January 13, 2016 • 41 mins
Feminist marriages can take as much planning as feminist weddings. Meg Keene, A Practical Wedding founder and author of the new "A Practical Wedding Planner" offers indispensable advice for newlywed transitions, egalitarian relationships and redefining what it means to be a wife.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And on our last episode we
talked about wedding planning and the concept of feminist brides
(00:23):
and weddings and something Caroline, I've thought a lot about
during my engagement is Yes, the big day, the big event,
but also becoming a newlywed. Yeah, and how your life
might change. Oh my god, will it change? How do
you have a marriage that's like equal and egalitarian. There's
(00:47):
so much and you know what, as much of a
pain as wedding planning is and has been, what I
really tried to do with it partially to it's a
glass half full of the whole thing is see how
it has been this exercise of my fiance and I
(01:09):
establishing these skills that we will take into our marriage
in terms of divvying things up, of communicating, of merging
our families and the fun things that go along with that,
and sometimes having to be brutally honest. I mean, Caroline,
I learned one night that he just you know, really
can't stand Garland. And I was briefly offended by that.
(01:33):
Oh no, I know, but I'm serious. It's it's funny
how these small things. I mean, it's it's a nice
dress rehearsal because it's like, oh, we're talking about Garland.
We're not talking about daycare unless you name your child Garland. Yeah,
which we're planning to because we're a big Judy fans.
So in a way, I've been so selfishly excited about
(01:56):
talking to a practical wedding founder, Meg Key, as we
did in our last episode about wedding planning, um, and
talking to you are also about this newly wed phase
and what being a feminist wife looks like and means,
and what a feminist husband means, and the heteronormativity of
it all. Yeah, we did. We did definitely address the
(02:19):
heteronormativity of it all and like what we can stand
to learn from our same sex peers, which Meg's basically
saying everything, we can learn everything from them. Um. But
even I, as someone who is unmarried, I just felt
like I had so much to learn from Meg. She
had some really really great, reassuring, valuable perspective for just
(02:43):
people who are in serious relationships, screw the whole marriage thing, even,
like just valuable advice for people who are in committed,
long term, serious relationships and in case you didn't tune
into our last episode, just to reintroduce who Meg is.
In two thousand eight, she founded a Practical Wedding dot com,
(03:05):
which started off as sort of a casual wedding blog
sharing her wedding planning and d I y um experiences.
That has now become one of the leading wedding resources
on the internet, and she recently published her second book,
A Practical Wedding Planner, a step by step guide to
(03:25):
cutting through the crazy and creating the wedding you want.
And A Practical Wedding is such a fantastic resource because
it not only focuses on, of course, the fundamentals of
planning a wedding, but they also spend a lot of
time on relationship advice. Um there's an entire essays series
on their about reclaiming wife and what that means. So
(03:47):
whether you're engaged or even single, if you go to
a Practical Wedding there are um so many great relationship
advice columns on there. So you wanted to tap into
that expertise that Meg has gleaned, but both in her
work and also in her personal life. So let's continue
our conversation with Meg Kane. Why don't we transition to
(04:12):
newlywed life? Since we've we've planned the wedding, we've gotten
through it, the DJs told us everything that we're doing
as we're doing it. So what can we expect when
we're expecting to be newlyweds Because during engagement we're planning
all this wedding stuff. But what about the marriage, right,
(04:33):
So let's just assume for the sake of argument that
you have slept together and you live together, because I
think if you haven't, that's like a it's a little
bit of a different ball of life. Um. So, I mean,
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is
that it can change things, like it can be different.
(04:58):
If it doesn't, doesn't mean that there's anything wrong. But
I think in this sort of modern era, we all
assume that nothing's going to change that, um, like we're
just having a party and then we're coming back to
our partent um. And I think that is often I mean,
(05:19):
I don't know if it's the majority or not, but
probably the majority of the time that that is not
the case, Like it does change something, um And so
sort of knowing that that might happen is I think important.
