Marriage and compromise
Via Feministe’s Weekend Roundup, I read this post from Andrea at Vociferate, on Do straight feminists always have to compromise? Looking at my own marriage, my answer is no, not if you define "compromise" as Andrea seems to, as giving up on something fundamental.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes find myself muttering as I pick up T’s balled socks from the floor. But I pick them up, and I don’t think it’s a violation of feminist principles to do so. Because he does lots of things for me, like doing almost all the driving on long trips, especially when the weather is lousy, and puts up with my bad habits, like leaving piles of newspapers and magazines all over the house. Does it balance out? More or less, enough so that we’re both happy. I’m a firm believer in equality in relationships, but I don’t think that means keeping score all the time.
I think the socks are like the woman in the zen koan, who asked two monks for help crossing a river where the bridge had been washed out. The elder picked her up and carried her across. Three hours later, the younger said "Master! We’re not supposed to touch women, and yet you carried that woman across ther river." The elder replied "I left her behind at the river; it seems that you are still carrying her." It’s a lot healthier for our relationship to just put the socks in the hamper than to let them fester in the back of my mind.
Andrea’s post made me think of Ann Lander’s famous question "Are you better off with him or without him?" Landers’ advice was that if you decide you’re better off in a relationship than not, you should stop banging your head against the wall trying to change aspects of your partner. The problem with that advice, of course, is that abusers tell their partners that they’re too ugly to ever get another partner, too stupid to get a job, and after hearing that enough far too many people start to believe it.
I’ve written here before about Rhonda Mahoney’s book "Kidding Ourselves." She applies the logic of game theory to compromise in marriage and argues that that the stronger an individual’s fallback position is, the better deal they can negotiate with their partner. So, if you can make a credible threat of leaving your partner — if you have the skills to support yourself, a decent hope of getting a new partner, a good chance of getting the custody arrangement you’d prefer — you’ll be better off even while married. Thus, many feminist women are suddenly unhappy with the division of labor in their relationships following the birth of a baby because they’ve been hit by a double whammy: the amount of total work that needs to be done has increased dramatically just when they’ve given up much of their credible threat of walking out.
I see a lot of truth in that story, but I’m enough of a romantic that I resist the suggestion that power and threat points are the only factors that determine who makes which compromises in a relationships. If I had to point a finger to what makes a committed relationship, it wouldn’t be duration of the relationship, or a marriage license, but to whether the partners really think about "what’s good for us" rather than just "what’s good for me."
October 24th, 2005 at 7:21 am
This post really hit home as Mr. Geeky and I find ourselves renegotiating what is better for us, something we do from time to time. In most ways, I feel that Mr. Geeky respects my “feminist” ways and yet, I do find our household roles are quite traditional. I do the laundry; he takes out the trash. Sometimes this irks me. Sometimes I wish that we could renegotiate those things.
I think it is often a struggle for both partners to figure out when to assert their individuality and when they need to compromise. I don’t think that has anything to do with feminism necessarily, but it may feel that way to women. It certainly feels that way to me sometimes, that by doing the laundry, I am somehow less of a feminist and that if I were more of one, I’d somehow have managed to make Mr. Geeky do the laundry. Even less trivially, there are issues like whose career takes precidence. The lesson I’ve learned in my 11-year marriage is that it’s actually pretty hard to keep a marriage running smoothly. Yes, there are times when very little needs to be said or done, but there are more times than I would have thought that we are figuring out what to do, where to take the relationship.
October 24th, 2005 at 9:20 am
Well, I guess the question that I have here is, don’t homosexual couples have to make compromises? Is the issue then that straight relationships are by their definition reinforcing the status quo?
I think that in any relationship–particularly one that involves children–adults must make compromises with each other to keep the family running. I don’t think it’s true that in a straight relationship, the woman has to make all the compromises, although unfortunately that still happens.
I’ve never heard of the Mahoney book (must have missed your post on it), but I do think the issues you describe are important ones. I know that for me, seeing my mother struggle as a single parent made me decide that I wouldn’t have children until I was able to financially support them on my own, if I needed to. There are times when I’m muttering about my husband too — but if I was in a lesbian relationship, I might be muttering just as loud about her failure to pick up socks.
