Not a wife, huh?

If you go to my last post you will see that in response to something I am not I wrote "WIFE". Patty seems to be the only blog reader to pick up on this, or maybe you saw it and know me and aren't surprised by this answer at all. For those, like Patty, who are under the impression I am a wife let me clearly assert that I am in fact NOT a wife.

Yes, R and I are married. Yes, I am a woman and he is a man. But I am still not a wife.

In our household their is ONE four letter word that hurts me if spoken, it is the 'wife' word. For me the expectations of that word are much like the C word. It means to be property, to be owned, to be demure, quite, and less than equal, I am sure many of you disagree. I think that is wonderful, we are all different, and we can be friends and disagree. But for me becoming a 'wife' would be like disowning my liberal feminist ways. My brain couldn't connect how to be a wife and a feminist at the same time and so I chose. I would be married as a partner, still be a feminist and could keep being who I was before the wedding.

At our wedding R and I were pronounced "partners for life" rather than husband and wife. It was a choice both of us made a choice that in our relationship we were partners. "husband" and "wife" are to loaded with expectations and gender roles for us. R is no more a husband than I am a wife and I hold him to higher expectations because of the terms we use to describe our roles in marriage. We are partners, not husband, not wife, we are equals in this relationship, in a way I didn't feel possible if I was the "wife" and he was the "husband".

This isn't to say that my friends who are wives aren't partners too or that I think there is something wrong with being a wife. I would love to have a wife, it just isn't a role I wanted to play. It was a personal choice, and a choice much like not taking my husband's name. It just isn't a title I am interested in.