And the other thing to think about is that, um,
(05:40):
while most of us have lived together and slept together, uh,
many of us have not combined our finances um. And
so that's sort of the final frontier I think. Um,
my husband and I didn't combine our finances held the
week before the wedding, which I do not recommend that
(06:01):
that that was. That was when I found out he'd
accidentally spend the money he was the post us for
as his like living money for the last year of
law school. Bless his spendthrift heart and nearly died of
shock because I was the the only breadwinner. UM. So
you know that was a little bit stressful the week
before the wedding. UM. So maybe I had that conversation before. Uh,
(06:24):
But that combining finances UM or fighting about combining finances,
or trying to figure out how and if you're going
to combine finances um is it's big. It's emotional. And
for us, suddenly we were planning for a joint future
and living a joint present in a really real way, um,
(06:49):
in terms of money and checking accounts UM. And that
was a really, really big transition for us and a
good month, but big, well, how what are some good
healthy ways during the engagement? So you're you're you've been
planning for this wedding, you have the wedding, are there
also some good healthy ways during that time that you
can plan a healthy marriage and healthy sort of egalitarian
(07:14):
division of household duties on the last one? Good luck? No,
not good luck. But I think you may be fighting
about that for the end of time and he should be. Um.
But uh, I'm a big fan of premarital counseling. UM.
If you if you have a religious service, you often
(07:35):
get it as sort of part of the deal. UM.
And we did UM and it was really helpful. And UM,
if you have a secular service, you can find therapists
that do it. UM. What I found that was interesting
is it was less like a couple's therapy session, which
we've done and whatever. Those are like driving pencils through
(07:58):
your eyes. But it is more it's usually when done
if you don't have like huge outstanding issues. UM, it's
it's usually more about like asking questions, like we committed
to going to a couples therapy if either of us
even ever asked for it. UM. During pre marital counseling,
(08:19):
which is a really good thing to do. UM. We
talked about like final wishes and death and finances and
what we might do if we found out that, you know,
someone was unfaithful and you know, all those sort of
big questions that you haven't always talked about. UM. And
(08:40):
then this isn't even a shameless plug. This is just
sort of like funny for me. UM. I put together
a couple of pages in my first book for questions
to ask before you get married, UM, and I like
threw it together in an hour. I was like, Okay,
let me just do this, UM. And then every single
friend of mine that has gotten married and use the
(09:00):
book UM has been to come up to me that's
my favorite part of the book. And I was like,
I couldn't done the whole book in an hour, that
that's all anyone wants. UM. And then therapists have come
to me and said, like, people bring it into them
and are like, we need to cover all of these questions,
and they're like, we we cannot cover all of these
questions because it's like every question you could ever ask
(09:20):
in the history of a relationship. But maybe let's pick
a couple, um, but doing something like that, you know,
whether it's from my book or some other book. Um.
I'm actually looking at a book on the shelf of
my office called one thousand and one Questions to Ask
Before You Get Married, which is kind of a lot
of questions. And I haven't read the books, so I
don't know if it's good, But there are you know
(09:41):
a lot of books and resources like that that that
you can, um look at. And I think it's good
to do during planning because it's good to take a
little bit of time out of like planning what is
basically an event, um, to think about why you're doing it.
What are a couple of those questions from your book
(10:02):
that kind of stand out as maybe some of the
tougher ones are more unexpected questions you might not even
think to ask. There's sort of two kinds of questions.
I think, Um, we're sort of consistently shocked as a staff,
right because we both get a lot of questions written
in and we're able to observe a whole lot of comments, um,
(10:27):
and people discussing marriage. And you know, in my case,
I've been doing it for almost a decade, so I've
sort of had a bird's eye view on what people
are thinking about and talking about UM for a long time. UM,
and I'm consistently surprised how often people are ignoring really
big issues, really big questions, UM that like you can't
(10:51):
sort anything out for forever, but like you probably need
to have a grip on like I don't know what
do you want kids? Do not want kids? Where do
you see on that? UM? What religion do you you
know want in your family if you're not the same religion? UM?
Is one if this is something I've seen come up
more and more actually is like is one of you
(11:12):
essentially monogamous? And it is one of you maybe not
essentially monogamous. We've we've had commentars, you know, talking about
like how do I go to my husband and talk
about opening my marriage? Um? And you know that's tough.
Uh if if you've never floated it before, UM, your
husband might be like, oh my god, what are you
(11:33):
talking about? UM. So there are those really sort of
fundamental questions that I think people often, especially if you
have not been together for forever and ever and ever
before you get married, I think people sort of want
to say we love each other so it'll be okay. Um,
But in my experience now having been coupled for more
(11:55):
than a decade and married for half of that, Um,
there's sort of two parts of marriage, and one is
a relationship part, and one is also this sort of
like life management part, like your co workers and household
management and life management. And if you really are far
apart on some issue around life management, it's gonna come up.
