When you marry young, have your children one after another like stepping stones, no one tells you about division of duties.  In looking back, we both pitched in when it got "too much".  And as I remember, it got to be too much often.  . as caring for children often is.  We did the best job we could to set the kids off in the right direction - and I still believe it was the example we set, the love we gave, that made the difference.  We have fewer worries about them as adults … and wonder of wonders, they seem to have followed in our footsteps - something that doesn’t always happen we have found.

But it was time for us now — and we each had our own high goals in life, quite separate from the other.  Now was OUR hour to begin to shine.  We exalted - as I look back - hugging each other as each moved up the ladders we had chosen - and the pride equated somehow to make the love we felt even stronger.  Each was the other’s strongest advocate; each was the other’s strongest rooting section.  It was like a two trees growing up and joining forces, having strong roots and branches that reached for the light, for the sky.  We were independent in the paths we took after the children had started on their own roads, with goals that took flavors of their own. 

Looking back, I think each of us squeezed in all our separate dreams and ambitions, but drew even closer in congratulation of each other.  In other words, love flourished and still does.  There is joy in our married life … we are not joined at the hip.  We are separate individuals with high, apple pie in the sky hopes - as Sinatra sings - but we (and I think I can speak for my husband) have no regrets - and without a talked-about division of duties, we have fallen in place in that, making it work - and thus having time for ourselves - deeming that own special time the most important and never taken for granted.  

I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Joan, It sounds like you have a great marriage.  I feel fortunate that I do, too.  My relationship doesn’t sound at all like Carin’s.  I married fairly young.  We have two children.  I’ve always worked.  From the start, we pooled our money.  There was no mine or yours.  It was all ours.  And we always made decisions together (sometimes maddeningly…since when did you care that much about the color of the bathroom towels?)  But perhaps I was lucky, or perhaps very smart, when I chose my mate.  He does all the grocery shopping and most of the cooking.  We share the fretting over who will pick up the kids, who will stay home when one is sick.  He’s taken them to the doctor when they are sick as often as I have.  He vacuums more often than I do (although I clean the kitchen more often than he does because somehow he just does not see all the crumbs I do.)  I’ve always done the laundry because I have more things that I want hand washed or hung to dry or whatever.  We both love being outside so we very much share the yard duties.  I pay the day-to-day bills but he does most of the banking, making sure I have money in my wallet.  He usually puts gas in the cars; I usually get them washed.

We haven’t done this by counting up who does what.  It just felt right to us and we both always considered each other equals.  We’ve had shared goals and found our path toward them in a way that feels really good to us both.

It doesn’t describe my marriage. but then again on another thread i posted my lifes theme song as "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks. And one of my favorite lines in it is "so take me as I am this may mean you’ll have to be a stronger man"

However… it does describe soooo many of the other marriages i see. I’d say easy 7 out of 10 maybe? that might be a lot but… close. I just had no desire to parent a grown man.

Oh ya… i also have a "theory" that the superior wife thing is bad for your sex life. No one wants to sleep with their mother. and no guy wants to sleep with the woman who constantly makes him feel like he’s "less than" even if he is buying into it to make it easy on himself. and women don’t want to sleep with a man they feel is "less than" either. even subconsciously. You did the research… what do you think Carin?

Like me, many wives have become the superior members of their union, because they have no choice in the matter.

Men do less because they can, because their wives let them slide.

Doing less is the male default position…

… while the female default setting is to do more and more until we do nearly everything.