Reclaiming Wife

May 2012

Reclaiming Wife: The Weight of the World

Body image posts are hard. They're hard for people to read and hard for people to discuss, even on APW. This makes me sad. It makes me sad because I feel like Western Women have been fed a poison pill about our bodies, and instead of valuing them for what amazing tools they are, we spend our lives beating our bodies up, and then trying to come to some sort of reluctant truce with them. This leaves us unable to converse with other women in supportive ways, because different perspectives might harm our tentative peace we've struck with ourselves. But. What APW Editor Maddie had to say about putting on fifty pounds after getting married, grappling with that emotionally, and still loving the shit out of herself, was so important that we had to publish it. So please don't read Maddie's experience as filling in for your own. Instead, let it stand as one super smart woman's experience, and let it guide a conversation about your own thoughts. (Fingers crossed!)
A few weeks ago, a tweet came through my Twitter feed that went something like this:

I've gained ten pounds since my wedding. I feel like such a failure.

No stranger to the post-wedding weight gain myself, it was the last part that stopped me cold. Failure. At first I was so angry I couldn't see straight. FAILURE?! Really?! How are we allowing a society to exist in which a ten-pound weight gain amounts to failure? I wanted to reach through the computer and shake the person on the other end and say, "You aren't failing! The world is failing you!"

But then I was mostly sad. Because I remember that feeling. It happened to me when I looked in the mirror, not more than two years after my own wedding; I noticed the stretch marks that had settled on my body after a particularly grueling start to married life left me with fifty pounds of excess body mass and a chubbiness that had begun to show in my face.

For me, the change wasn't gradual. I instantly gained back the twenty pounds I'd lost before the wedding when I decided to throw away our pots and pans mid-move in anticipation of getting a new set as a registry gift. Well, the wedding came and went. And the move came and went. And we didn't get our pots and pans. So after we got married, we ate frozen pizza for three months until we could afford a new set and in the meantime basked in the glow of being newlyweds in a shiny new apartment with a newfound freedom and DVR'd episodes of Glee to catch up on.

Then we got our dog. Saddled with sleepless nights and too much overtime, our routine—which was once made up of bonding over home-cooked dinners—quickly turned to running down the street for—ready for it—fresh pizza and scarfing it down before one of us passed out on the couch from sheer exhaustion. My Christmas present that year was our one-year-later honeymoon to Mexico and an extra thirty pounds of midsection. Gee, thanks, you shouldn't have.

But it doesn't matter how I gained the weight or even how much I gained. What matters is how I felt afterwards. I'd lost and gained weight before, mostly the same twenty pounds in college, usually because I couldn't keep my hands away from the cafeteria cookies and because I didn't understand that one cookie is a serving, not seven (which is bullshit, if you ask me). But this time it was different. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: The Weight of the World

Posted in: Gender & Feminism, Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 361 Comments »

May 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Taking The Long Road

This week we're talking about Changes. Specifically, how changes can be profoundly hard, but still not break you. Yesterday Tristan talked about changing his name to his wife's, and Francie discussed the profound changes that can come during a wedding ceremony. Today, APW Editor Maddie asked her mom to be here to talk about her divorces. That's right. Her multiple divorces (take that, taboos), and how she survived and in the end thrived. But, as all posts from mothers are (have you asked your mom to write an APW post yet?) this post is a big one. Huge, actually. It's about a whole life, and it will make you cry (NSFW). Now, it's my honor to give you Jennifer:

When my daughter Maddie asked me to write something about overcoming the loss of a fairy tale (I don't think those were her exact words), I didn't know where to start. I knew what she was looking for theoretically, but putting important experiences into words is her forte, not mine. Mine is just plain old perseverance. I make lists. I check things off the lists. It's what I do. I even make lists for other people. Ask my husband; he loves lists. He always knows what I'm looking for based on his list. Nope, no mind reading or mixed messages in our house. Just lists. Now that I think of it, my wedding vows to him were a list: Top Ten Reasons to Marry John Brooks—presented in full color—Letterman style. A big hit.

Maddie taught me about lists. It was in the wake of getting dumped—again—by someone I really loved. I was sitting at my kitchen island crying with her sister Casey consoling me when she called. Her words would change my life and how I looked at everything. She asked me if I remembered the movie Runaway Bride. I said yes. She asked me if I remembered Julia Roberts' character only eating the eggs her fiancés liked. I did. Her next few words set off a light bulb in my head—a bright one that still burns. “Mom, you need to decide what kind of eggs you like.”