(12:16):
It's going to be a problem. Um. And then the
most sort of not unexpected but the question people don't
think to ask, which I think is important, is about
your views on aging parents and on family um. Because
that comes up, right, parents get sick and die, parents
get sick and don't die. Um, parents need to go
(12:37):
into retirement homes. Parents might want to move into your home. Um.
So it really starts coming up for people, and it
can be really shocking to discover that. Like, Oh, my
partner's assumption was that his mom would just move into
our house, right, And he just assumed that was fine,
And that is not fine at all. UM. So I
think that's an important thing to discuss, along with sort
(13:00):
of financial ramifications around that, like if your parents or
family needed money, would you expect you and your partner
to anti up or now now you mentioned, um, just
a minute ago, the issue of one partner being monogamous
and maybe the other not so much. And I was
curious whether you hear very much from a practical wedding
(13:24):
UM visitors about that transition, the newlywed sex life transition,
and whether that's the thing, because I mean, it's kind
of funny. We're like, as brides were often gifted all
of this lingerie, and there's all the expectations about the
first night together, which is funny because of course it's
probably not the first night. And so I was wondering
(13:47):
if that is another unexpected thing. I don't know if
it is. I mean whatever, I think married sex is hot.
I do though, like that was surprising for me. I
was like, oh, it's sexy, um, but like something about
the concept of it. Uh, But yeah, I don't know.
(14:08):
I don't hear a lot. I don't think it's a
big transition point for for most people, UM, the way
I think you do sometimes come across that like, oh,
We've been together for X amount of time and suddenly
I'm realizing I want this different thing, um, And and
that could be legitimately quite stressful. I think, well, that's
good to know that's kind of comforting that it's not.
(14:30):
But it's not. It's just it's sexy. It's fine, Caroline.
I have a personal website and I gotta admit it
doesn't look all that great because I haven't redesigned it
using square Space. And get on that. Well, I will
(14:50):
because Caroline sites that you square Space look professionally designed,
regardless of your Christen Conger skill level, and no coding
is required. On top of that, they give you intuitive
and easy to use tools, and you get a free
domain if you sign up for a year, So Caroline
sandwiches could be yours. Finally, and when you decide to
(15:15):
sign up for square space, make sure to use the
offera code mom stuff to get ten percent off your
first purchase square Space. Build it beautiful. And now back
to the show. Well, a couple of years now ago,
(15:35):
Kristen and I didn't episode on the division of household labor,
and we were mainly focusing on the fact that according
to Academia, uh, it looked like same sex couples were
away on the ball. Men living with men and women
living with women pretty much had it down in terms
of splitting things up equally. It wasn't a huge fight
(15:57):
as to who's gonna mow the lawn versus who's going
to do the dishes. It was more like, let's do
things fairly simply because there aren't traditional gender roles to
fall into. If you both are the social planner and
no one's mowing the lawn, nothing will get done. Well. Actually,
you might have a lot of parties. You just will
have an overgrown law. So you have to like weed
whack to get through the door. Yeah, jeez, yeah, every
(16:19):
every person to bring your own beer and you're own
weed whacker. Um. So A, I want to ask you
what can opposite sex couples stand to learn from same
sex couples once they're in the marriage, But also like
how can people in general learn to strike that balance
in their marriage? I think we can learn everything from Um.
(16:44):
We we live in Oakland, and Oakland is like the
lesbian capital of the universe now or something. I think
I think we have a special crown. Um. You know,
the per capita lesbian population is really high, um, which
is great because it means that now that we have kids,
were raising our kids around a lot of um same
(17:06):
sex Uh. Parents. UM. So I just feel like there's
all this stuff that we're not going to have to
undo with our kids because they're going to see that
from the beginning. But it does mean that we get
to watch, you know, how other couples are doing things,
and how same sex couples are doing things. UM. And
I tend to think that we're reasonably good. Um, but
(17:28):
we're not that good ever, because we do still we
are still fighting the good fight, as opposed to as
being like, well, how are we going to divide this up? Um?
I think that I mean other than the more. If
you have same sex couples in your life, ask them
how they do it? Seriously, like, get all the advice
(17:50):
you can get. But um, I think as a woman,
it's really about fighting for what matters and fighting for
what matters over and over and over again. UM. I
have a stafford who says, um, if it's worth yelling about,
it's worth yelling about every time. It's not. It's not easy.
