Is Marriage Worth It?
The State of Marriage Survey, the harsh realities of marriage, and recovering after divorce
In this newsletter…
Intro: Is marriage worth it?
Early State of Marriage survey results
Feminist Advice Friday
I vividly remember the day I joined my first online mom group. I had just given birth to my now-5-year-old and a friend added me.
It didn’t take long for me to get banned after months of ranting and raving about rampant racism, sexism, and classism in the group. But what finally got me kicked out wasn’t any of these things; it was the insistence that men are not stupid.
Group culture was all about talking about lazy husbands, no presents on Mother’s Day, and no breaks from the children, then dismissing this nonsense as “just the way men are.” I knew this was wrong, because I managed not to get a dud of a husband. We split things equitably, and he’s never missed a holiday present.
Left with no outlet for my rage at what I perceived as excuse-making for spousal abuse, I started ranting on my personal Facebook page. Those rants started going viral, and eventually it all led to this newsletter, my Facebook page, and a ton of viral blog posts. When I first started all of this, I wanted to save marriage. I wanted to convince cisgender heterosexual women that they deserved better, and that they should demand it.
Now? I’m not sure.
Earlier this month, I started a private Facebook group for my paid Substack subscribers to discuss their experiences with motherhood and marriage. In our Liberating Motherhood group, my eyes have been opened to how truly awful the typical marriage is.
I don’t know if marriage should be saved. I worry that it is every bit the prison for women that it’s always been. So I decided to design a survey about modern marriage and motherhood.
Please take it. It only takes about 3 minutes. The more data we have, the better. You can find the State of Marriage survey here. The survey will be open for a month, and I will release the results here and on my Facebook and Instagram pages by May 1.
I started sending the survey to some friends, and released it in the Liberating Motherhood group and wow…already, I feel very depressed about the state of marriage.
Early State of Marriage Survey Results
Here are some highlights of the findings so far:
Most respondents work outside of the home, but 0% say that their division of domestic labor is equal.
Most respondents are getting up nightly with a baby or child, and most of their husbands are not.
Most of you are severely sleep deprived.
Most male partners get significant weekly free time.
Almost no one says their spouse regularly gets them gifts for holidays.
Abuse is rampant. Half of respondents say their partner calls them names; 25% say their spouse throws things or breaks things. 20% say their spouse has hit or slapped them. 55% say they have been afraid of their spouse.
Perhaps most critically, almost every respondent says their marriage is worse than usual. This suggests to me that people think their marriage problems are individual issues, when they are in fact societal issues.
I’ll have more data, better data, and more specific data if more people take the survey, so please do so!
Feminist Advice Friday: How do I know if I'm asking too much?
A reader asks…
I have been working on my husband to take more responsibility for houshold labor and parenting for years. It started when we had our daughter, with little hints here and there. Then at some point I started reading you and other writers, and started more aggressively demanding change.
He has definitely made a lot of changes. But even though we both work outside the home and make about the same, our household labor balance is still far from 50/50. For holidays and stuff, it’s even worse. He doesn’t buy the kids presents, doesn’t buy presents for his family, barely remembers Mother’s Day. I’m honestly getting mad just writing about it.
Again, he’s really made a lot of changes though. He does our daughter’s hair. Things are continually moving in the right direction. They’re just moving So. Slow. At the rate we’re going, we won’t achieve anything close to equality before we’re both dead.
I’m tired. I’m tired of hounding him. I’m tired of being the one to take responsibility for making our relationship equitable. Shouldn’t he care about it, too? Shouldn’t he care about what he’s modeling to our daughter? But I grew up with a really patriarchal family and so did he. Our friends mostly have typical shitty marriages where the mom does everything and the dad golfs all the time. Our marriage is better than that.
I really love him. He’s smart and funny and lots of other good things.
And I just wonder: Am I asking too much? Is this the best we can do? I don’t want to be beating a drum for improvement forever. I don’t want to always be the one saying it’s not good enough.
Help me figure this out.
My answer:
I see two distinct issues here: The first is your belief that maybe, in asking for equality, you are actually asking for too much. The second is that your husband is capable of changing, as demonstrated by his behavior, but continues to refuse to pivot toward true justice in your relationship.
Just phrasing things that way is helpful for understanding the reality of your situation, I think.
But I want to start by reassuring you that you are not asking anything close to too much. The belief that you do not deserve equality is rooted in the notion that you are fundamentally less than your spouse—that your time, your needs, your work, and indeed your humanity matter less than your husband’s. That’s misogyny that has broken into your brain to hijack your thoughts.
Your needs are just as important as his. And when his needs include needing you to sacrifice more so he can get more than you do, his needs are not just less important, but offensive. If what he needs is to continue having leisure time you don’t get and continue forcing you to police him into more equality, then his needs spring from the idea that you’re just less important than he is.
That’s a pretty fucked up way to think about your spouse. But it’s exactly what he is doing.
Every time he hints that you’re asking too much, or relaxes when you are working, or pretends not to notice your child’s needs, he is sacrificing your well-being so he can get more than he deserves and more than his fair share.
Back to your question:
When are you asking too much?
You’re asking too much when one of too things is true:
When what you ask is so demanding that it makes it impossible for a person to have a meaningful, fulfilling life. If, for example, your husband worked 120 hours a week, you might be asking too much if you expected him to do an additional 20 of housework.
When what you ask depends on the other person giving more than they get, or is rooted in the idea that you are simply entitled to get more than they are.
Your husband, not you, is asking too much. He is the one treating it as an unspoken fact that of course you must do more than he does. Of course you must have less free time, less support, less space in your brain.
Reframe things to reflect reality.
Your husband is asking too much. I can’t say it enough.
So what now?
Armed with the understanding that what you want is both reasonable and the bare minimum, it’s time to revisit the household labor conversation with your husband. Give him one more shot. Tell him exactly what you need, and then ask him why he thinks he doesn’t have to give it. Ask him why he thinks he should get more leisure time than you.
Make him answer for his behavior, instead of allowing you to feel like there’s something wrong with you for wanting better. Don’t let him get away with gaslighting you either. Give him a final chance to get all the way to equality, and make clear that anything less is less than you deserve.
I wrote a while ago about setting meaningful boundaries with a spouse, and I think some of that might be relevant here, since it seems like you don’t want to leave but also want to be able to meaningfully enforce some norms. Readers, what say you?
I publish #feministadvicefriday every Friday(ish) here and on Facebook. You can submit your own question to zawn.villines@gmail.com, by messaging my Facebook page, or anonymously by using my site’s contact form.