Casey and I then started my list. We listed every attribute I was looking for in a partner—something I had never thought about in my 38 years. These are the attributes beyond attraction. These are the ones that make for a real live lifetime union, the ones that meet the in-sickness-and-in-health standards. I was so busy trying to fulfill everyone else's criteria, I had never stopped to create my own. I had doomed myself to misery and lost fairy tales by not looking beyond nice teeth and a sense of humor. Brilliant work, Jennifer.

So, from here I will take what I have learned and share it with you in list form. It's not the same as my other bulleted lists; it's more of a numbered tutorial on survival. This is a list of what-ifs and what-to-do-ifs when the road to happiness gets rough...or turns into a Thelma and Louise kind of ride.

Keep on Truckin': These are the only words I remember from my first wedding—a toast aimed at my groom, delivered by a large, bearded, biker-looking dude I had never met, and who I would have feared had I met him in a secluded area. Looking back, that toast would become my unspoken mantra, not my ex-husbands. For me, that first fairy tale (yes the first— I'm a slow learner) ended abruptly. It wasn't good; waking up at age twenty-two and realizing you're not a real princess, after finding out the night before that Charming cheated on you, makes for a real dream crusher. Throw in two baby girls and one on the way in weeks and your fairy tale dreams are not just ruined; you are in the dungeon alone with your kids and a fiery dragon named What the F*ck Do I Do Now. Moments like this tend to bring clarity. If the immediate moment fails you, as it did for me, plan a family outing to the social services office to apply for welfare. Here, your babies may be offered bubble gum by a very large, braless, toothless woman wearing jeans and a laundry-bag-mesh shirt. Wait... did I mention braless? Yeah. That brings clarity. This is where I learned I didn't like Dependent Housewife Eggs. I liked College Education Eggs. So I got me some. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Taking The Long Road

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 49 Comments »

May 2012

Reclaiming Husband: The Name Game

One of the issues I'm most passionate about in weddings and marriage is name changing. Not because I think everyone should do it one way (far from it), but because I think it's an extremely complicated issue for most women (even if the complication is, "I want to change my name and I feel fine about it; SHOULD I feel fine about it?") and it's an issue most men don't even think about. In my most passionate plea on the subject I wrote Name Changing: Don't Be Quiet About It, trying to get us all to make a personal issue into one our partners, and hopefully society, shared. So, I'm just beyond thrilled to give you Tristan (a huge APW reader!), the groom in last week's joyful courthouse wedding, writing about taking his wife's last name. His post goes to the heart of partnership and the real emotional power of names.

Erika and I, like many readers of APW, slid gently into engagement rather than in one momentous display. First came discussions about whether either of us was even in favor of marriage (previously, we were both firmly opposed—funny how finding the right person changes your mind on that subject). We discussed conceptual children and what became very real plans to move across the country. There is still some disagreement between us whether I asked her to take her name (her contention) or if she beat me to the punch (which is the clear memory that I have) but not long after we decided to get married, before we even announced it to the world, we knew I'd be taking her last name. It wasn't a very fraught decision. I know it's supposed to be a big deal for the husband to take the wife's name, but for us it just wasn't. We wanted to share a name to symbolize that we were a family together, and since we'd both come of age in pretty strong queer communities, we knew we didn't have to abide by anyone's rules but the ones we made for ourselves. We didn't really get any push back from the people in our lives, and while my parents were a little reticent at first, they recognized that there wasn't any reason I shouldn't take Erika's name other than “tradition.”

The whole process was complicated by neither of us using our birth names in our day-to-day lives. Her “last name” was her professional last name (she's an actor), which she hadn't yet gotten around to legally changing. This was another reason for me to take her name; Erika had already established a professional identity under that name. For her, that name was her brand. If that been the only issue, we could have just selected her stage name for both of us when we signed the marriage license. But I had been using a different first name for over twenty years (anyone who learned my legal first name tended to be baffled by how wrong it was for me), so clearly, this was an opportunity for us to get all our names changed in one fell swoop. I would change my entire name, first and last, and when we married she would “take” her own professional name.

In California, at least, changing your name through the courts (which I had to do because I was changing my first name as well as my last) is a fairly involved and somewhat expensive process. I got advice from a transwoman I work with, but she'd done it years ago with assistance from the transgender law center, and so some of her experience was glossed over and out of date. In June I filled out the numerous forms. I paid a lawyer to look them over and was glad I did; as with any legal document there was plenty to get wrong. Another $400 and a month later I had a court date, then two months more, to give time to publish my name change for six weeks in a local weekly (another $100). (As late as 2007, this was the only way a man in California could take his wife's name; at over $600 dollars vs. $80, one could see why it would get challenged under the equal protection clause). However, as I was changing both my given name and my surname, that victory for equality in the California court system did not, alas, help me. Continue reading Reclaiming Husband: The Name Game

Posted in: Gender & Feminism, Reclaiming Wife, Tradition | 64 Comments »