(18:12):
It doesn't become easy. Um. In my experience, if you
have kids, it becomes way harder, real fast, especially if
you have biological kids. Right, because guess what, I had
to be pregnant twice. UM. And we have uh lesbian
couple at UM school at our school, our kids school,
(18:36):
and so envious they their pregnancies were like at the
same time, right and um they switched off and I
was like, oh, oh, I hate that so much that
I have to do it twice. UM. But then I
was nursing. Um, I'm nursing UM, so that there was
like an even division of labor that can can't be
(18:56):
undone UM. So there was a lot of conflict around that,
and a lot of conflict around also like societal roles.
Once you're both really entrenched in your careers and then
possibly have kids, UM, that's when it stops being about
like what you theoretically thought you were going to do,
and about you know, I have to nurse and you
(19:18):
feel like your career will be impacted if you tell
your male boss that you are going to part time
because of kids, right, Like just all this stuff that
gets layered on UM. But I just think you have
to fight about it over and over and over and
over and over again because it's important. UM. So you know,
my husband and I just had another big blowout about
(19:41):
daycare pickup and our oldest is three, and I would
say within the last He's three and he's been going
to Dake care since eight weeks, and I would say
within the last month, we have finally started to work
at out daycare pickups. So that's a lot of like
hitting it over the head over and over and over again. UM.
So yeah, you just gotta like work at it for
(20:03):
forever well, taking it a couple of steps back from motherhood. UM.
One thing that you've written about a lot, and is
also um a hallmark of practical wedding is the concept
of reclaiming wife and the whole wife identity. So I
was wondering if you could speak to that because wife
is such a loaded term. God, it's so loaded. Yeah.
(20:25):
I realized the day after we got married, like I
vividly remember where, like crossing the Bay Bridge, like I
remember where we were. Um, Dave used the word wife
for the first time, which is like intense when it happens, right,
because I felt like he was. I think that everyone
does this, like you feel like they're lying and then
you're like, oh my god, it's really true. Um. And
like remember looking at his wedding ring and looking at
(20:47):
my wedding ring, UM, and just realizing that like him
having a wedding ring on meant that he now had
like more job security, like more respects, was going to
get promotions easier. Um. And the inverse was true for me.
It would be harder for me to get jobs, It
would be harder for me to move up in the ranks. Um,
(21:11):
I wouldn't have in many ways last respect. Um, certain
things would be expected of me, like giving up my
career or for kids, right. Um. And so it was
just like heavy and tough. And I took off my
engagement ring at that point. Um. It's since been stolen
(21:31):
and replaced. So now I wear my engagement ring everywhere,
but it's a new ring. Um. And just wore a
band because the band was like it didn't visibly look like, oh,
that's a wedding band. Um, because I just sort of
had this feeling that like it wasn't the public's business
that I was married. Um. So, God, it's just a
(21:51):
lot of time pack. I wish I had some easy
answer like let's just reclaim wife and it's awesome and done.
But oh oh, and so when you first get married,
I think it's just like heavy and a lot and
trying to figure out what it means to you and um,
doesn't mean you have to do all these things? That
do you want to do these things? And and then
(22:11):
everyone's asking you about kids, and um, it's tough, man.
I mean, even the answer, well, even though it's not
an easy answer, it's comforting to know that those kinds
of emotions can happen because similar to motherhood, I think,
you know, we expect women to be overjoyed at becoming
(22:36):
wives and becoming mothers, and our complexity of our emotions
and identity are often marginalized. Yeah. And I also just
want to take an intersectional feminist time out, um to
say that I was saying all of that as a
white feminist, and um, it is not always the same
for black feminists certainly, who have you know, there's a
(23:00):
whole history there of stripping family rights away from black
people in this country. UM. So I'm not the sort
of anything like an authority on that, um and shouldn't
be the one to speak to it. But I do
want to like take a time out to say, like, hey,
this is I can only speak for I can only
(23:21):
speak for white ladies. Well, I have a friend who
got married a couple of years ago and even I
mean up to the wedding, and I think even after
they got married, her mother in law was still sort
of ignoring the fact that her brand new daughter in
law wanted to keep her maiden name, did not want
(23:42):
to change her name and take her husband's last name.
And so her mother in law kept making all these comments.
And even I think had a tote bag monogramed, and
that's fun. So if not that uncommon, like it happens,
you know what I mean, Like I didn't have a toebag,
but I have a lot of mail. Yeah, well, yeah,
what's the big deal. What's what's going on with the
(24:03):
name changing? And have you dealt with any of that?
