I've been thinking about how my wife doesn't need me anymore.
There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a woman.
— Proverbs 30:18-19
Becky invited me to a high school dance in May, 1959, when she was fifteen years old and I was seventeen. We got to know each other during conversations in the high school courtyard. She was in fifth period student government, and was often left to her own devices as a responsible young person. I, on the other hand, cut class to hang out with her. These conversations were the beginning of our four-year courtship that culminated in our marriage in September, 1963. The vows we wrote reflected the values of the faith community we grew up in and the wider culture of mid-century America. We echoed the New Testament Epistle to the Ephesians:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church . . . Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
— Ephesians 5:22-24, King James Version
Much of this was and is, of course, ridiculous. In the intimacy of our four years before marriage, we shared leadership in whatever decisions presented themselves: whom to spend time with, how to fit in with each of our families, what to do together for fun, which of the traditional sexual boundaries to honor and which to leave behind. She was a better student than I was, her family was quieter and more deliberate than mine and therefore she, too, was more deliberate and reasonable, since I was still too often governed by my impulsive instincts and the lack of parental oversight I’d lived with since I was ten years old. She was just better at running her life and guiding our relationship than I was. This was the reality that lived within the expectation that I was somehow in charge.
Times have also changed in our culture, not just about marriage but about what is and is not acceptable behavior as I relate to all the women in my life. Again, it’s been a long learning curve from where I was as a young man to where I find myself today in the way of a man with a woman.
I recently had dinner with four women who have been my therapy colleagues for decades. In recent years, geographical changes and Covid restrictions have driven us to Zoom for our weekly two-hour meetings, where we continue to explore what it means to be deep and loving friends and discuss therapy cases to help each other be better in our work.
During all of our years of meeting together in person, we’d been comfortable greeting one another with hugs and kisses; but as I headed for the restaurant for our reunion dinner, I was on edge about what boundaries were now in play.
We haven’t been in a room together for five years, years in which the personal and cultural protocols for men touching women may have been subtly altered. Maybe I've inadvertently made them uncomfortable or done things that weren't okay; I don't want to make anyone feel that way. Perhaps it's not surprising, then, that I found myself nervous about meeting with these friends to whom I have not been physically close for a long time.
I know about these women that they've endured a history of assault that's all too common. They’ve been groped in public venues, cat-called with vulgarities, followed ominously while walking, day or night. They’ve lived through times when such behavior was dismissed as boys will be boys.
But what I wasn’t clear about was any new expectations they might have about touch. Had time and distance altered our manner of relating properly? Are there new boundaries that I should be aware of? So as each of my friends arrived, I waited, allowing each of them to initiate whatever contact we would have. Thankfully, we were as intimate as always; each of them hugged and kissed me, and hugged and kissed one another like the affectionate friends we’ve always been.
When we gathered by Zoom the following week, I shared my inhibitions with them, and they each reacted with surprise at my hesitation, and sadness that the complications of women and men have come to this, even between those who love and trust one another.
But they understood. What they and other women in my life are teaching me is that their bodies are not accessible without invitation. So now, when it comes to touching, I share no unexpected hugs, no uninvited kisses, no assumptions that touching is okay. It’s not just that no means no; it’s now the case that I cannot assume yes.
What they and other women in my life are teaching me is that their bodies are not accessible without invitation.
These transitions have required of me substantial changes in my relationship to my colleagues; I see many of the same shifts in my relationship with my wife. We’ve now spent more than sixty years freeing ourselves from the traditions of marriage, discovering our individual strengths and weaknesses, and finding a way to respect one another and share the lead in whatever decisions we have to make.
My wife doesn't need me. That's a startling change from assumptions I had when we got married. I was in charge, I had final authority, and she would make her way alongside me in that relationship. I believed I was the main character in our marriage. Now, none of that is true, and in fact, I've spent the last sixty years adjusting to changes that she has made about who she is and how she moves through the world.
I believed I was the main character in our marriage.
A decade into our marriage, the tradition we grew up with was a fading but still lingering assumption of her role. In a 1970s couples’ workshop, one of the assignments was to write what you thought would be an appropriate notation on your grave marker. Becky wrote Wife and Mother. Now, as she approaches eighty, she still loves being a wife and mother, and has the added joy of being three times a grandmother, deeply embedded in the lives of two teenage boys and a smart, witty eleven-year-old girl.
When she graduated from UCLA in 1965 with a degree in English Literature, the most available career choices were teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. Becky has often noted that when our daughter graduated a generation later, she could aspire to be president of the country without sounding like a lunatic. And for our granddaughter, there is no professional future available to men that is not also available to her. Thanks be to God.
In the mid-seventies, having given birth to our daughter and son, Becky decided she didn’t need to be pregnant again but could raise one more child. So we adopted a twenty-seven-month-old little boy; she was his fifth mother, and his hyper brain chemistry and weird internal grammar kept us awake at nights until, in his teens, he finally settled into himself. When he was ten years old, she decided to go back to school. She’d been an elementary school teacher before the birth of our first child, then ran a tutoring business for nearly a decade when the kids were small. But when she turned forty, she went to law school and is just now retiring from the firm she joined in the mid-1980s. For decades, she was the only woman partner in the firm yet made her way with men who respected her abilities and honored their friendship.
In addition to her legal work, she’s volunteered to serve on boards of non-profits, and in several cases became the board’s chair and steered agencies through treacherous waters to periods of calm success. She began singing in church choirs when she was five years old; she’s still there Sunday by Sunday, in the soprano section, and has been an active leader in our congregation for thirty years.
It has certainly erased any notion that I am in any way in charge simply because I’m her husband. Authority in our marriage now resides in the conversations between us, over small issues and large. We’ve learned that any win/lose decision is a loss for the marriage, so we stay in the conversation until we find common ground or, if there is no common ground, we shelve the issue.
She’s embarrassed that I’m writing about her at all, and especially that I’ve pointed out her broad successes as a human being and as a woman. I’m doing so not just out of my love and respect for her, but because she’s lived through decades that have challenged her to adapt to repressions her daughter and granddaughter will not face because she was among their forerunners in breaking down these barriers.
It has certainly erased any notion that I am in any way “in charge” simply because I’m her husband.
I’ve learned a lot about being a man through being surrounded by liberated, self-actualizing women who don't need me to protect them or guide them or take leadership when decisions need to be made. My colleagues are equally self-sufficient, as are the women with whom I’m friends. My women therapy clients don’t need me to tell them what to do or how to protect themselves; they need me to join them in exploring who they are and why they’re here – the two questions I keep asking myself from season to season. In each of these situations, I’m one human being in love with another human being, and love and respect define the conversations that characterize our life together.