The Problem with Being She-Ra

The Man and I recently signed the lease on a new place.  It's a fixer-upper and a downsize, but we get a fireplace, a yard (also a fixer-upper) and my cat back.  The landlord has pretty much given us free reign with the place, and has even offered to reimburse us if it turns out nice.  We're actually super excited about it.

See, The Man and I both work in areas where it's sometimes hard to see the fruits of your labors.  He'll program for 20+ hours and end up with a tiny blob that reacts to other tiny blobs on the screen.  I'll lesson plan and grade and stress and end up with kids that don't even try to turn in any of the work they do.  You feel like you're putting in all of your time for a thankless task, and it can get really depressing.

Cleaning, remodeling, and yard work are the opposite.

We are so dang excited about this new place because we've been setting goals, planning actions, and working with our hands, and at the end we can actually see what we've changed!  Yesterday we spent over 4 hours just cleaning up the house and yard, and it felt awesome.  It's nowhere near where we want it to be, but we can actually see a change in the place already.  Hurrah!

It was a conversation during yesterday's cleaning that inspired this post.
Me: Hey [The Man], can you help me with this?
TM: Definitely.  Actually, let me do it; you're pregnant.
M: Hah.  I don't like using that; it feels like an excuse to-
TM: An excuse for me to be manly?  An excuse for you to be womanly?
M: Am I not usually womanly?
TM: Well you're not like, "oh, TM, I'm so helpless!"  You're pretty independent.
M: Huh.

It's not like The Man has a medieval view on gender roles; he's very supportive of my goals in life.  When I told him I'd like to try to go back to school for sonography he got excited and encouraged me to take the online class I needed.  We've talked a lot about the possibility of both of us working when our kids are in school.

At the same time though, I think it bugs him a bit that I'm more of a Wonder Woman than a Lois Lane.  I rarely give him the opportunity to be the big strong man.  And aye, there's the rub.

See, I LIKE being independent.  I'm proud that I can change a tire, move heavy furniture, be the breadwinner, and stand up for myself.  I'm not going to change that.  I am not the type of person to let someone else make all the big decisions without my say in the matter.  I know that I am capable and intelligent and hard-working and I'll be damned if I pretend that I'm not.  I want my daughters to have that same sense of self-worth; that same ability to function on their own and be tough.

On the other hand, I sometimes wonder how much my independence bulldozes The Man's independence.  He's such an easy-going guy that it's I often find myself telling him what to do, and that's no good either.  And just like I sometimes want to be told that I'm beautiful and appealing, he sometimes likes to show that he's strong and capable of providing for me; it's kind of cruel for me to deny him those opportunities.

I think I just need to find a balance.  Somehow.

Man Flowers

The other night The Man mentioned that he hadn't bought me flowers in quite some time, and he needed to get on that.  I heartily agreed.  Then I realized something: I've never really bought him man flowers.

Now, I'm not talking about those bacon bouquets or anything; I'm talking about the female version of buying flowers to tell her man, "hey, I appreciate you and I think you're pretty rad.  Here's something you can look at daily to remind you of my feelings."  Growing up I always heard that the men need to continue courting the women past marriage; what about the other way around?

I mean sure, I try to look nice and smell nice, but that's also because I need to be professional at work.  I also clean up the house from time to time, but that's because when things get too messy I just shut down totally and I can't get any work done at all.  I tell The Man he's handsome and I allow him to pay on dates, but gosh dangit I wanna get my man some flowers.

In my quest for man flowers (wow, this is sounding a little racy...) I tried to think about the times when I make The Man happiest.  Besides the obvious (making cookies - get your mind out of the gutter), he always gets really happy when I clean up the house.  I had my goal.

Well, I got home from school around 5:45 and got started.  I was tired from teaching and grading and planning and next-to-no sleep, but I pushed through.  By 8 I had the oven cleaned, the microwave spotless, the kitchen looking awesome, the living room re-organized the way he wanted it, the bedroom re-organized the way he wanted it (we were kind of on a re-organizing roll this weekend), the bathroom deep-cleaned (the landlords decided to not install ventilation so we get mold ALL THE TIME), and the apartment just looking all-around great.  We'll ignore the fact that I shoved everything I didn't want to deal with into the second bedroom.  And you know what?  It felt great.  Kinda like how flowers brighten up the house for anyone living there, the cleaning made our house feel all the better.