May 2012

BackTalk: Women, Marriage, and Money—A Response to The New York Times

(Note! We're playing around with an extra Friday feature for the first time today. It's tentatively called BackTalk and will be quick responses from me, and sometimes the staff, to current news articles or trend stories, or short form discussion of wedding planning. Then, next up, we'll have Ask Team Practical to close the week. Since we're just getting our feet wet and figuring out what works, no fancy logo or anything yet. —Meg)

It's possible that I've never had a news article show up as often in my Twitter feed with a desperate plea for APW discussion than the recent New York Times article about joint finances called, "In Marriage, the Unseen Bottom Line." The comments were mostly in the vein of, "This article makes me livid, but hey! They quoted Caitlin Moran!"

As most of you know, I'm a long time (feminist) advocate of pooling your financial resources (see: marriage as mini-socialism). But this article, the couples that were pooling their financial resources scared the shit out of me. I suddenly understood people's reticence to pool resources. Because yes, if pooling family resources meant that I couldn't spend money without my partner's say-so, or that I ceded all personal responsibility for knowing the nature of our finances (this is dangerous stuff, women of the world, whether you pool your finances or not), you bet I'd think it was anti-feminist to pool finances. Here are some key quotes:

A completely unscientific snap poll of 44 girlfriends in Europe and the United States — all highly educated, in their 30s and in relationships, most with children and a job — showed that 41 pooled at least some money with their partners. Dissecting what constitutes joint spending makes for an intriguing study in gender equality: Milk and diapers rarely cause disputes. But what about postnatal yoga? Or haircuts, invariably more expensive for women than men?

I asked Paul, Rachel’s husband, why he felt that shoes (and, it turns out, makeup and clothes! What am I doing wrong?) should be paid for by the joint account. “There are so many explicit and implicit requirements on how a woman should look,” he said. You shouldn’t be punished financially for being female, he said. Caitlin Moran, author of the best-selling “How to Be a Woman,” called it a tax on being a woman.

When women have children and one parent, still usually the mother, sacrifices at least some earnings to maternity leave or part-time work or a less ambitious career, the notion of equality would seem to demand that both parents pool their (often different) incomes and decide on an identical spending allowance. But in my mini-survey, 30 of the 41 women with joint accounts preferred keeping their (often lower) salaries in a personal account and paying a pro-rated amount into the family pool in order to enjoy some unscrutinized spending. “I know that a lot of my spending is frivolous, and I couldn’t defend it if you shoved a spreadsheet in my face.”

But if the women spend the money, the guys control it. Only one of the friends I interviewed is in charge of family finances ... What it is with us liberated women? We took care of our financial affairs when we were single. Why do we give up control when a man shows up? “It’s boring,” groaned one French friend — a banker, no less — echoing many others. “I’m rubbish at math,” said another. It’s just a division of labor, suggested a third. “He is finance minister, and I am minister of culture and entertainment.” —Read the Whole Article

But with all of my reservations about the Jimmy Cho shopping on the sly, out-of-control-of-the-family-finances way that women were portrayed in the article, I felt that some of the questions that the piece was asking were key. Continue reading BackTalk: Women, Marriage, and Money—A Response to The New York Times

Posted in: Gender & Feminism, Marriage, Meg's Thoughts, Reclaiming Wife | 342 Comments »

May 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Living Apart

I hear a lot about married couples living apart these days. I mean, a lot. There are a lot of APW readers and a lot of my friends doing it (please refer to this post on thriving despite hardships). This makes sense to me. The economy is an epic disaster, particularly for the young, so if you're young and ambitious, you take opportunities where you can get them... even if they are on opposite sides of the country. Plus, we're a country at war (whether or not we talk about it often enough), and there are tons of couples going through deployments, often over and over and over. The thing is, despite knowing that couples are in the trenches with this every single day, I've found very little discussion or support for this reality. I think it's a painful topic for us to discuss culturally ("How have we done this to our youth?"). It's easier to focus on the entitled young than on the sacrificing young. And the less we talk about a subject, the more shame builds, and the less we talk about it. So with that in mind, let's dive in to Lily's post on living 3,000 miles away from your spouse.

This week was spring break at the University of Maryland, where I work and go to school, so naturally I went to California to visit my husband. We got married last July and are currently living 3,000 miles away from each other. By choice.

You see, I had an amazing opportunity to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Maryland in College Student Personnel, where I get to think about all the things I love. I get to study counseling, and organizations, and how colleges work, and I get to do it for free, which is pretty unbelievable. I have an assistantship that lets me work in my field (student affairs, yay!) and gives me tuition remission, a stipend, and health insurance. My husband is also a smarty-pants and is working on his doctorate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, my alma mater, where we met (go Banana Slugs!). When I got my acceptance, it was unfathomable that I wouldn’t go. UMD was my reach school and, by far and away, the cheapest. No student loans and the best education? How could we turn that down? We got engaged, and I moved cross-country.

