Smackdown topic: Thursday, June 6- bad habits.

Y'all know how I don't like to cook and clean. For once in my life I'll spare you going on about that, and go on about another one instead...

The trait that pisses Dave off the most of any of the bad things I do (apparently, anyway) is my inability to pick. When anyone asks what restaurant I want to go to, what I'd like to do tonight, etc., I almost always won't give an opinion of any kind. Most of the time I either can't think of anything or don't actually have one, but I think he finds that hard to believe. But even if there is something I want to do, I am reluctant to actually SAY it.

Why, you ask? It's another one of those things learned in childhood. The tradition in my family was to go out to dinner every Friday night. Every Friday night, Dad would ask Mom and I where we'd like to go. Only when we actually TOLD him, he shot every suggestion down in flames. It's too expensive, it's too spicy, I don't like Mexican food (never mind how many times he's eaten it before), I don't feel like going over there... Picky, picky, picky. And that would only put him in an even crabbier mood and he'd yell, and WE'D get in a crabby mood right back at him, and we were all fed up.

Sometime during the teen years, I figured out how to handle this. I made a list of all the restaurants in town and grouped them by location, approximate cost, type, etc. and made it into a flow chart. I then handed the chart to Dad and said "You're the pickiest one of all, it has to please you, YOU PICK FROM NOW ON!" This is one of the very rare few times that standing up to one of my parents has worked. If you call this working, anyway. From then on, I would not and have not say/said a damn thing about where we are going to eat if Dad is in the car. If anyone asks me where I would like to eat, I say "Dad picks." Even if Dad picks out a restaurant I do not like, I just say "Fine." I may not be thrilled with the choice, but it isn't worth the fighting.

(Actually, this is not quite true. Last summer I said that I didn't want to go to Denny's, which led to my parents and I getting in a nasty fight for the next hour. See what I mean?)

It didn't help either that once I got out of college, it's also seemed easier for me to not voice opinions. For example, I had this one vegetarian friend who was incredibly picky about where to eat. We'd have like 8 people waiting around starving in her living room while she shot down suggestions for 45 minutes. When she finally picked a place and it was somewhere I didn't want to go, the last thing I wanted to be was the lone holdout who held things up for 45 more minutes just because I out of everyone else didn't want to go there. Plus we'd have to battle it out with Ms. Picky again. Not worth it!

I find it interesting that as far as I can tell, Dave's about the only person to ever get more than a little annoyed at me doing this. (Okay, Scott doesn't seem to be completely thrilled with it either.) I think everyone else just wants me to shut up and agree with the rest!

As you can tell, this habit is a mere indicator of a big bad habit of mine, avoiding confrontation! I'm so utterly tired of squabbling and fighting and bitching all the damn time after 19 straight years of it at home and 5 years of it mostly via phone that almost nothing seems worth all the fighting it would take to get what I want any more. I just want things to be QUIET for a change. So if something makes me mad, I'll probably bite my tongue off rather than say something to the person about it, and if I'm not thrilled with a situation I'll keep it to myself and the journal. I'm so used to "discussions" denigrating into screaming matches that I find it hard to conceive that some people might actually work out things via discussion instead of the loudest screamer prevailing.

Dave finds it rather worrisome that we haven't had a big old fight yet. Or at any rate, he seems to find it worrisome because his dad finds it worrisome. Then again, he's used to fighting in relationships, and I haven't done a whole lot of it. I usually refused to discuss/fight with the ex unless we did it online because I can't stand the screaming/crying/etc. Not that that did anything to improve the problem, it just made things quieter.

I dread fighting. We've warned each other what we're likely to be like in fights, but I don't know how much it'll help when it actually occurs.

Her: "I hate cooking! I hate trying to figure out what to fix for dinner night after night!"
Me: "Why can't your husband, um..."
Her: "Oh, he would if he could! He loves it! But he doesn't get off work until 6:30, and we're all just too hungry to wait. So I'm stuck with it."
Me: "Ugh."
Her: "He's the one that insists on proper meals. When I was single I lived on cheese sandwiches."
(I sit there feeling more and more uncomfortable, especially since my dinner the night before was chips and dip.)
Her: "Thing is, though, you're going to get stuck with it, whether you like it or not. I'm a feminist person, and my husband would love to stay home and cook and watch the kids. But he makes so much more than I ever will. He supports me while I'm doing this. So it just can't happen."
Me: "Oh crap. I hate cooking. I turn into a raving bitch when I have to do it. My mother's so anal about the whole thing that it totally turned me off. I really don't want to get stuck doing it for life."
Her: "Oh, you will. Even if you don't mean to, it just happens and you're stuck with it. Especially when you have kids."

Yes, I'm depressed now.

Doesn't help either that my reading material these days is alternating between The History Of The Wife and Flux: Women On Sex, Work, Love, Kids, And Life In A Half-Changed World. The former rubs in every last indignity and abuse and imprisonment of the married state, while the latter so far is all about how women can't have kids and have a good career and a good relationship, and thus most of them don't even bother with much of a career because they'll just end up sponging off the husband and staying home doing ALL the child care, because they don't expect him to do a lick of it. They know that "equal partnership" just doesn't happen.

Yes, I'm very depressed.

You know what really bothers me? Breastfeeding. Of all things, that strikes me as being the biggest thing that traps women into the primary caretaker role, regardless of what the man would like to do with regards to babyrearing. The woman is tied to the baby without being able to get away from it for more than a few hours, and nobody but her can take care of it for more than a few hours, and you can only work for a few hours before you have to feed the baby again. (I had a coworker who had her husband bring the baby in for lunch every day for like a year. How many people can get that?) Gah. I know that EVERYONE in the universe now says you have smarter, healthier babies if you breastfeed, so therefore YOU MUST BREAST FEED NO MATTER WHAT, so that makes it even worse on you socially if you, well..._{don't want to.} Though in all honesty, I wasn't breastfed, and I'm healthy as a horse and a lot smarter than I should be, given the gene pool that I come from. I'm much more healthy than the breastfed kids I know! So I tend to think this is bullshit, but nobody else would believe me if I said that.

Sigh. I find the idea of kids to be incredibly nervewracking, speaking as a female. I fear biology trapping me into a role I don't want to play out for the rest of my life. When it comes to reproduction, I REALLY wish I was a guy. Hell, it's easy for Dave to want to have kids, it's not all on HIM to do 95 percent of the damn work. The stereotypical man can just support the woman for nine months, then go make the money while she does all the work, and hardly lift a finger. Yeah, who wouldn't want to have that? But does everyone want to BE the woman in that scenario, or are all women just going to end up that way eventually, like it or not?

That seems to be the debate in Flux. You can "go the man route" of career and forego relationships and reproduction, you can "go the woman route" and forego career for reproduction, and they so far don't mention anyone doing anything else. I always figured I'd go the career and relationship route, because reproduction seems like something that EATS you and turns you into a MOMMEEEE! creature with no thoughts of herself or her SO or anyone but the children. In short, it makes you into my mom. No wonder the whole thing terrifies me. My mom has always consciously chosen to forego anything other than me and Dad- she won't do clubs, she rarely gets out and away from Dad (not that she can now, too late)- but what if motherhood makes you unable to still be yourself? What if after awhile, you can't choose anything else but servitude?

No wonder I find it all terrifying.

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