Wednesday, July 17, 2002

To Take Care Of Them

Occasionally, I'm asked about marriage. Specifically, will I get married again?

Although I would not put money on the prospect, I never say never.

Saying never has a habit of coming back and biting me on the ass, hard.

My standard response on the topic is that marriage is nothing more than societally sanctioned prostitution -- women exchanging sexual favors and domestic labor for economic security for themselves and their offspring.

As I hate cleaning up after myself and know I have no stomach for tending to others, the prospect of being someone's maid, laundress, cook, and whore is just not attractive. Especially since I am self supporting and see no children in my immediate future.

There is an essay in the NYTimes expressing just these feelings -- although less bluntly -- from the perspective of senior women. The gist is older women are not looking to get married again, while older men are.

Even though I am merely 31, this was the paragraph I identified with -- although the whole piece is worth reading :

The reasons to me are quite obvious. I had a good marriage, I loved my husband dearly for over 40 years. I was devastated when I lost him. But by now I have built a life of living alone. It was not easy; it was hard work and took an emotional toll, but I found it had its perks. My widow friends know them, too: we are not responsible for another person's comfort, we come and go as we please, eat when and what we like, we are not vulnerable to someone else's moods. As one friend put it bluntly: "I never want to do a laundry for a man again."

The paragraph highlighting why older men want to get married is also telling:

But the men in our age group seem to want something quite different. They want a wife. They want what they had before, a woman in the house to do all the things that a wife is supposed to do — which is, to wrap it up under one big label, To Take Care of Them.

Yack.

Taking care of myself is more than enough daily drudgery.

Click here to read the rest of Who Needs A Husband?

posted by Bohica at 2:36 PM