And and what do people tell you? Um? I mean
like at first I should be blunt. I have, again
as a white feminist, need to be really clear about that.
But like I have a pretty unapologetic point of view
where I'm like, ladies, don't change your names, um, and
give your kids your name, which I did. Um. And
(24:26):
I feel really strongly about I'm like it, right, we're
wiping off match, We're literally wiping matrilineal lines off the
face of the world. Um. So I feel strongly about it,
and that really is sort of one of my big, big,
big feminist fights. Um and uh, it's not easy. And
(24:47):
I don't know what goes on with the older generation.
I think they're sort of it's the whole women policing
women thing, right. I think there's psychological theory up once
I and then the other about this, but that you know,
marginalized groups end up enforcing the norms, like self enforcing norms. Um.
(25:08):
So I think it's you know, if you change your name,
then you like sort of have a dog in that
fight and want to enforce that code. Um. But and
then there's this other idea that if you um don't
have one name of your Plat family, which I find
to be like just profoundly ridiculous and um, apologies if
(25:32):
you think that, but I find to be sort of
profoundly ridiculous and really entrenched. Um. And we don't, right,
My husband has the names worn with, I have the
name I was born with. Our kids have hyphenated names
with my math um, so we don't have a family
name at all, and we don't use the hyperennated name
(25:52):
as a family name because neither of us use it
at all, even socially. Um, like it's just not even
a thing. Like it's just not even a thing. Um.
So yeah, the world really pushes back. And I think
that if you have made the stand of taking your
name or of keeping your name, um, it's you kind
(26:14):
of write like best that you picked the fight, um,
which is great, but that means to kind of push
that right because otherwise you didn't pick the bite. So yeah,
there's a lot of correct thing that goes on. For me,
it went on for like five years. It keep didn't
die easily. Wow, like five years post wedding. Oh yeah,
oh yeah. And then also then we had the kid thing, right,
(26:38):
where then people really want to enforce the kid having
me the dad's last name only. So like I've already
taught my kid who speaks to um correct people, uh
and tell them what his name is it really is. Um.
So yeah, God, it's intense. It's intense. The patriarchy does
(27:00):
not die quietly, ladies. So in terms of what a
feminist marriage looks like, it sounds like it looks like
a continual work in progress and a constant negotiation in
a way. Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of
those things where it's like a continual struggle, but in
(27:21):
my opinion, better than the alternative. Right, Like, I'd rather
have a blow up with my husband about gender rules
once a month. Then I have to do everything. So
maybe it's just laziness, but um, I don't want to
do everything. Um, I don't want to have to go
to work and then come home and do all of
(27:42):
the cleaning and all of the cooking and you know,
like I don't want to have to do everything that
I stayed at home you know wife did once upon
a time, A work full time. Um, I don't want
to be both, So it's worth fighting for me. Yeah,
my boy, and and I just made I'm not kidding
(28:02):
a short chart for the house because well because we
found it. Because he cooks a lot, which is great
because I am nowhere near a great cook. But I
can do some laundry and too. Yeah right, So like
I love laundry. It's so satisfying. There's a pile and
there's not a pile, and then it smells good and
(28:22):
so like that's so satisfying. Um, And so that's fine. Great,
you cook, I'll clean up after you cook, and I'll
do laundry and then fold it. And it's it's everything's great, um,
but there were just the outlying stuff. Basically, anything that
wasn't cooking or laundry could potentially turn into a fight.
Oh there's two things I think studies have actually shown
maybe or maybe making that up. And it's a made
(28:44):
up city in my head, um, But according to the
made up city in my head, um, I think that
you have less fights and less stress if you have
defined roles, right, and then it's like, my job is
to do the laundry, and if you do the laundry
for some reason, you're that's great and you're doing me
a favor, but we both know that you're doing me
(29:04):
a favor kind of thing, um than like the undefined
gray area. And then I also will say that if
you get to a point where you can and like
feel like you can do it ethically, etcetera, hiring helps.
