A story of Marriage

A man lost his job for watching pornography on his work computer. He explained that he is struggling to overcome a “porn addiction.” He has been married to his fat, deaf wife for about twenty years. They don’t have a conventional relationship, he said. They are “not intimate in any way.” She’s way too good for him. They are in counseling to help him overcome the “addiction.” He has no friends. But he has grown closer to his church group. Is this what marriage is like?

Pseudomutuality in relationships

How will we ever achieve an equal society if we can’t even live in equality with those whom we love?

--Maria Sveland

Heterosexual women and men in our society often describe their relationships as egalitarian and fair while also reporting relationship patterns that are objectively unfair.

For instance, they may report that they both do housework--but measurements of how much time each spouse puts in almost always reveal that the woman does more (on average, 80% of the work). One man said that his wife did all the cooking, but he did the dishes. By “doing the dishes” he meant putting the dishes in the dishwasher, leaving his wife to notice when they were done and put them away.

Or spouses may say that they are both responsible for childcare--but often, the man’s contribution to childcare is playing sports, going on outings, and watching TV with the kids, while the woman remains in charge of cleaning up after the kids, nagging them to take a bath, going to doctor’s appointments, and other boring stuff. Even when spouses sincerely attempt to share the burden, often the woman remains the manager, in charge of the family schedule, remembering what needs to be done, and reminding her husband to do it.

Couples may talk as though they are peers, but behave in ways that unintentionally promote invisible male power. Research in  the ‘90s that examined couples’ shared work and family decisions found that even though both partners reported that their decisions were mutual, outcomes tended to favor the husband’s needs and goals more than the wife’s.

One reason this “pseudomutuality” exists is that, when you ask women whether their relationship is equal, they don’t compare the relationship to an ideal of equality; they compare to an imagined “evil man” scenario. I know my husband is not a wife-beater or crude cartoon misogynist. He helps out more than my friends’ husbands. So I have nothing to worry about, right?

This cultural narrative of evil men trying to control women appears very important to women as something to avoid and to men  as unacceptable behavior. Although this discourse appears useful as a negative model of what to stay away from, it also seems to be applied to individual men in a sort of all-or-nothing way. Some men dominate and control; others don’t. The more subtle ways that male power is embedded within normative gender discourse and social structures did not seem to be part of the story. When men do not fit the dominating male pattern, couples can have a false sense of security about the existence of male power in their relationship and are less likely to look for or recognize the more subtle forms of male power built into the gender-differences discourse.

Within heterosexual relationships, and, the research suggests but does not prove, especially within marriage, even women who believe in equality are often pulled towards traditional gender roles. They may find themselves feeling that the condition of the house reflects on them--a feeling that husbands are unlikely to share. Or, with the modesty our society teaches women to feel or pretend to feel, they may say that their husband’s careers are more important than theirs (this tends to occur even when he makes less money). This leads to lives structured to accommodate the husband’s career.

Francine Deutsch describes two couples she encountered. In one couple, he was a college professor and she was a physician, and in the other couple she was the college professor and he the physician. But in both cases, both the husband and wife claimed the man’s job was less flexible.

There is no happy ending to this post, but I will leave you with a hilarious anecdote from Linda Hirshman . A female professor of her acquaintance decided to drop out of the workforce. When Hirshman asked her why, she said she had no choice: commuting 300 miles every weekday was driving her crazy. Hirshman asked the obvious question: why in the world had she chosen to live 150 miles from her university? The answer, equally obvious, was that she lived right next to her husband’s office.

The serious point here is that one traditional choice tends to lead to another traditional choice. In most marriages, the husband makes more money, so it might seem reasonable to value his career more. But for this woman, that seemingly innocuous choice led to locating near his workplace, spending most of her free time commuting, and, ultimately, housewifery.

I’m not going to bother precisely attributing these quotes, but here is my essential bibliography:

Couples, Gender and Power, Carmen Knudson-Martin

Gender Vertigo, Barbara Risman

Wifework, Susan Maushart

Get to Work, Linda Hirshman

Fiction and memoir:

An Unconventional Family, Sandra Lipsitz Bem

Bitter Bitch, Maria Sveland

We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver

Update: more quotes along the same lines.

Some research suggests that men cope with such uncomfortable inequities by denying that housework matters--or that it even exists! Male respondents to a time use study frequently tried to draw the interviewer into a collusive dismissal of the significance of housework and child care. Male partners were sometimes unaware that cleaners were doing some of the work. All they knew--and all they needed to know--was that it was getting done, and by someone else. One man admitted that he did no cooking, but claimed it was because he wasn’t interested in cooked food. When a wife suggested they might alternate responsibility for bed-making, the husband said he didn’t believe in bed-making. Or male respondents implied that their attitude toward housekeeping was tolerant and their wives’ obsessive. To most men, the suggestion that there might be a right and a wrong way to vacuum or fold a nappy or hang out the laundry inspires eye-rolling, or even disbelief. This is another way in which we betray the very deeply held assumptions that what men accomplish matters, and what women accomplish doesn’t...a women who persists in framing housework as skilled work, and who cares about the results obtained, is routinely stigmatized as too fussy or a control freak.

The persistence of marrying up or hypergamy is one of the most serious obstacles to achieving genuine equality within marriage today.

 

All married men cheat

I have been castigated recently for saying, “All married men cheat.” I have two responses to this. I admit that, of course, I have no knowledge of the exact percentage of married men who cheat. And in fact, I think there are strong reasons to believe that no one can know the exact percentage. The number of men who cheat but don’t want to admit it -- the number of men who are faithful and don’t want to admit it. And then, of course, a man who, when asked if he has
ever cheated on his wife, answers “no”, even if he is telling the strict truth, can really only mean “no, I haven’t yet.” In order to get a true picture of the percentage of married men who cheat, you would not only have to get a fair and representative statistical sample of all married men -- a sample which, although representative, somehow happened to be made up of completely truthful men, and you would also have to talk to these men at the precise moment of their death. Call no man faithful until he is dead, so to speak.

But really, to discuss how many married men cheat is beside the point. Although I phrased it badly, what I really meant is that adultery, although not universal, is inherent in the nature of marriage; just as incest is inherent in the nature of the family, and force is inherent in the nature of government. We try to wall it off, but it’s always surging back, showing up in various disguises. So a faithful man, if he exists -- one who is faithful not from cowardice, and not from lack of opportunity, but because he truly doesn’t want anyone but his wife -- if he exists, he is a greater miracle than the most shameless cheater. The reason why the media coverage of Tiger Woods’s adultery was so frustrating: society forcing us to pretend to a surprise and shock and outrage which, most likely, no one with the slightest acquaintance with the world felt.