Anne’s been amazing this week. As I’ve mentioned, our weekday evenings are short, but in recent months they’ve been mostly fraught. She brought the stresses of her job home with her and dumped them on me more or less aggressively before we both tried to empty our minds with the aid of a sitcom or two. It didn’t feel good for either of us.
This week my kisses have been received with delighted laughter and she’s been something entirely new—easy-going. She’s mostly been leaving work at work and at home, going with the flow.
When she wants something from me, she’s been asking in a nice way. “Honey, would you mind getting something down from the shelf for me?” “How would you feel about having fish tonight?” “Do you think you might have time to write Aunt Jane about seeing that play with her later this month?” In the past, I might have heard a frustrated “Could you get this for me?” “We should have fish tonight,” or “You need to write Aunt Jane a note.” The difference in my own reaction is enormous. Where before I often felt put upon, now I want to leap into action. My woman needs my help!
As we were getting ready for bed last night I told her that I couldn’t be more happy about how she’d been treating me this week. “Have you been reading some sort of reference book or something?” I asked with a smile, knowing how unlikely that was. But the difference has been so dramatic. It’s as if she’d picked up The Surrendered Wife or something. In reality, I think she’d sooner shave her head than pick up The Surrendered Wife.
Anne is a true child of the ’70s, and those of you who were around back then know what that means. Ms. magazine, “I Am Woman,” second-wave feminism, “A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle.” The facts are that women—including Anne—were often treated condescendingly or contemptuously by male authorities, peers and co-workers, and it took an emphatic response to change that. But the steely defensiveness that comes with a societal movement is a terrible thing to bring home to your family. Anne has still got it, although she’s starting to let it go.
At the same time, there have always been hints that Anne might be happier if her man weren’t always the strictly egalitarian, turtleneck-wearing, sensitive guy who was the New Man to the ’70s New Woman.
For one thing, the men she responds to on TV and in the movies aren’t like that at all. When we finally watched one of her favorite movies, The Sound of Music, together, she confided to me that her masculine ideal was Christopher Plummer’s character, Captain von Trapp. This is a guy who, as the movie starts, has his family so regimented that the kids march in military drill when he blows a whistle! It seemed perfectly likely to me that his marriage would include the occasional spanking. There’s more than one way to solve a problem like Maria…
By contrast, her adjective of choice for a male character she doesn’t like is “weak.”
Another thing: Because we’ve always had two jobs, we’ve always had two cars. But when we go somewhere together, it’s always understood that I drive. I never insisted on this, never lobbied for it. It just seemed to happen.
Likewise, I take care of the household finances. I have Quicken, and I spend an average of 20 minutes a day entering bills, tracking investments and projecting balances. Anne doesn’t look at any of it. Sometimes when we’ve been at odds, she’s brought up this inequality as something that troubles her. But when I set up a shared hard drive and installed Quicken on her own computer, she never opened it.
And one more thing. A couple of times in the past few years, when asked what I wanted for my birthday, I asked for her obedience for the day. The first time, it took her about a week to agree. But she did, and I made sure we had a great day: fun sex in the morning, a long walk by the water in the afternoon, dinner out in the evening. In truth, nothing too challenging or out of the ordinary, but it was directed by me.
Anne just glowed with happiness, that day and for a couple days after. The fact is, Anne likes me to run things. She just wants me to run things the way she’d like.
I love to please her. Like the dominant partners of the blogs I read, I consider her happiness crucial.
The question is, what will happen when I start being my own version of Captain von Trapp?
