Sharing

Two stories:
When I was first married, my wife used to tell the story of cooking, and how we'd share it -- one day she'd cook, and the next day I'd cook. Then she'd cook, and then we'd have pizza. Then she'd cook, and they we'd have leftovers. Then she'd cook, and then we'd go out to eat. She cooked, she would say, fifty percent of the time, which was what she wanted.

Before we were married, I asked her if it mattered who was the 'head of the family'. I didn't particularly want to be, because I didn't see myself as commanding or all-knowing, but I wondered what we would do if we ever got to a point where somebody had to make a choice. She said we'd just figure it out then, which is what we've done. Or will, if we ever just flat don't agree, and can't work it out.

The impetus for these thoughts: an article in today's Times - an interview with Justice Ginsberg. At the end, the woman doing the interview asked, essentially, if men will ever achieve equality in marriage; her answer was, essentially, probably not. She used her daughter's marriage as an example that change is possible, saying that her daughter's husband 'carries his fair share of the load' as she travels around the world, saying that their arrangement works for them because her daughter is a great cook; later, though, she says that the court can never order a man to do more than simply take out the garbage.

I think that's a snide observation, but I don't know if the underlying implication - that women usually do the heavy lifting in making a relationship work - is true. Years ago, I came across an observation that marriage is an asymmetrical arrangement - sometimes one partner is seventy percent, sometimes the other, usually based on what they're doing at the time. My feeling is that whatever works for the couple is what it ought to be -- there isn't any external right or wrong. For example, to use a pretty common reference: Fairly early in our marriage, I asked my wife if it mattered to her whether the toilet seat was left up, and she said that it did not. I still wondered about it, because I thought it possible that this was the kind of thing that did matter -- all the articles said so -- so that perhaps she was just being nice -- or even, saving it up to use against me later. Nothing she said or did bred this suspicion; it was the articles that would have me believe that this was the way life really was. I do believe that for some, it is. Just, not for me. Not for us.

So I'd say that just as a court can never order a man to do more than simply take out the garbage, it can't order a couple to figure out what makes sense for them, and quit living by what Cosmopolitian thinks. Which is bad news, I guess, for Justice Ginsburg.