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Well, maybe not MY married life quite yet, but…

We tend to focus primarily on (non-)dating and courtship on this site because, let’s face it, neither Becky nor I are making plans to walk down the aisle anytime soon (although Becky’s pretty impulsive, so please don’t put any money on that statement!). But every once in a while, amidst the Group-Non-Dates and bar bumps and lustful Mad Men marathons, we can’t help but wonder where all this build-up will lead us. As I’ve said before, I’m stubbornly hopeful and optimistic that we are an unstoppable generation of women who are wading through all the ambiguity and lawlessness and will emerge at the other end with strong, fulfilling, successful relationships. But what will they look like? And what does that even mean?

I’ve always assumed that eventually – in the far-away future, when my career is established, when I’ve traveled the world, when I’m feeling less selfish, when I’m done winning the Nobel Peace Prize, when I meet the right guy, when my apartment is finally vacuumed and in order, when I’m in a completely and totally different mental space than I am right now, etc. – I would get married. And I’ve always known what my marriage WOULDN’T look like – the marriages of our grandmothers, who sacrificed their professional aspirations for their husbands and children, or the marriages of our mothers, who were often overworked and plagued with guilt for not being at every single ballet recital, soccer game, violin practice and playdate for which they signed us up. Yet I’ve never been able to visualize what it actually WOULD look like.

This big, mental question mark isn’t surprising, according to a recent New York Times Magazine piece that discusses what it has meant to be married, and to be a wife, for the past few generations (sent in by Wendy <3!). It turns out that no one is quite sure what the “wife” label means anymore. Lisa Belkin, the writer of the article and a parenting blogger, calls this cultural shift “the redefinition of marriage – and what it means to be a wife.” She explains how her (our mothers’) generation grappled with the realization that “the old guideposts were gone, and new ones had not been established. What was a good wife?”

Sound familiar?

In the same way that we’re now trying to figure out the new signals of dating and courtship, our mothers had to figure out the new tenets of successful wifedom. I don’t envy them, and at the end of the day, I believe they did an impressively good job of raising us despite their confusion (I make no claims about myself, but my friends are pretty great!).

But here we are, this new sliver of a generation, just starting to plan for marriage and/or taking the first steps to build our lives with our partners. What does OUR future hold? Belkin has faith in us, proclaiming that “there is a third way…between the extremes of perfect wife and over-enmeshed mother” and that “there are hints that the next generation is heading down this third path, this place where “wife” doesn’t come with a job description to either embrace or reject.” Luckily for us, we have an opportunity, yet again, to reset society’s romantic expectations. Let’s not screw this up!

Apart from our general sense of empowerment and independence, Belkin argues that the real key to this open-ended romantic future seems to be all the great, enlightened men who we’re marrying (including many of the ones who regularly read this blog!). These men, the men of our generation, are apparently more comfortable structuring their marriages as equal partnerships and pitching in with their own time and efforts than men have ever been before. Yes, their texts may be confusing, but their willingness to ultimately love within a new model of marriage and commitment will likely end up being invaluable for us women.

So maybe this is why I’d never been able to imagine my married life before. I’d always (selfishly?) wondered what I would be doing, how I would ration out my time, how many different roles I would play, how I could cheat the system in order to get everything done AND be happy. I envisioned my husband as Man X, playing a traditional male role and leaving me to figure out the rest. But if I can trust that my modern man will be willing to help with the kids and housework and bread-winning, and that he’ll emotionally support me when I need it, and that we’ll both be rational and open-minded enough to sit down and decide that maybe he can cook tonight while I drive the kids to their softball games…suddenly the possibilities for navigating and personalizing married life seem endless. If we don’t all agree on what a wife should be, then we can co-opt the label to mean whatever works for each of us!

I have a feeling that for me, it will mean a lot less cooking.

Apr 5, 2010

1 F-YEAH! F-YEAH!