You finally found him! Congratulations! Your Mister Right has arrived! Now you will live happily after. Or not. Depending on how willing you are to assume the traditional female role in this relationship.
I am not a man-hating kind of feminist, I am not an oppressed woman forced to do house chores, that's not the case. In fact, I am one of the lucky few whose boyfriends every now and then actually vacuum or wash the dishes. So I should not complain right? Well, not exactly.
I recently moved in with my boyfriend. After the initial few months of enjoying our new flat and helping me (to certain extent at least) to keep it nice and clean, my man decided he's got better things to do on a weekend than help me out. I let it slip one weekend. Then the second weekend passed. I started getting irritated. Why am I who's coming back from work later than he is and who travels so much for work that I end up with 60 hour weeks expected to clean? Why do I have to come back to a dirty flat where my dear beloved marked his territory with socks, mugs, and all kinds of items? I don't get it. As a woman, my natural instinct is to make the space nice for the other person. Each time I make it home before he does, I feel the need to spruce it up a bit, so that we can enjoy our environment. Do men lack that gene? Do they love filth or is it a matter of not taking the other person into consideration?
What worries me even more is that from the sound of things, I am not an isolated case. Women across the world hope that their "partner" will truly participate in the housework and like in partnership split it 50:50. And one by one they finally give in. We decided that in the end of the day it's either our sanity or a fair relationship and we resort to the role we played for centuries. Except that when women stayed home and were supported by men at least they had time to do all that. Now after a full-time job to pay your (equal by the way) share in rent we're expected to have another full-time position of a cleaner and housemaid. Why?
Why do women prefer to give in to something that is truly unfair and should not exist in the country where both sexes have equal rights than to stand their ground? Do we know on some level that if we don't we'll end up alone? And if so, why are we so scared of solitude? I read somewhere recently that the term "spinster" used to have a positive meaning. It was to denote women in Medieval times who did not have to marry for money as they could spin so well that they could provide for themselves. Now the term became women's most feared noun, something we are terrified of defining us. We may have careers, money, independence, but when it comes to men we still have that pressing conviction that a woman without a man is incomplete. Maybe that's why we resign ourselves to roles we don't want to play and then convince our daughters and son's that "hey, that's life" and "someone has to do this".
I'm sorry to say this but if a man leaves you because you stood up to him or because you refused to follow the society's unreasonable expectations then he wasn't the partner you deserved. If a man is not helping out at home exactly as much as you are then he's not a true man to start with. I can't change the world but I have the right to shape my little world the way I please. And I refuse to give in.
