I Don’t Want To Be A Wife Anymore
Call me a partner, please.
Sean Locke Photography | Shutterstock I’ve been a wife for nearly 14 years, and still, I wince ever so slightly when I hear myself referred to as such. Early on, I assumed wife would be something I’d grow into eventually. Every title is new and strange when you first try it on.
Mama was new and strange to me at first, too, as was Mom when my daughter decided she wasn’t a baby anymore and needed to drop a syllable. These days, as a pre-teen, she pronounces Mom as a two-syllable word, usually accompanied by a head shake and an eye roll. So now I have to get used to being Mo-om.
But it’s never taken long for me to adapt to these evolving iterations that confirm my identity as a mother.
I don’t know what it is about wife. I just don’t like the word. I don’t associate it with adjectives like empowered, smart, or even particularly kind. Instead, descriptors like subservient, superficial, and catty come to mind.
Throughout recent history, there have been two dominant perceptions and portrayals of wives. There’s the obedient “yes dear” wife, and there’s the naggy, ball-and-chain wife.
The obedient “yes dear” wife is happily confined to the home and eternally faithful to her husband, turning a blind eye to his “male urges” that render him incapable of reciprocating her fidelity. We vaguely pity her, but some men secretly wonder why their wives can’t be so simple and so sweet. Some women secretly wonder why their happiness seems so elusive by comparison.
The naggy, ball-and-chain wife is unhappily confined to the home and still eternally faithful to her husband, calling him out on his hypocrisy if he feigns helplessness over his inability to reciprocate. But this wife is no picnic. She’s usually a drag. We roll our eyes and shake our heads. We groan whenever she opens her mouth. Women fear becoming a version of her. Sometimes we worry we already are.
There are also the fringe wives: the cheating wives, the murderous wives, the wives who abandon their families. There is something very wrong with these wives. We don’t want to be these wives, either, but sometimes, in our darkest moments of feeling cornered by a society that insists on confining us, we let our minds wander.
In this day and age, there are undoubtedly more nuanced perceptions and portrayals of wives.
Photo: Anete Lusina/Pexels
But even so, we typically take a backseat to our husbands, the heroes.
Is this still what “good wives” are still supposed to do? Take a backseat? What does it even mean to be a “good wife” in the 21st century? According to the site Marriage:
A good wife exhibits both care and compassion. She is sensitive to the family’s needs and does her best to provide a solution. She understands when her husband is frustrated, and tries to make him happy.
Her caring disposition makes sure the family does not lack in any aspect of life.
Maybe “good wives” no longer have to be housewives, but the house and family are still our domain. Being a “good wife” means prioritizing your husband’s needs, just as being a “good mom” means that your children’s needs always come first.
Even as “modern wives,” 21st-century wives, we almost subconsciously go out of our way to protect our husbands’ time and well-being — in ways that are rarely reciprocated. It’s not that our husbands are clueless, even though we sometimes accuse them of this. It’s just that unlike us, our husbands haven’t been primed since birth for martyrdom.
Language choices alone aren’t going to dismantle the patriarchy, but contrary to the claims of the popular “sticks and stones” idiom, words can hurt. Words can marginalize.
Words can also empower.
When a word carries negative historical baggage, we generally have two choices.
The first is reappropriation. Just as feminists tried to reappropriate b**** (a word that still makes me instinctively shudder, despite their best efforts), we can become intentional about associating the word wife with self-actualization, autonomy, and partnership.
The second option is to stop using the word altogether. To adopt a new word that’s baggage-free.
I’m leaning toward the second option. Because honestly, I’d rather be a partner than a wife.
After all, it’s 2022, and the majority of women work outside the home. Some married couples consist of two husbands or two wives. And many other committed couples are eschewing marriage altogether.
Why, I wonder, do we continue to insist on distinguishing between husbands and wives, between married and unmarried couples?
While the word wife conjures largely negative connotations for me, the word partner defines exactly what I want to be perceived as, and exactly how I want to contribute to my relationship.
As my husband — er, I mean, partner — and I struggled through the intensive years of parenting two small children, we were woefully unaware of the intentionality with which we would have to unpack years of socialization that had trained us to take on different roles within the home.
I defaulted to delegating the unpaid labor. My partner, trying to be an involved father, defaulted to taking my direction. When I was too tired to delegate, I just did it myself.
Photo: Liza Summer/Pexels
Our marriage during those years didn’t feel like a partnership.
It felt like some kind of weird, tacit managerial relationship, in which I was in charge of household tasks, but didn’t want to be, and my husband deferred to me, but only out of a sense of obligation. We weren’t mutually supporting one another or working toward a shared vision.
Resentment built on both sides. Just as I was often too tired to delegate, I was often too tired to fight. So like a good wife, I kept my mouth shut. I let my partner sleep in on the weekends. I took the kids out on Saturday afternoon so he could get a break. I wrestled with all the childcare puzzles and signed all the permission slips. I made all the appointments. I kept lists in my head a mile long.
I felt like a wife back then, toiling in the background — exhausted, resentful, and overlooked. Sometimes I felt like a drag. I didn’t want to be a drag. So like a good wife, I smiled and nodded and said nothing.
Had we called each other partner during that fog of early parenthood, I doubt our word choice alone would have set the stage for a truly symbiotic relationship. But it would have been a constant reminder that this was why we had made a commitment to one another — to leverage one another’s strengths for the benefit of our family. To mutually support one another on the bewildering, illuminating journey of partnership and parenthood.
Neither of us had signed up for a relationship with a clear delineation between husband and wife. There was no illusion that I was going to take his coat at the end of a workday and fix him a drink while he read the paper. During the 14 months he spent as a stay-at-home dad, I was the one returning home from work.
Somewhere along the way — through lots of tears, raised voices, revelations, setbacks, and breakthroughs — we realized that if we were going to truly be partners, we’d have to work at it.
Not just work at the daily grind, which is enough as it is, but work at setting up systems and processes that enable us both to feel invested, valued and heard.
On a flight home from a funeral last weekend, we had three seats together and one seat in the next row. My partner volunteered to sit with the kids. I sat next to two adults who didn’t kick the seats in front of them or ask me every 15 minutes when they were going to get snacks. I spent two hours reading, one-hour napping, and one hour watching PEN15. I splurged on a $10 beer. No one spilled anything on my lap. It was glorious.
Five years ago, it wouldn’t have occurred to my partner to volunteer to sit with the kids. Or, before he even had the chance, I would have insisted on it to give him a break.
But I’m not a wife anymore. I’m a partner, with all the benefits, challenges, and responsibilities that partnership entails.
Yes, partnerships are a lot of work. They’re consistently messy and require continual tweaking and resetting. But being a “good wife” is even more work. And I can tell you from experience, it consistently sucks.
Kerala Taylor is an award-winning writer and co-owner of a worker-owned marketing agency. Her weekly stories are dedicated to interrupting notions of what it means to be a mother, woman, worker, and wife. She writes on Medium and has recently launched a Substack publication Mom, Interrupted.