October 24th, 2005 at 12:10 pm
I think everyone in relationships has to (and should) compromise– I think the issue for feminists in straight relationships is that a lot of the typical compromises are also along gender lines, in a way they would not be in homosexual relationships, so that straight feminists may feel that they are not challenging gender roles in the ways they thought they would.
I couldn’t agree more about the idea that successful marriages are full partnerships, but that also so much depends on whether either partner is actually able to leave the other. A friend of mine said recently that she would never leave her husband because his job could not support two households, and my mind just boggled– and she is a product of all-girls schooling, and has a law degree, and thinks of herself as a feminist. Another friend only talks about their future and present in the terms of “Husband says this, Husband thinks that”– rarely as “we want, we need.”
October 24th, 2005 at 2:55 pm
My husband is a stay-home dad and we totally split the work around the house (with help from a cleaning woman). Yet I am very aware that, during times when I am filling his usual role, he does not do his half. For example when I have been home on maternity leave, or when I have taken time off so he can complete major home repairs, he has immediately reverted to Ward Cleaver behavior. (Not helping in the evenings, for example, or not ever cooking meals.)
It’s also true in my house that the higher my income has gotten the more supportive DH is in terms of picking up more of the slack. I think his reasoning is that work is more demanding these days and more worth “protecting”; another interpretation is that his respect for my work directly correlates with the dollar value assigned it.
October 24th, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Are there any studies of division of labor in single-sex couples?
Although I’m sympathetic to the idea that division of labor doesn’t mean slavishly dividing individual tasks, I’m troubled when the breakdown of work is along traditional gender lines, because of the reinforcing networks that occur — Mahoney describes them in her book: woman stays home during maternity leave (only available to women, and besides, women are the one’s who give birth, takes on errands around the house, acquires the expertise, and then, all of a sudden, she’s a stay at home mom, or a part-time worker who has given up her earning potential).
Does this happen in single sex couples? Or is society responsible for it’s high frequency in hetero couples?
bj
October 24th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
interesting post and discussion. what does compromise mean? seems to me there’s a real narrow and dated definition being used here. Who picks up whose socks? Well, sometimes I pick up socks and clothes and dust, sometimes my wife does. When I was at home full time with our daughter I did almost all cooking, laundry, etc., when she was home full time she did it. When she went back to work and was very stressed, I took over almost all cooking laundry, lunchmaking and getting kids to school. A cousin of mine criticized us that my wife — a very committed feminist — was at home with kids and doing household work. I told my cousin (who was somewhat older than us) that she was stuck in the past, because we compromised in the sense of whoever was less stressed took up the slack. That is not a compromise of feminist principles.
I think in any relationship there’s got to be a give and take, and in a relationship informed by feminist values too both partners have to and do compromise, not in the sense of giving up something fundamental, but in the sense of a give and take.
I’m also a skeptic about game theory in general, because it always leaves out the human element. In this case especially, I’d argue. Because if it was true, why would I ever take over the household chores and kid-tending if I was the one bringing in most money while my wife was going to school and then working in a job that paid much less than mine?
The answer is exactly what you’ve pointed to Elizabeth: what makes a committed relationship …[is] whether the partners really think about “what’s good for us” rather than just “what’s good for me.”
October 25th, 2005 at 9:46 am
chip, as always, makes an excellent point there.
October 30th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Hey, I’m an html idiot & don’t know how to do trackback–but I just quoted this post & wanted you to know.http://bumblebeesweetpotato.blogspot.com/2005/10/yes-what-is-modern-grrrrlll-to-do.html
July 24th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Marriage relationship is not all about to compromise; it is actually about recognizing one spouse’s compromise by his/her partner. if you know that your partner is passionate and desperate about you and you also have the same feeling about him, only then marriage relationship goes in a healthy and conflict free way. Sometimes one spouse take advantage of his/her partners emotions because he/she knows that his/her partner can do anything for him. As I already mentioned that it is about recognizing each other compromises and emotions is stead of making fool of your spouse. But the fact is that, not sooner but later your partner will recognize your behavior and try to get rid from you. So please try to trustworthy, passionate, faithful, and honest for your partner. If your partner is not doing the same then it is your partner’s mistake, not yours. If couple recognize any such situation and still want to restore marriage relationship can take help of Couple therapy and marriage counseling. For more help and support visit us at:
http://www.marriage-counselors.net/