Parent/child issues in marriages

[nancylebov]

http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2005/11/growing_up_and_.html

And part of that paradigm of the "guest in one's own house" was the feeling that I was "doing chores." I swept floors (badly), did laundry (mixing colors and temperatures) and ran errands (and forgot things). And indeed, in my head it was much more about pleasing my wife (or, as I would have put it then, "getting her off my case") than it was about partnership. I would do these chores, thinking about how I was only doing these things because she wanted me to. I thought about how if I were single, I wouldn't have to do these things. I wallowed in passive-aggressive self-pity. Frankly, it was pathetic.

I've never been married, but some of the issues sound vaguely familiar somehow anyway.

Comments

[lexin.livejournal.com]

I'm like that and I live alone. But as Quentin Crisp said, the dust doesn't get any worse after six months.

dust

[jlw.livejournal.com]

New and improved dust. The version I remember was four years.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Explicit and clear negotiation with honesty and compatible levels of willingness to compromise on both sides can really get around this one.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Of course, but for a lot of people, it's no small thing to get to that point.

[hughcasey.livejournal.com]

I am married, and it's more than vaguely familiar, let me tell you.

[kressel.livejournal.com]

I wrote about this issue on my website, though it's from a female and Jewish perspective. It's called The Essential Ingredient, and though for me it's a personal favorite, it doesn't get as many hits as my other articles.

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that it's all about personal responsibility, and thus isn't contained to any one set of relationships. A teenager could as easily wail, "The professor's so _mean_, he's making me do _tons_ of homework!" without ever realizing that sie can, in fact, choose not to do the homework and take the failing grade and the results thereof. Or the single man could grumble about the boss 'making' him come into work on the weekend...no, no one's making him. He could choose to say 'no' and take the risk of loosing status at work. Everything we do, as an adult, is a matter of choice. And I think, sometimes, that most parents do _not_ prepare children for the reality of that. A lot of people leave their parents' homes with no concept of personal responsibility, or even cause-and-effect as it applies to life.

I do find it rather...hmm...amusing, I guess...that the writer's realization of personal responsibility came through conversion to a religion that believes in such concepts as original sin and salvation through an external source. Nothing against christians...technically, am probably a christian myself...but the philosophy of, say, buddhism, or any other karma/balance based belief system would be more likely to result in such an epiphany, IMO. Just goes to show that there are a million roads to get to the same place, I guess.

V

[still-asking.livejournal.com]

I get only marginal satisfaction from 'completing my chores' but I can really enjoy making my house look better.

Issac Bonewits would, if I recall his outlook correctly, consider that magical thinking - chaging consiousness thu will.

[still-asking.livejournal.com]

Issac, do you have an LJ?