Day Twenty Seven

I’m on the home stretch. Only four more days. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. Maybe I can do this. I hope I can do this. I think my affirmations are getting weaker…it’s time for me to get some sleep, I guess. So I’ll leave you with the essay I wrote for today.

FLR

I learned a new term today, and spent some time on Google and Wikipedia getting familiar with it. The term was ‘female led relationships’. According to AI, an FLR is ‘a consensual dynamic where the female partner takes the dominant role, often making key decisions and guiding the relationship’s direction, with the male partner in a more supportive role’. Who knew? I had no idea there was such a term, or even that there was a need for such a term. Yeah, I’ve known some relationships where the female definitely had the dominant role in some area, or all areas, of the decision making. I didn’t think much about it; it was a relationship that worked because the female in the relationship was better at those things than the male.

I decided to Google MLR, to see if there was a similar term. I got sites on Major League Fishing (seriously? There’s a major league for fishing? Boooorrrrriiiiinnnng.) When I typed in ‘male-led relationship’, I did get something, though. The definition is similar, only with the sexes reversed. I also found sites telling me that ‘male-led relationships are more natural [because] most females get attracted to male dominance. Seriously? MOST? Why not ALL? Or only SOME? Most of the women I know are not attracted to male dominance; I exclude all female members of my family, because I’m never really sure I know them.

Another site tells me that ‘a growing number of internet influencers, both male and female, insist that men should lead their relationships and women should defer to their man’s abilities’. I decided not to click on the site to see if they had details about a) who these ‘influencers’ are and what their background is for influencing and b) just what those male abilities were that entitled them to make all the decisions. I didn’t have the stomach for it.

Or maybe we should be concerned about our relationships if we take on any of the decision making, because you have to let a man lead if you want a healthy relationship. Or because allowing a man to lead makes him a better man and leads to a stronger relationship. Or we could just consult the guide to letting go of control and letting him lead, just trusting him, because he wants to lead you to where you will both be happy and free.

Okay, I have to stop here and go to regurgitate…back now. Some thoughts. Who knew I didn’t have a healthy relationship? We’re about the happiest couple I know, and we share decisions, though there are some places where I decide (like how I want to organize my books) and places where he decides (like how he wants to organize his vinyl collection). He doesn’t lead and I don’t follow. Oh, I trust him, yes, and I know he wants us to be in a place where we will both be happy and free…that’s why we share the decision making, and neither of us assumes a dominant role. We are partners, equal.

Next thought. If a man being allowed to lead makes him a better man and leads to a stronger relationship, why are so many of the marriages that are male-dominated abusive? Why do they often (certainly not always, and probably not the majority of the time, but it’s a hard statistic to be precise) lead to domestic abuse? Why do submissive women, women with husbands who lead them, often look so unhappy? Or is beating your wife up being a better man? Maybe I have a warped view of male/female relationships, thinking that it’s better when people aren’t hitting each other.

I started out to write about how weird it was that we needed a term like FLR, or female-dominated relationship, but my research, as you can tell, led me down a rabbit hole. It is a deep rabbit hole, and it took me a long way. I think, in fact, that I left the twenty-first century and am now somewhere back in the depths of time, somewhere medieval. By the time I was born, a lot of people would be embarrassed making such sentiments public - not in my family; a lot of the family believed just that, and were happy to say it. In spite of that, my parents made most of their decisions together; my mother’s concessions to having a male-dominated relationship was to say those things while doing things however the hell she wanted. As for me, I just took it one step further…I openly stated that when we got married the relationship would be as partners. My husband agreed without hesitation.

So where are we now? It begins to appear we are not actually in the twenty-first century after all. We are somewhere pre-1960, pre-women’s movement, somewhere that would like to install women back into a submissive position. Okay, ladies, get those dinners cooked, those dishes washed, then have sex and pop out babies.

In my experience, what is new isn’t the sentiment; that has been there for a long time, smoldering under the surface of men who feel they lost something when the women gained. Maybe they did, I don’t know. If what they lost was the ability to tell a woman everything she had to do, maybe what they lost wasn’t so great. Wouldn’t they rather have a woman who lives up to her talents and intellect, who shares the decision-making, who has a good job with good pay? No, a lot of men don’t. They resent their wives for working and bringing in part of the money, even though they know it’s needed. It makes them feel like less of a man.

If feeling like a man means being able to order around lesser beings (women) or dominate them, maybe feeling like a man isn’t a great thing. Maybe it would be better to feel like a person, someone defined not by posturing and dominating, but rather by being a part of a couple that is equal. If the need to feel manly means you have to put someone else ‘in their place’, you have to be deferred to, I think it is time to find a new definition for man.

The reality is, a relationship shouldn’t be defined by who leads it. A relationship should be a relationship, not a master/slave or boss/employee interaction. Some women are better at financial decision-making than their husbands; in other relationships, the man is better. So don’t think about female-led or male-led; think about capability-led, or if you like, don’t think about it as led. For one to lead, the other must follow, and that invariably means someone is behind their partner in life, rather than beside them.

Just divide up the damn chores based on skill, availability, or whatever other criterion seems appropriate. Don’t worry about who leads and who follows. And whatever you do, NEVER THE HELL TELL ME THAT A DOMINANT MALE IS MORE NATURAL. It always makes me shout.