The Shake-Shake Marriage - A Double Entendre?

My post yesterday probably seemed as if I were taking little faults in my husband and being bitchy about it. I must be nit-picking during a rage of PMS hormones, right?

In a way, yes. In a way, no.

Yes, those were little things and I was nit-picking, maybe a little bitchy too, but I'm not a mess of PMS hormones. I wasn't mad, just exasperated and perplexed in the 'huh? men.' kind of way.

But....

I am overall frustrated and almost completely disenchanted with marriage.

Wait? Did you read that right? Let me say it again because I almost never write anything negative about my husband and our marriage. It's usually just the opposite.

I am overall frustrated and almost completely disenchanted with marriage.

For almost three years now, whenever I hear of someone I know getting engaged, the first thought that comes to my mind is to offer condolences, not congratulations. I have to stop myself and remember the appropriate response that is expected of me in the situation, otherwise I would be compelled to hug the girl in a compassionate way and whisper "I'm so sorry" in her ear.

This admission of mine may surprise anyone who has followed my blog because I usually sing the praises of King Wally. Truth be told, he isn't a bad guy. As a dad, he's great and in many ways, he is better than the average husband.

Which makes me wonder if we women have been bamboozled to think if we have a husband who will watch his own kids, wash a few dishes, and attempt to do laundry (even if he screws it up, which I still suspect is on purpose) that we have it good.

Hey, that's a step up from days gone by when if your husband didn't beat you, you had it good, right?

The times I've dared to whisper my unhappy feelings with people I know, I'm usually met with tales of how their husbands won't even do X Y or Z, all of which Wally does do.

It's always on the tip of my tongue to ask them why in the world they stay in their marriage if the husband won't do even X Y or Z, because damn if I would. But I don't ask. I feel crazy instead, as if I'm way out of line to question our collective definition of a good marriage.

Though it may not seem so from this post, I do appreciate the X Y & Z things Wally does. Outside of the children, X Y & Z are probably the only things that have kept us together for the past 3 or so years. I give him the brownie points for washing some dishes, all the diapers he changed, watching the boys so I can have lunch with a girlfriend, taking care of the lawn, washing the cars.

Then I wonder where my brownie points are?

As the wife, I'm just expected to do those things, minus the grass. But he doesn't gets all gushy and sentimental over the meals I cook, you know. Why does he get brownie points for doing the same thing I do almost every day? About the only thing I get brownie points for are blow jobs.

It's almost as if grooms are given a card on their wedding day that reads something like this...

Man, you just get a job and leave the rest up to your wife. She takes care of everything else in life, even if she works too. Bills, checkbook, laundry, groceries, meals, holidays, gifts for everyone, including herself. Dude, you don't even have to think because she takes care of that too!

Should your wife ever try to get you to do something more, then play dumb, fuck it up and you're off the hook!

When you have kids, this pass really kicks in. On top of the other stuff listed above, she'll take care of the kids, kids school, PTA, conferences, birthdays, dentist, doctors, room parent, ball practice, homework, Halloween costumes, new clothes, etc. If you want to see this action in high gear, then spawn upon her a high needs child and watch her do even more.

It's also her responsibility to keep the sex life alive. Should she go too long without doing something real kinky-like, then go into her pajama drawer and rearrange her stuff, strategically placing her naughty lingerie on the very top to give her a hint next time she gets ready for bed. You've now done your part to spice things up, the rest is on her.

Oh, and she'll also plan fun stuff for everyone to break up the dull existence of every day life. You just sit back and enjoy the ride.

I'm not kidding when I say it got to the point where Wally told me he needed new underwear, as if I'm suppose to go buy it. Like I would ever expect him to buy my fucking underwear for me?! My god, we're adults! I'm his wife, not his mother! That little event, which is really little from outside perspective, was another nit-picky thing that opened my floodgates of resentment.

I don't resent the work I put into our children. Wally and I have arrange things in our life so I can be the mom who volunteers at the school and bakes homemade cookies. I want that because I know in just a few short years, that stage of motherhood will be disappear as they boys grow.

I don't even mind baking the occasional cookies and brownies for his office parties, but that's possibly more about me showing off my exceptional baking skills when it comes to sweets (because I am that good) than doing something from the kindness of my heart. Possibly.

It doesn't bother me that I do all of the grocery, clothes, and gift shopping. (Except for my own gifts. That does bother me.)

I also don't resent doing the majority of housework or cooking. I'm home more, only working part-time & from home, and he helps out enough to keep me from going insane with it too. Plus, I'd rather get most of it done while he's at work so that when we're all home together, we have the free time to do other things.

But then it's left on me to do those other things too. Not only am I responsible for the drudgery of every day life, but all the things in life that turn mere existence into Life somehow became my responsibility too. And from what I see with my friends, family and acquaintances, that's how it is for most women. The wives create the Life together and the men simply show up.

I finally understand why my mom left my dad after 35 years of marriage. I didn't get it five years ago when she said she couldn't do it all anymore.

Shit mom, you've been doing it for over three decades! Daddy isn't a bad person! Why now??!!??

I get it now and I don't know how she stayed as long as she did.

I'm beginning to realize that marriage is a institution of imbalance in which I feel screwed and not in an orgasmic way. It's not that I don't get some benefit from marriage, but damn if the scales aren't out of whack.

Wally knows exactly how I feel about marriage and I can safely say he doesn't want it to be this way either. But there have only been small changes in how things work in our marriage. Were the roles reversed, I can't say I'd be the icon for progressive change either. I'd have a pretty sweet deal, why mess that up?

Yet even though we both know things can't stay so imbalanced and the two of us remain happy together until death do us part, we find it hard to break this common pattern. We don't even know how we reached this relationship pattern except the possibility that it's so ingrained in our culture that we do it without realizing.

Perhaps a new attempt would be to erase the fairy tale mindset of living happily ever after and replace it with living fully ever after.