I have been thinking a lot lately about gender roles. As I look back on my relationship with Mike, I see that we were both quite conservative in our ideas about how men and women should act towards each other and in society. Mike was the traditional breadwinner and attached a lot of his sense of self to his career, as men seem wont to do. I mostly stayed home and cared for the house and the children in the way my mother had done before me, working only as a sideline subordinate to my home duties. However, we met and married in the late sixties and early seventies, a time of huge change and turmoil. Our emulation of our parents was a crumbling pattern that is not even available to my sons and their wives. They must all work, and childcare and family life have a different cast and different pressures.
What I see now in our society is a great backlash against the changes that have recently occurred in the relationship between men and women. The current urge to elevate old rigid ideas of masculinity and undermine the gains of women in agency and power looks to me like the desperate scratching of a disintegrating patriarchy. I hope so, because that pattern has trapped everyone, men and women, in straightjackets of conformity that prevent each gender from becoming whole. Most of us are born as one sex or the other, but none of us are completely feminine or masculine. Patriarchy requires us to suppress the “opposite” side of ourselves and casts us into a dichotomy of us versus them. (I assume matriarchy would also tend this way, but matriarchies have been rare in recorded history.) Men must behave in one way, and women another, with the male roles being the most tyrannical, both in their demands on men and their effect on women. I don’t think this works anymore.
Part of what motivates these thoughts right now for me is my grief at losing Mike, and my ongoing assessment of our relationship, which has been thrown into high relief by his death. Like I said, we were old school in the outward forms of our marriage, and we went through the usual trials of maturing and working out how we would be. We both chafed at various times against our own and each other’s expectations and of course, we were humans, not saints. In the end though, what we achieved was a true partnership, which made us very lucky.
Now I know that our eventual success stemmed partly from Mike’s personality and what was his unusual, maybe even feminine, ability to feel and express love. He was a guy who liked traditional guy things like fast cars and building stuff, but from the very first he showed a devotion and love to me that never dissipated. He thought I was smart and he liked that about me. He actively worked to support my happiness. A good example is when he encouraged me to leave my dull job and enroll in a four year program at an expensive private art school. That experience changed my life, but the financial burden fell completely on him. He never once complained and cheered my successes. Our children shared in his love. He was active in the boy’s lives and frequently lamented how much time away from them his work demanded. He was always physically affectionate to me and the boys, free with quick hugs and passing kisses. He noticed small things. Once, when we were visiting my cousin, he saw that my shoe was untied and knelt down to tie it. My cousin said later that she wished she had a man who would do that for her, but I hardly noticed it at the time, because it was just the kind of thing Mike did. Not subservience, but pure, loving generosity. Within the traditional parameters of our marriage, he transcended the strong, silent, domineering stereotype and gave me freely the love that he felt. He treasured me, and this is important, allowed me to become more myself. A lot of my ruminations now revolve around how well I returned the favor. I now see that I could have done better (why did he have to die to clarify this?) but I did well enough for us to reach a mutually respectful, mutually admiring relationship that I think points to a future pattern that we should all be working towards. My experience says that men and women are different, but not opposites. Women need options and opportunities, men need connection and caring. Softening and fusing traditional gender roles is confusing and stressful, but in the end, I hope it will lead to more fully realized, loving, complete human beings and a safer, more hopeful future. Love is the key.
Raven and Sparrow 
