Life: Marriage Of True Minds

In Daily Life today there’s an interesting article on women who supposedly view marriage as an achievement, strived for like a promotion or an award.

It shook up some thoughts in my pretty head about this supposed ‘movement’.

• Finding a partner in any form, one who forgives your crazy and overlooks your bad habits is an achievement, wedding or not, gay or straight.
• Ever hear of the donkey and the racehorse phenomenon? The racehorse and the donkey share a paddock. They become life partners but the donkey will always be not as beautiful or as talented but they’re okay with that. Maybe some people are happy being the donkey, or they swap roles sometimes?
• Princess Catherine neé Middleton is criticised for being the poster girl of this movement but she works every time she heads out into the world. Honestly if you think she isn’t busy and isn’t stressed about her life and the criticism and expectation then you’re crazy. If we tried a day of it then I am sure we would buckle under the pressure. Look what it did to her departed Mother-in -law.
• Does being married mean you don’t believe in feminism?
• Since the beginning of time there are women and men whose goal was to marry up, either financially or status wise to get themselves out of the life they don’t like.

To me, marriage is to stand up as a couple, in front of those nearest to you and saying, ‘Hey we’re about to head down this path, we might make it, we hope we do, look out for us, check in and help us if we stumble.’

At no point during my own wedding did I feel I was letting the suffragettes down, but then I  was raised by a man and then subsequently married a man who believes in equal rights for everyone.

A friend of mine was recently at a restaurant in the city. She overheard young men talking at the table next to her, about their needs for a wife. Their demands were:

• Being wife ready, which included being able to cook so they could have dinner on the table when they got home.
• Being of a low socio-economic status so they won’t work or have any desire to attend university.

Woah. WTF?

While women are critisied for letting the side down because they like cupcakes and want to look good in their wedding photos, men continue to say things like this and get away with it. Not at any point was this man’s theory rebutted by his friends. It was accepted.

There are no girls I know who would stand for this crap. They would shove their dainty cupcakes in the mans face and tell them to stick their ‘wife ready’ values up their nose. And they would look bloody fabulous while they did it.

I will leave you with this quote to muse upon.

“Don’t marry for money. Go where the money is, then marry for love…” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Happy Monday.