Going to try and keep things fairly light tonight, so I’m not working off any notes, just going off the cuff. Its a holiday after all.
Lately my wife and I have been trying to work on our communication. My wife found some kind of cards on the internet with questions we can ask each other. The questions are designed to build a strong relationship by enabling partners to find out more about each other while improving their communication. So several times a week we have been sitting down and taking turns asking each other questions from the cards. Its a fun and relatively harmless way to get to know each other a little better and communicate open and honestly with each other.
One question I received recently made me really stop and think. I don’t remember the exact questions but it was something to the effect of “Do I value traditional gender roles?”. Now, as I am sexist and working on getting better about recognizing my bias, this really made me pause. When I hear “traditional gender roles” my brain instinctively goes to things like the man works, the woman stays at home to cook, clean, and raise a family; you know, nuclear family type shit. Then I think about how I don’t trust my wife in the kitchen at all, I don’t ever expect her to clean, she cant even load a dishwasher properly. So how could I value traditional gender roles? Well there are a number of things wrong with thinking like that. First just because you don’t expect your partner to perform traditional gender roles, does not necessarily mean you do not value them. Secondly, traditional gender roles extend past those kind of routine physical actions. I mean “what is a traditional gender role?” is really a cultural question. What is traditional in my culture may not be traditional in yours. In my culture I feel it is a traditional gender role for women to do the planning, to manage the household, to support the husband. It in these traditional roles that I would have to argue that I do value. I know I have to do more to treat my wife as a partner and an equal, but if I examine my actions its clear that I do value at least some of the traditional roles of the woman in a marriage.
Of course I never considered at the time that traditional gender roles applies to me as well as a man and a husband. What are my societal traditional gender roles? I imagine it is to provide, to work to put food on the table, to bury my emotions, to be strong for my family, to protect my family, to take out the garbage, to fix things, and to grill. I don’t really want to be the provider but I value most of those things even though I know a few of them I probably shouldn’t. A real man can be vulnerable.
Valuing traditional gender roles doesn’t need to be a bad thing, so long as it works for both partners. I think I hear questions like this and I knee jerk “oh I shouldn’t value those things, if I do I am sexist and that is bad”. Of course that doesn’t need to be true. This whole blog is about learning to be honest with myself and my wife about who I am and what my expectations are. I am human, I’m not perfect, often I value traditional gender roles, and that can be ok so long as it doesn’t hurt myself or others.
Also as part of these blogs, I am going to start to appreciate opportunities for growth. A constant problem in our relationship is that my wife has no safe space to say negative things about me without me getting hurt and blowing up in her face. I want to try to flip the script and instead of being hurt by criticism I want to try to be grateful for being shown opportunities to try and grow. So this week is that very statement. I was shown that I do not take criticism. I am grateful for being told that as that and specifically that I attempt to manipulate my wife into treating me as being perfect. She has told me some version of this for years but something about how she specifically presented it this time has lead me to this path of looking for the opportunity for growth instead of being hurt. I feel this is a healthier path.
Anyway that is it for this week. See you next week.
Thanks!