Including all that we have achieved in the past three years, the highs and lows, and the realisation of how little quality time we had spent together (minus our toddler). We chatted about how tricky it feels to prioritise our relationship. We weren’t blaming each other; we understood these were the seasons (as they say), but there was a sombre acceptance that we both felt stuck in survival mode.
Domestic life does not come naturally to me. I often feel burdened by the responsibilities of running a household. Then again neither does routine or organisation. Call me naive (or maybe I was drunk on patriarchal optimism?), but I bought into the fallacy that I would magically transform into a laundry-loving, bake-from-scratch, prioritise-date-night kind of wife. In contrast, the reality is that for me, not long after becoming a wife, I also became a mother, and it was the second shift of motherhood that takes up an astronomical amount of time and brain space; in fact, on average, mothers spend 57 hours per week on unpaid childcare and household work, according to an AIFS study. I know all of this. Yet, I feel I am failing wifehood, a role that I was certain I would succeed at because I am happily married to a man who I adore and adores me – warts and all. I don’t think I am a shitty wife, but perhaps I’d just slipped into a state of sedation. I couldn’t take on any more, and I was operating on auto-pilot and contributing the bare minimum to our relationship.
The demands of parenthood and working for ourselves were taking their toll on us. We went back and forth on a few points, explaining how we felt and trying to find a common ground of what we could do to prioritise each other once again. Until this conversation, I had not the slightest clue that my husband felt the same way I did. He also felt unimportant and unseen; like me, he was his own harshest critic. We assumed certain things about each other, and as Joan Didion points out in The Year Of Magical Thinking, “We imagined we knew everything the other thought, even when we did not necessarily want to know it, but in fact, I have come to see, we knew not the smallest fraction of what there was to know.” I was perplexed he did not connect the dots between my physical and mental capacity of being a working mother and the feeling of being ‘touched out, to the lack of time I had to prioritise us. But how would he understand and empathise with these feelings if he had not experienced them and I had not voiced them to him?
It is fair to say that he does not do many chores around the house. He does work long hours. He works six days a week, mentally seven days, as he owns a business. He helps with our son, tries to get home for bedtime, and tends to the yard but steers clear of most of the indoor daily duties. I work 3-4 days a week, plus I am the primary carer for our son and all of the visible and invisible labour that goes along with it – this is a role that, as we know, never stops. When it comes to the division of labour, we have both fallen into the roles passed down to us from previous generations, and though he does help – why do I still feel like I’m doing it all?
In a recent interview on Culture Study, Kate Mangino, author of Unequal Partners (which I have ordered online but has not hit bookstores here in Australia just yet), explains, “To sum it up, the person doing intermittent / outdoor tasks has far more free time and far more flexibility than the person doing the routine / indoor tasks. Time and flexibility are incredibly valuable resources. With more time and the flexibility to do what you want, when you want to do it, the person doing male-coded work has a whole menu of opportunities (work, hobbies, education, sleep, friends, exercise, a second job, etc.), which are unavailable to their routine task performing partner.” This rationale makes complete sense to me. Free-time. That was what I resented most and missed dearly. The ease of ducking out at lunch, running errands alone, booking an appointment, going to the gym, working from home without putting on washing, resuming most things in life and not needing to check somebody will be home to mind our son – the freedom.
I felt conflicted by the unequal gender roles pummelled into us – was I to blame for our non-existent date nights? Or because each morning, we riffle through the pile of unfolded washing, praying to find clean undies and a matching pair of socks? The unwashed dishes from last night? That I forgot my mother-in-law’s birthday? Social conditioning would have me believe so, yes. The 1950s housewife has had a glow-up via social media where the modern mother flaunts her perfect home (I know I parade the clean corner of mine), her impeccable outfits, her happy husband and angelic children all wearing matching socks (and probably clean knickers too), and most importantly her thriving and purposeful career. And it is not her that I am scoffing at. I, too, do this; the ideology may have shifted, but it is still out-of-reach yet equally alluring.
Now, my husband was not blaming me for a home that was less than Instagrammable. He wasn’t blaming me for anything and didn’t care that he filtered through a mountain of clothes each morning or that I hadn’t organised a date night in months (maybe even a year?). He didn’t care because he didn’t link any of this to his self-worth or sanity as I did. He knew that life happens and that, like him, I don’t always have the time or energy to do the things that sit at the bottom of my priorities. I was beating myself up over things I thought a good wife should do.
Then, I thought, what constitutes a ‘good wife’ (or anyone who considers themselves in the female role in a relationship)? And like anyone dealing with an existential crisis, I decided to google it. ‘What makes a good wife?’ I typed, and google spat out 2,700,000,000 results. The first index seemed very biblical and placed “caring and compassion” at the top, which is relevant to being not only a good wife but a good person. The next result, a list from thinkaloud.net (a site that claims to be a “destination where you’ll find stories about every step you, as a woman, take.”) reads, “There is no such thing as a perfect wife, but if you find one that makes time for you in her busy schedule, she’s a keeper.” It goes on, “A woman who works hard to find quality time for her hubby is worth her weight in gold. Instead of finding excuses for her overly busy schedule, she makes her husband a priority.” We’re only at the second point, and I’m already discovering I am a terrible wife (ha!). Most of these lists were wildly religious, outdated, offensive and laugh-out-loud ridiculous. But of the lists I read, they all seemed to have a common chorus; the wife was in the supportive role and implied it was her sole purpose to allow him to shine. So, out of curiosity, I typed ‘What makes a good husband?’ which revealed just 1,800,000,000 results themed around his inner qualities and personal growth, unlike the wife whose most favourable quality is tending to the needs of her husband. It’s hard to believe in 2022 that such lists exist, but sadly they do.
So where to next? After much tongue-biting from both of us, we resisted getting into the usual around-in-circles argument. Instead, we listened to each other and agreed on a few key changes, including continuing this conversation – we love each other deeply. Still, we both had to get out of snooze-mode. He agreed to help with the domestic chores and schedule time for me to have a regular exercise/"me" time routine (just as he does), which will lighten my mental load and reduce the risk of burnout. I agreed to talk with him more about what was going through my mind and thus be a bit kinder to him. And prioritise my need for “me” time by scheduling it. We also agreed it was both of our roles to make more effort for each other in terms of organising a date night, including arranging a babysitter – another task that felt like it was exclusively mine.
We haven’t had time for our date night (yet), but we do put down our phones and interact much more than we did a few weeks ago. Habits take time to break, but since our conversation, we both have put in the effort to work together instead of feeling like we’re operating against each other – and most importantly, we are starting to feel a lot more like equal partners.
I’d love to hear how you make time for a bit of romance in your relationship? Comment below.
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