We got married the summer between the two years of my program for completely practical reasons. We wanted to be able to take advantage of the ease that marriage might give us when doing a national job search together. Since then we have spent about every other month together, since his schedule is very flexible while he finishes his dissertation. The last few months before we graduate and this long distance ends will be much harder, though, with less time together, and more time tending our separate homes.

I wish that this post could do something like what many other posts on APW do for me; give clarity, provide some a-ha moment about a shared experience, or analyze a phenomenon that some (or many?) of us experience. But in reality it is more an opportunity for me to lay this all out on the internet for others. Because it is at once the best and a totally stupid decision for us, and after eight months, I am starting to get tired of wrestling with it. Here are some things I think about often:

How I talk about it with others: This is probably the most difficult. Very few people understand. Only others who have done it before, or who know people who have, don’t require a long explanation. These people are amazing and are a source of comfort, but I have stopped meeting them, because I have started to lie. I say “my husband is out of town” or “my husband travels a lot for work.” This is mostly for self-preservation, as it is tiring to have to explain the situation constantly. This all goes to hell though, when I want to tell a story about my husband's roommates. That phrase tends to get the most raised eyebrows. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Living Apart

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 120 Comments »

May 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Big Risks for Big Rewards

So it turns out, when we asked you for moving posts last week, there was more this community had to say on the topic than we could possibly imagine. Which makes sense. At this point in most of our lives, we're in a state of transition, of moving forward. Possibly literally and certainly metaphysically, we're all in a state of moving. Which isn't to say this week is about packing boxes. It's not. It's about going the distance in a whole variety of ways. So today is in two parts. First, we have a Reclaiming Wife post from Lauren McGlynn (with her adorable Texas courthouse wedding photos) about uprooting her life and her business and moving to Scotland to be with her husband. Then, this afternoon we have Lauren's amazing Scottish wedding. So let's dive in. This one has huge lessons for all of us.

The year that Aidan & I got married was one of the craziest years of my life. A timeline of that year goes something like this:

Me: B&B cook and aspiring wedding photographer. Him: Philosophy PhD candidate.

January: Aidan and I are engaged!

February: I photograph my first wedding and I love it.

March: People start booking me to photograph their weddings in the fall. I am thrilled.

April: Aidan and I get married in Texas.

May: Aidan and I get married in Scotland.

June: Aidan stays in Scotland while I move to North Carolina to live on my friend’s blueberry farm in the hopes of picking up some weddings so that we can have some money. I can’t legally work in Scotland and he can’t legally work in the States during the summers.

July: Aidan and I talk on the computer a lot. I photograph more weddings in North Carolina.

August: After two months, neither of us can stand being apart anymore, so Aidan flies to the farm, decides that he can not stand the heat, nor the insects, nor the lack of air conditioning (he is a delicate Scottish flower after all), so we drive back to Texas where it is hotter but there is AC.

September-October: I photograph lots of weddings.

November: I am laid off from my job. My new husband, still living on mere grad student salary, tells me not to look for another job, that I better make this photography thing work. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, I marvel over my good fortune at marrying such a person. I dump more money than I have ever spent on anything into advertising.

December: I start booking weddings like a crazy person.

January: Aidan is offered a Philosophy post doc… in Scotland.

Did you hear that? That record scratch? Is your neck tingling in sympathetic whiplash? Because what’s happening here is that both of our dreams are coming true—ON SEPARATE CONTINENTS.

When I met Aidan he was still a PhD student, and I had recently dropped out of grad school to work at a grocery store. I usually like to dress that up a little to make it sound more respectable by adding that it was a small neighborhood grocery store and that they sold lots of organic cereal and stuff. But whatever: When I met Aidan I was making seven dollars and hour working a mindless job at a lame grocery store. When Aidan finally came through my line, the first thing I did was add "Scottish accent" to the top of my list of sexy man things. After a few months of getting to know each other over brief one-to-three minute checkout line interactions we went out on a date.

A few months later we had a conversation where I asked him how serious he was feeling about our relationship. He made some very serious noises, but then he told me that the future of our relationship depended on me being willing to move wherever he got a job. That might be Canada, that might be the UK, that might be the middle of nowhere Alabama. At the time my career had progressed from grocery store clerk to chopping down trees with a chainsaw then dragging them through a chigger infested desert field as an Americorps volunteer, so I was like: Yeah sure, sounds good to me. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Big Risks for Big Rewards

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife | 64 Comments »

Reclaiming Wife

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