Me and my wife have always prided ourselves on being free from the shackles of gender roles. We wrote out own script.
The price you pay for writing your own script in marrige, like in anything else, is that you're on you own. It's on YOU to make sense of it. There is no one to ask. It's sort of like being an aethist - you've abandoned god and your fellow men and have to make sense of your life on your own.
It was good for a few years but shit just got real - we are expecting our first kid in three months. And we both suspiciously find ourselves falling into the gender roles we've fought. They feel comfortable like an old sofa that has learned the shape of your body.
My wife is suddenly ok with not working for some time, she often jokes(?) about never wanting to go back to work. She talks to her parents and my parents much more. It's clear that we will need their support. Since she has stopped working she is taking care of things around the house much more and I don't think about this stuff.
Maybe we were rebels without a cause? But I don't think so. In every other area of life I've chosen to do my own thinking and live by my own rules. For me that has always worked out better. But this might be the real test.
First of all, congratulations! A first child is a BIG life transition - you will notice a lot of things changing about each of you, some that don't fit into the narrative you had about yourselves or one another from pre-parenthood. It's really hard to tell whether these changes are temporary to accommodate this transition, or a complete rewrite of who you are individually, as well as a couple. The 'not knowing' is the harder bit to deal with than the reversal of gender roles.
But you know what? You will still continue to live by your own rules and it will be a mix of rules from the past, and some trying to overcompensate for it, but the mix itself is something you will own entirely by yourselves. It's just worth acknowledging that this freedom comes with costs. Else, you may end up running a high cash burn marriage ;)
Banger post.
Me and my wife have always prided ourselves on being free from the shackles of gender roles. We wrote out own script.
The price you pay for writing your own script in marrige, like in anything else, is that you're on you own. It's on YOU to make sense of it. There is no one to ask. It's sort of like being an aethist - you've abandoned god and your fellow men and have to make sense of your life on your own.
It was good for a few years but shit just got real - we are expecting our first kid in three months. And we both suspiciously find ourselves falling into the gender roles we've fought. They feel comfortable like an old sofa that has learned the shape of your body.
My wife is suddenly ok with not working for some time, she often jokes(?) about never wanting to go back to work. She talks to her parents and my parents much more. It's clear that we will need their support. Since she has stopped working she is taking care of things around the house much more and I don't think about this stuff.
Maybe we were rebels without a cause? But I don't think so. In every other area of life I've chosen to do my own thinking and live by my own rules. For me that has always worked out better. But this might be the real test.
First of all, congratulations! A first child is a BIG life transition - you will notice a lot of things changing about each of you, some that don't fit into the narrative you had about yourselves or one another from pre-parenthood. It's really hard to tell whether these changes are temporary to accommodate this transition, or a complete rewrite of who you are individually, as well as a couple. The 'not knowing' is the harder bit to deal with than the reversal of gender roles.
But you know what? You will still continue to live by your own rules and it will be a mix of rules from the past, and some trying to overcompensate for it, but the mix itself is something you will own entirely by yourselves. It's just worth acknowledging that this freedom comes with costs. Else, you may end up running a high cash burn marriage ;)