Earlier this year I published an essay, “On Motherhood” where I wrote about how badly I want to have a child and about my decision not to freeze my eggs or pursue medical fertility preservation, generally. Today’s essay is a follow up, of sorts. I am discussing my current thoughts on motherhood and relationships. If you’d like, reading the first essay may provide some context for the thoughts below but this essay does stand independently.
An additional note- I am a heterosexual woman and I date heterosexual men. I write about mothers and fathers and the different expectations we have for the two in this essay. I understand, respect, and celebrate that couples with different sexual orientations have different divisions of labor and their own parenting challenges. I also understand that all heterosexual couples do not have the same experiences. I am writing the only way I know how, from my experience. I hope I’ve managed to do that with respect.
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I do not know anyone who is in a longterm relationship or marriage who has not, at one time or another, been very disappointed by their partner. I suspect I do not now any person who has never disappointed their long term partner. I do not know even a singular adult who has never been disappointed by their parents. And yet, I crave- as many of us do- a long and lasting relationship with a spouse. I want children. I want the family I did not have as a child and do not have as an adult, though I understand that family will inevitably be an imperfect one. Are relationships the only thing we pursue knowing that they will, at times, cause us immense pain and uncertainty?
I do not mean to be a cynic, I mean to be realistic. Because I think it is much more difficult to be disappointed by things when we are realistic about them. If I marry again, as I generally hope to do, I will expect my husband to be decent and work hard. I expect that he will be generally loving and emotionally available. I expect he will listen when I speak and try to really and truly hear what I am saying. I expect him to compliment me- for the things I do and the way I look. Compliments make me feel seen. I expect him to attempt to parent our hypothetical children as an equal partner. I also expect that, still, the majority of the parenting will fall on my shoulders. No matter the effort, it seems almost if not completely impossible for a man in our society to take on a true half of the parenting- when a baby is born to a heterosexual couple, the man is already a year behind. I expect that sometimes he will not understand my anger or frustrations or perspective. I expect his lived experience will have been so different than mine that at some points he will look at me like I am an alien and I will call my best friend and cry and struggle with confusion and resentment. But I expect I will love him anyway.