New Project: Chapter 2
Home. Open doors, welcoming arms. The place they have to take you when you return. The place you can’t go back to once you’ve gone. Myth and mystery of cold and warmth, slammed doors, silent alarms. The place you run from. The place you belong.
Before my father died, there was a semblance of balance. My parents fought, but they also kissed. If one of them denied me a bra, the other encouraged me to wear lipstick. Then, suddenly, he was gone and my mother couldn’t afford the rent. Pack it up. Pack it in. Move on.
After awhile, my mother had a string of boyfriends. With each of them, she was different. The shifts were subtle, showing up as new interests or convictions, but they were as hideous as the men disingenuous. I partied with them sometimes.
“Here honey, have a sip.”
“Take a hit.”
“Wanna come along?”
At fifteen, I met my first love while at a bar with my mom. He was wonderful. He wrote me songs. I quit the track team to be with him and let my homework slide. I, too, was a chameleon changing color for a man. That’s what we’re taught. Lure him then keep him any way you can.
The formula for toxic love goes like this:
Empty yourself just a little to make room for what matters to him.
Give up things you love to spend time with him.
Help him.
Expect him to reciprocate.
Resent him and guilt him when he doesn’t.
Take the blame when things go wrong.
Though an age-old recipe for disaster, it’s also grandma’s secret to landing and keeping a man. Even when we don’t want to believe it, even when we think we’re better than that, the recipe is handed down and served up on college campuses, at family dinners, and at church potlucks again and again and again. Most movies, TV shows, songs, and books script the same narrative. He’s got a life. She’s got a love interest. If she’s worthy, she’ll earn herself a man. In this way, men are currency. In this way, feminism doesn’t stand.
Feminists would argue that women are perpetual victims. They are written out of history. Their voices are silenced in boardrooms, bedrooms, and courtrooms across the land. As women age, their self-esteem diminishes and their confidence crumbles because, to paraphrase Gloria Steinem, they bear witness to their own absence.
However, in the recipe for toxic love, women are not made absent from their lives. They choose to be absent. Nobody likes this, but once the ingredients are mixed the meal is inevitable and we choke it down.
Fifty years after second-wave feminism took its stand, educated women still choose to be absent when it comes to their home lives. In most instances, these women are not victims. They are perpetrators of their own demise. They are caregivers by choice; sacrificial martyrs who give themselves up to get what they want and then get stuck in a pattern. Feminists would have us believe that the unpaid emotional labor women expend is anathema to a healthy society. I would argue that there may have been a time when a man would let a crying child starve before doing a woman’s job, but those times are, for the most part, gone. Most men do not make women caregive. Women caregive because they believe it’s what they must do to win and keep the love of a man.
In her book, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, Anne-Marie Slaughter says, “Not valuing caregiving is the taproot, the deeper problem that gives rise to distortion and discrimination in multiple areas of American society.” She believes that focus on care and caregiving will change the way men and women relate. However, Slaughter does not argue for women to care less. She argues for men, corporations, and governments to care more.
This is a fundamental problem. Even Slaughter acknowledges the fact that women don’t like to let men caregive and will often convince themselves and everyone else that the men are doing it wrong. Women do this to be indispensable. If men pick up the slack then women aren’t important, grandma’s recipe won’t work, and love won’t last.
The morning after my epiphany, I told Steve about it. At first, he didn’t understand. Defenses kicked in because he thought he was under attack.
“I can’t do anything right,” he said.
The morning was clear, the sun bright. Tall, yellow grass bent in the wind. In the distance, the lake sparkled like a gem. I took his hand, squeezed it tight.
“No. You do most things right. I need you to hear me this time. I realized something last night. I gave up my garden to hold your hand. I quit reading to sit on the couch next to you. I gave up things I love to be close to you.
You didn’t ask me to do any of that. You accepted it, didn’t question it, because in your mind, I’m autonomous, but somewhere along the line I lost that sense of myself. I want you to tell me I matter, to show me I matter because I somehow lost my self-worth. I keep asking you to prove your love by doing things that are not in your nature. You keep trying. You keep failing because they’re not in your nature. But you try. That means I do matter to you. It means I have worth in your eyes. I’ve been so focused on what I don’t get, I missed what you give. That makes me wrong. It also means I have to reclaim my life and I’m terrified.”
Steve shook his head. “Of what? Why?”
“What will you do with my absence? How will you fill the time? Will you miss me or will you forget me? Truly, honey, I’m petrified.”
Steve cupped my face in his hands. He kissed me and wiped a tear from my cheek. “I fell in love with a strong, independent woman. I am still in love with a strong, independent woman. You think you’re lost, but I see you and you’re amazing. You will never lose me by taking care of yourself. I might get annoyed sometimes, but hell, I’m a man.”
He laughed, blue eyes bright, as I slapped his arm.