Man Flowers for the win.

I did leave an empty vase in the middle of the kitchen table.  I mean, I'm not a saint.

The Pros and Cons of Marriage (from the eyes of a newlywed)

So, sometime last year I ran across a blog giving advice on how to make your marriage as good as possible.  It had some things I agreed with and some things that made me smirk (bring home flowers to your wife weekly?  Please, I’m lucky to get biannually), and then I saw why: the author had been married four months.  Now, I don’t mean to diss on four-month marriages, but…No, I mean to diss.  Baby, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

This post is going to be a lot like that for people that have been married longer than I have, but maybe you’ll find it humorous that I’m so naïve about the life I have ahead of me.  The Man and I just passed the two-year mark, so we’ve been married long enough to realize that marriage is work, but we’re still in the newlywed stage.  The following is a list of some of the Pros and Cons of marriage that I’ve discovered (this list also applies just as much to people in long-term committed relationships).

Pro: You’re no longer single! 

You don’t have to worry if someone likes you or not, you don’t have to go on awkward first dates, and you nabbed one of the most attractive people in the world.

Con: You’re no longer single. 

You will start to miss that angsty feeling of not knowing if someone likes you or not.  You’re going to miss awkward first dates, because you were meeting new people all the time.  The most attractive person in the world will start farting in front of you and blaming it on “barking spiders.”

Pro: You’ve got someone helping you pay your bills. 

No longer is it all on your shoulders (or, if you’re a moocher like me, partially on your shoulders and heavily on the shoulders of your parents).  Sure, the cost of living goes up, but when two people are pitching in it just feels easier.

Con: You seem to have more bills than ever, and you sometimes have to pay for someone else’s stuff.  When The Man and I first got married, I had almost $20k saved up.  With school, living in separate states for a while, and the rising price of gas, it was gone in less than a year.  It felt kind of unfair, because if I hadn’t have gotten married I would be sitting pretty right now on a sizeable savings account. 

Pro: You have an awesome and ridiculously handsome/beautiful cheering section rooting for you. 

Life is really hard, and when you live on your own it feels doubly so.  Sure, you can call your mum every day and have her tell you that you’re great, but she birthed you; she better feel that way!  When you’re married you have the opportunity to go home every day to someone who thinks you’re so incredible that they decided to spend the rest of their life with you.  That can be a pretty awesome feeling.  I’m not saying they’re always super excited and happy to see you all the time and you’re so wonderful and everything you do is perfect and oh gosh oh gosh they’re the luckiest person on Earth; I’m saying that when you’re really struggling, they’re there for you.

Con: They know the real you.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have boogers.  And I poop.  And sometimes I lay around all day doing nothing because I am one of the laziest people out there.  Also, I hate washing dishes, and we don’t have a dishwasher.  And The Man sees all of that.  He knows the worst sides of me more than anyone (I mean, he’s seen me without make-up on at least…2 occasions!).  And I get on his nerves sometimes, because living with someone like me is not a cakewalk. 

There are tons of other pros and cons, but due to modern technology people have extremely short attention spans now (myself included) and I don’t want to bore you.

See marriage, like anything else in life, is always going to have good and bad.  It may even have equal amounts of good things and bad things.  The trick is to look qualitatively, not quantitatively.  I have a best friend who has promised to stick with me through hard times and easy times, through wrinkles and fat rolls, through snorting laughs and annoying eating noises.  My future children will have a father who loves them, sets an example for them, and makes sure their needs are provided for.  I have someone who is always pushing me to be a better person, to look at things from a different perspective, to serve more, to love more, and to be more.  And on top of that, he loves to clean!

Sure, maybe I have to be less selfish and of course there will be other people I have chemistry with, but it’s not worth it to me.  Losing what I have and the joy it brings me isn’t worth a year of passion, a nicer apartment, or any of the other things leaving The Man might bring me.

I think we lose track of that in day-to-day life.  We get preoccupied with how monotonous or boring our lives seem, and we forget that it’s really stability and happiness.  In five years when we hit the infamous “seven-year lull,” I hope The Man and I can remember why we’re together, and I hope we fight for this relationship, because it’s a darn good one.