This guest article from YourTango was written by Marcus Osborne for GalTime.com.
There are plenty of celebrated relationship obstacles. We’re pretty aware of most of them, right? Money, religion, communication, race, class, national origin … all the greatest hits. Virtually every dating and relationship expert has offered up their best advice on navigating those choppy waters — and why not? So much discussion, debate, and research has been had about those particular flashpoints, so it’s difficult to understand why they remain problem areas at all.
On the other hand, most adults, by the time they’ve gained a certain amount of experience, can hardly claim ignorance. They’ve learned how to remedy the most poisonous of pills in their relationship. But there’s an unrecognized, underplayed threat to couples and potential couples far and wide. That threat is the growing divide between traditionalists and progressives.
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My husband and I have what we call a non-traditional transitional generation marriage – that is, he works a blue collar job and makes a fair wage but I spend just as much time working on my Ph.D. Even though I don’t make as much as he does now on my grad assistant stipend, the day will come when I shoot right past him on the salary scale – and he’s fine with that. The difficulty comes when it’s time to sweep the floor or go grocery shopping – we both tend to fall into traditional roles, but have been very mindful of the strain it’s placing on our relationship and our well-being. I have to make a concerted effort to NOT do everything around the house and he has to make a concerted effort to NOT walk past the pile of laundry. It’s slow-going but it seems to be working. We’ve just learned to be okay with an occasionally messy home!
I think that our society has one foot firmly planted in the past but with only a toe dippied in the waters of cultural change and newness. It’s my belief that most Americans do not like change and that most are pretty conservative–and when change requires hard work and sacrificing of one’s old gender roles that bring about certain conveniences, then more resistence and bucking is seen–and that goes for both men and women. Women do not like giving up their old roles and expnading their minds to accomodate for the new roles of their spouses anymore than your average men. And I think the argument about men’s advantages in society being boiled down exclusively to physicality is pretty uninformed and shallow, to say the least. What about all the brillance that men have brought to just about every sphere and aspect to human evolution, science, math and etc…? While society has changed and being successful in society is no longer (if truly ever) based on one’s strngth and therefore ushers in women, etc., men no longer have to use their strength and can use more of their brains, too. I personally think that whole argument is totally over simplified and completely suspect, but for the sake of argument, men have garnered much advantage to a society that requires more brain work than it once did–every bit as much, if not more than women have.
I have to say that I am not fond of these discussions because they are so shallow and seem to lack a true, complex understanding of people–and most officious me is that I sence gender bias–which I vehemently dislike.
Great post, Marcus.
I don’t think roles have reversed. I think we’re picking and choosing which roles we want to keep and lose.
I admit that I’m a blend of progressive and traditional in terms of gender roles in a relationship.
What I mean by that is I believe men and women should treat each other fairly as human beings and not stereotype or judge each other based on gender.
I also know that we are not created to be exactly the same, so it’s important to understand our roles in a relationship or family.
If a man is biologically built to chase and protect a woman because it makes him feel more masculine or meaningful, then a women would be entertaining the man by letting him do so. After all, it is flattering to be pursued by a man as a woman.
At the same token, if a woman is biologically built to nurture and care for a man, then the man would be entertaining the woman by letting her do so.
I think where things get sticky is when we start making assumptions about the person we’re dealing with and assuming they know where we stand. These things need to be communicated so that we understand which traditional and progressive roles we value, or not, and how we want to love and be loved in return.
I think this is going to be an ongoing discussion for a long time to come.