Weeklies

Some Angry Thoughts on Marriage.

There’s the old, nuanced story embedded in some of us (the “lucky” ones) about the 1950’s-style man who goes out into the world to his job every day, and his pretty wife who runs the household. She says: “This isn’t fair! I need to be an adult among other adults sometimes.” He says: “you think I️ WANT to leave my beautiful home early in the morning and come back late?? I’d much rather stay here in my pajamas and have fun with the kids like you! But someone needs to earn money at my wholesome, Richard Scarry-type job so we can pay off our insanely reasonable mortgage!” The man is from Mars, the woman from Venus. They will never understand each other. She takes to drink, or pills (Advil hadn’t yet been invented, so this would have been something harder). He has an affair with his secretary, who is too young to hate him. They both smoke three packs a day and die young. Neither gets to enjoy outliving the other.

It's trickier for you and me. I’m an artist, a freelancer, or a self-employed person (married mothers: beware a career choice without a concrete title). You, after a long period of self-underemployment (under-self-employment?) during the pandemic, have landed a really nice job managing a machine shop in Greenpoint—maybe the last Richard Scarry job, and perfect for you, because you are a human with the head of a cat (JK JK jK I wish). You wake early, walk the dog, make the coffee, and leave at six. I wake at five thirty with our son and take him to daycare at eight. I pick him up most evenings, too, at five, and put him to bed at eight. I love being with our son a good chunk of the day. More importantly, I know he needs one of us to be with him, being attentive and stable. There’s an understanding between us, you and me, that I need to be the attentive/stable child-carer because of your work. And it’s true: you wouldn’t be able to be as good a worker at your new, demanding job if you were doing more at home. It’s also true that you have gotten more helpful at home. The dog-walking, the coffee-making, the dishwashing, the tidying: I don’t take these hard-won developments the least bit for granted. It’s become clear to me that you try hard.

The unacknowledged thing I need to say here, though, is that I also have—or also had—a demanding job. I’m self-employed, so there’s no obvious punishment for me for working less. There’s no boss to disappoint. At the same time, my working less correlates directly to less income and less success. Self-employed people can’t get away with quietly slacking off the way everyone else can (can they??). Something I suspect many new mothers need to be able to do for at least a couple of years (per kid) in order to keep their jobs.

I have few feelings. I won’t say they’re conflicting, because they aren’t. They coexist nicely. 1, I’m burning up with resentment. 2, I’m full of gratitude. I love spending time with my son. Being with him makes my blood pressure go down. 3, (And up). I don’t love doing all the heavy lifting of parenthood—physically restraining my son to get him to lie still in bed at night, jumping up to get him something to eat or drink or play with every ten seconds. I’d be so glad to do less of the cleaning and fetching and restraining. 4, I love my work. I am so grateful to have time to still do it at all. Grateful for all the childcare and help we do have. Grateful to be employed to the extent that I am. Grateful to be mid- rather than early-career, and hopefully able to weather this dip. 5, terrified by the quieting-down of my career. A no-air-to-breath, rock-crushing-me feeling. Hard to step back and see it in proportion. 6, At the same time, not ungrateful to be forced to take a step back from my formerly frantic work pace—not to work less hard (I don’t want to work less hard!!!) but to carefully assess my way of working and teach myself how to work more playfully. With more joy and less dread. Because the dreadful feeling I’m having now, the fear that my career is failing, is not new. I’ve been ruled by it since I started working, and before. It’s just that it’s taken over.

I need to carefully assess my resentment, too. It’s useful to understand the details of it. I’m not helpless here. I’m highly capable of creating change. Another thing not to take for granted. Another reason for hope, joy, delight.

Here are some drawings I️ made while working through these thoughts.

And one about the work-dread. Do you have it too?

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Behind the paywall: 15 of your magnificent gripes, illustrated. Thank you so much, everyone, for answering - I️ loved reading them a lot. And grinned evilly while drawing them, high praise.