We've only done that really recently, but um, having someone
come in and clean the house once a month and
(29:25):
do like the deep clean has removed a lot of
fights and a lot of filth from our our lives. Yeah,
we that's something that's on the table. We haven't made
a decision about that, um, but that's definitely something that
we've talked about too, just because then I mean, that's
one less thing to fight over, honestly, and like the
(29:48):
deep cleaning than it really is, like the laundry, there's
like these discrete tasks. And also I should say that
having been in this for a while, I had kids
and had my marriage changed with that and stuff. Um,
things change, and I think things change more than we
expected them to um, And I think it can be
(30:08):
hard to be like, but no, you said you'd do
the dishes always and forever. We signed that contract, um,
and you know, stuff changes and there's like different needs
at different times, and when I was heavily pregnant there
was stuff I just couldn't do and um. Yeah, so
it's just like you're just always like negotiating and renegotiating
for forever. But that's why you should marry someone you
(30:30):
can talk to communicate with. And yeah, I mean that's
what I'm hearing between the lines of everything you've said. Honestly,
when it comes to engagement, wedding planning, having the wedding,
and then going home the day after. You know, everything
that I'm hearing is how important communication is and just
picking a partner or looking out with your partner that
(30:53):
you really can communicate with each other. Yeah, and picking
someone that can be a partner and not just a
boyfriend or a girlfriend. Do you know what I mean?
Because like I really have thought a lot in the
past few months since having a second kid, So like
there's all that extra layers of stuff going on, and
we've had just a really hard few months with deaths
(31:14):
and the works. Um, but so life's getting really complicated
and just realizing like how much of our lives together
are like who's doing what? And is this getting done?
And also managing investments and do you know what anything?
But like the stuff that you do together ranges from
like sex to financial maintenement helps keeping um, and like
(31:39):
the sex heart falls well in the realm of relationships.
But I think we're conditioned to think about like relationships
is like are you in love? Love? And that they
make you feel angly and like that stuff comes and
goes right and sometimes you feel like that and sometimes
you feel like I would like to murder you, um,
but I will carry on because we're living a life together,
(32:00):
and um, then you and you come back around. Um.
But yeah, you've got to be able to manage. It's
like it's like managing a company, which I also do right. Like,
there's two companies, my company and my household, um, and
they both have remarkably similar tasks. I will say, So, Meg,
(32:20):
I feel like you're in the like planning stages of
your next website, A Practical Marriage, which I totally visit
all the time. I think it's gonna be like a
lifestyle site. So, Meg, where can people go to learn
more about you? And A practical wedding? And the book? Uh,
the book is a practical wedding planner and you can
(32:42):
find it on Amazon or the side part of my
site A Practical Wedding. You will notice that it is
uniform and consistent and easy to find me. You can
find us on Instagram and a Practical Wedding. Um. And
if you want to find out more about me for
some reason, um, I m at mag Keen dot com.
But I'd really live in a practical wedding That's probably
(33:03):
the best place to find me. Well, Meg, thank you
so much for spending so much time with us and
giving us so much insight, and also thank you for
making a practical wedding, which I'm not exaggerating when I
stay has helped keep me saying for the past year.
Thanks ladies, it was really fun. Yeah, thank you so much.
(33:24):
You are a joy. It was so it was so
good to talk to you. Well. Thank you again so
much to Meg for spending so much fabulous time talking
to us. We had so much fun. Honestly, again, it's
worth saying. I just want to talk to her all
(33:47):
the time and would love to just have her be
the third person on the podcast. She doesn't even have
to talk if she didn't want to. She's just so funny.
I just love her. I agree. I mean, you and
I uh talked about that interview outside the ste video
for like thirty minutes after she just to like digest
all of the great stuff and insight that Meg shared
with us, um and so honestly and openly, which we
(34:10):
really appreciated. Well. I think she's a very valuable voice,
whether it's in terms of your engagement planning, a wedding planning,
a marriage planning, a life with your partner. Um, because
she's there's no fruit for to her, There's there's nothing
that she's trying to like sugarcoat anything about relationships or
marriage or weddings or parenting. It's just nice to talk
(34:31):
to a fellow lady about these things honestly and openly.
She's just one of those great people who helps you,
or I hope helped you realize like you're not alone
and these things making you feel like you're crazy. Yeah,
and that some of this relationship stuff is really hard,
you know. I mean, there's a reason why not to
be dismal. But a third of marriages dissolved within the
(34:54):
first five years, and I think it's because we don't
walk into these relationships with full tool sets, because it
can be really easy to get distracted by the wedding
or just by problems are negativity in general, if you
get too swept up in any of that instead of
working through it. Yea. So definitely head over to A
(35:17):
Practical Wedding and check out everything that Meg's about, and
we also highly recommend if you are engaged like I am,
definitely check out their two books, which are fantastic resources.
