Attachment Marriaging

I have been reading about attachment parenting since we are preparing to have our first baby. In general, I agree with a lot of the ideas, because I agree with the parenting philosophy behind it all that you don’t need experts to tell you things about parenting. Parenting “experts” have all kinds of misguided views, for example many are concerned with teaching you how not to spoil your baby or how to not let the baby take control of you or manipulate you. However, I don’t want to talk about parenting here. I want to talk about marriage. Joel & I have created the joke that we are practicing attachment marriaging because we like to be together all the time and do things together. Many people today think it is smarter to have your own separate bank accounts so that no one person, usually the man who makes all the money, will control the relationship. That might be necessary for some people, but not for Joel and me. We share it all and don’t have trouble with one person controlling the whole financial situation. We can talk honestly about wanting to buy things, and we help each other to not spend so much money on things we don’t need and to keep our whole financial picture in mind.

Anyway, so Joel likes his laundry done twice a week, and somehow I have really not taken part in making that happen. Even though we agreed that I am to do the primary cooking and cleaning, I just don’t seem to ever do the laundry. But now that we just had a baby shower, we had two whole loads of laundry that needed to be done for the baby. And I was so excited about it. I was like, Joel, do you have any laundry you need done? He was like Yes! And I happily did the laundry because I was excited to be washing the baby’s clothes. And while folding, Joel folded his and I folded the baby’s. I was telling Joel how much I loved doing the laundry for the baby, and how it reminded me of the first time I did my own laundry when I was younger and how I felt so grown up. And now with washing the baby’s clothes, I feel like I am growing up again. And then I realized, wouldn’t it be nice if I felt that way about doing Joel’s laundry? How much better would it be if I felt like, wow, I am doing my husband’s laundry, I am growing up! And this is going to make him happy and look nice and not be stressed about what to wear, etc… No, somehow I have protected myself against those thoughts. I think from the beginning, I have been worried about being taken advantage of. I was worried about Joel using me, or not being fair, or leaving me to all the unintellectual work. And I realize now that that is just what I am against with all the current parenting experts. I think their advice to me to protect myself from my baby’s manipulations would really keep me from really being attached to my baby. And I feel like with all the advice or worried I have about being married and not letting Joel take advantage of me has gotten in the way of our relationship.

There are some differences from parenting and being married. For one, adults are able to manipulate each other, and also Joel and I certainly do love each other, so its not like we have a big strain in our marriage. We are definitely attached. But I just realized that it would be good to work more on allowing myself to have the attitude of happily doing things for Joel because it does make our lives better and our relationship stronger. Some people really need to worry about being taken advantage of, but I am not married to “some people”. I am married to Joel, and I have definitely seen that he isn’t out to take advantage of me. And he only wants laundry done twice a week because he runs out of clean clothes and needs them for school. I know how stressed he is with school, and it really isn’t hard to do laundry so why don’t I do it? And why don’t I enjoy doing it? I think a part of me gets caught up in the idea that I am very smart and could be “working” so sometimes it is a challenge to feel like I am not wasting my good brain on being a housewife. But it is really important to sort through these feelings, because honestly, if I were working, I would have to do all kinds of things that I don’t want to do either. Such as paperwork, meetings, dealing with problems that arise, it wouldn’t all be fun and stimulating. There are certainly a lot of hoops you have to jump through. Joel had a lot of stress putting together the 16 applications that he sent out this semester for a full time position. That certainly took a lot of time, and he had to write various essays or answer questions and fill out forms and order papers, and have it all out by a deadline, and in the end, he didn’t end up getting any of those jobs. So his work was certainly thankless in some sense. Whereas, when I do the laundry, I get to see Joel’s smiling face or get to enjoy an absence of his extra stress in the morning when needing clothes. Housework is not always a thankless job. Maybe Joel won’t say thanks every time I do the laundry, but while I am doing the act of laundering, I know that someone has to do it, and I am making our lives better. I feel much better about doing our laundry than I do about filling out applications, I definitely hate those things. And it is not true that all I do is work anyways, sometimes I spend many hours on housework a day, and other times I don’t. But I have a lot of time to pursue my intellectual interests. And I have had a lot of time to read about and prepare for birth and parenting, by doing fun projects, meeting people, and reading. And I have the big and definitely fun job of preparing to teach our children in homeschool. That to me is the ultimate intellectual stimulation because I get to teach without all the aspects of the school system that I despise.

In conclusion, I have realized that I want to redirect my thoughts, actions and attitude towards attachment marriageing. I know that it will really benefit Joel & me and enrich our relationship.