marriage is a privilege

Hey, reader.  How are you doing?  I was reading about the various privileges like whiteness, ability, citizenship, cis-ness, religion.  It surprises me when I see listed that marriage is a privilege.

“Whoever said marriage is a privilege wasn’t married to you!” I said to Ming.  Then we laughed and laughed and laughed.  We fell over each other laughing.

“Maybe it should be like marriage is a privilege for men,” I said, pondering gender.  “For women and enbies, it’s a liability.”

I thought about life expectancy, stress, gender roles, who handles what, and legibility.  Chores, healthcare, emotional skills, support.

gender roles

Ming does so much for me, and much of it is pertaining to the physical world.  Ming is not a man–Ming has non-binary gender.  But Ming looks kinda like a man to most people, and Ming was raised as a boy.  In Ming’s family of origin, being a boy was Ming’s role.

When I ask Spirit about Ming, I often pull the King of Pentacles.  Ming is amazing with materiality and home.

I do a lot emotionally–I’m Queen of Wands and King of Cups: nurturing, caring, asking, controlling, feeling.  I do substantial planning, visioning, holiday prep, tracking social and community stuff, identifying problems and insisting we need something different.  Also I do most of the cooking and food resource management.

Ming shops for groceries, washes the dishes, takes out the trash, and does all the laundry.  Ming also cares for the car, doing all the maintenance and most of the driving.  Technology is Ming’s role, and Ming does the plant care.  It’s a good mix!

disability and age

The disabled interdepenence we both do.  Ming has done astounding things to keep me functional and out of the psych hospital.  That year my mom died and I had multiple “delusional psychotic episodes”– wow!  If there was ever any doubt, let me assure you: Ming is amazing.

At the same time Ming is on the edge of becoming a senior.  Their health needs shift, and their memory is not as good as it was.  Truth be told, narcolepsy is a wild problem that touches just about every area of life: memory, energy level, identity, how much attention someone can pay.  How are you supposed to remember anything when you’re living half in a dream and don’t actually know what happened?

Disability adds a whole other layer of struggle on relationships.  I should write a book about disabled interdependence.  If marriage is a privilege ordinarily, disability throws a wrench in the whole thing.  Care work is unfathomable to people who haven’t done it.  Disability is unfathomable to people who haven’t lived it.

questions for discussion

• How is labor divided in your relationships?
• Do you believe that marriage is a privilege?
• Have you ever been married?  Was it more benefit or liability?
• How much conflict in a relationship is optimal?
• How do you know when it’s time to end a relationship?
• How does disability affect your relationships?
• Did culture teach you the truth about marriage?
• In your upbringing did you gain skills that help you do marriage?

how to be happy

I’ve thought a lot about how to be happy in relationship, and for me, sharing power equally is important.

Also it’s important to have balance in the love.  In most of my relationships I feel like the person who loves more, gives more, and wants more.  But with Ming things feel equal, which is important.  It would be exhausting and depressing if I was insecure in my most central family relationship.

Humor is vital too.  This blog post starts with me and Ming laughing about a rude thing I said.  If it wasn’t funny, we would be in a whole different situation.

meme

I made a meme about relationship.  Thank you to Ming for taking the picture.

The background is purple mushrooms (I think they’re amethyst deceivers) on some grass with pine needles, and the text says “I don’t need to wait until I want to die to get out.”

It’s a reminder that painful, stressful, unbalanced relationships are not my responsibility to continue.  I can leave before the crisis, or after one crisis–I have no responsibility to stick it out through the tenth crisis.

May we all understand our own needs and love ourselves as well as loving others.