A Practical Wedding, Creative Solutions for Planning a Beautiful, affordable
and meaningful Celebration, and most recently A Practical Wedding Planner,
(35:39):
A step by step guy to cutting through the crazy
and creating the wedding you want, and we'll have links
to those over at our website Stuff I've Never told
you dot Com. And now, of course, listeners, we want
to hear from you because a lot of you are
in relationships or have been in them. Some of you
might be wives, husbands. We want to know what your
insight and ad ices as well for having a long
(36:03):
term feminist relationship and the work that that takes mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our email address,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. I have a letter here from a
listener who said that she wanted to share a personal
story as a military member serving in Europe during the nineties.
(36:26):
She says a junior enlisted friend of mine found herself pregnant.
After consulting with her boyfriend, another junior enlisted service member,
the decision was made to terminate the pregnancy. After consulting
with a male military doctor, it was explained that the
procedure could not take place on base. She would need
to have the male hospital commander and her male squadron
commander signed off on her to receive care at a
local civilian facility. Take leave time and pay for out
(36:50):
of her own pocket. For the record, abortion was legal
in the country where we were stationed. The doctor assured
her the paperworkers a formality and to come back in
a week to go over the process. Two days later,
the service member was summoned to her male squadron commander's
office and interrogated at length as to her decision. Her
boyfriend escaped any such interrogation. This went on daily for
a week. The base male chaplain, who was not of
(37:13):
her faith, was brought in to persuade her to change
her mind. Mostly the sessions were about guilting, shaming, and
bribing her with better assignments. When the first two tactics failed, finally,
the commander said he refused to sign the paperwork allowing
her to seek medical treatment off base because he was
a family man and against abortion. After a week of
these interrogations, she returned to the military hospital to meet
(37:36):
with her mail doctor, who was shocked and horrified at
her treatment. The hospital commander had signed his part of
the paperwork, but the squadrons commander still refused. Talk about
men controlling women's bodies, my friend chose to defy her
squadron commander. She joked leave, drove herself to a civilian facility,
had the procedure, stayed two days in the hospital, which
was a hospital requirement, and then drove herself home. She
(37:58):
spent the next several months in fear, year of retaliation
and the possibility of punishment up to a court martial
for essentially disobeying her squadron commander. I now live in Texas,
where it seems not a day goes by that the
state legislature is not chipping away at the women's access
to legal abortion. This is all under the guise of
keeping women safe. So today when someone asks me how
(38:20):
I can be pro choice, I just tell them I
have my reasons. As for my fellow service member, she
left the service at the end of her enlistment. Today
she's a happily married mother with three college degrees. So
thank you for writing in Well, I gotta let her
hear from Amy about our recent beauty and fashion episodes
from the end of she writes, in your episodes on
(38:44):
beauty and fashion blogging or vlogging, as the case may be,
you commented about the lack of mail equivalence to this
kind of emotional work. Briefly, mentioning sports shows, I think
there's a better comparison to be made to video game
reviewers and let's play commentaries. Like ashen bloggers, let's play
videos portray a desirable lifestyle to their audience, earning money
(39:05):
playing video games. What could be more fun? However, there's
a lot of unseen work setting up cameras and audio,
playing and replaying through levels, cutting and editing videos, creating
title cards, et cetera. Let's play videos must simultaneously provide
interesting live commentary while playing the game. Their personality sells
the video even more than actual skills. This is intensive
(39:26):
behind the scenes as well as performative work, combining improv comedy,
expert commentary, and likable personality. Furthermore, the market is similar
to fashion blogging in that there are a few elite
let's play groups that make the real cash money by
charging subscription fees to join their live chat, YouTube ads, merchandise,
and donations. Examples include, but aren't limited to, yoggs cast
(39:50):
that might be yos cast, y'all don't know what how
it is actually pronounced video game awesome, and the omnipresent
beauty Pie. However, were making a living wage is difficult
in the market is staturated by amateurs doing their best
to break in. It's difficult to know how much or
how little some of the pros and quotes make. Some
make a point of buying their own games. Others get
(40:12):
copies sent to them as well as gadgets to try.
I think that let's play sector differs from fashion blogging
and that the players maintain a level of personal privacy. However,
there's a certain false intimacy that develops on the viewer's side.
I've spent hours listening to a couple of strangers play
a video game on the other side of the world,
and it starts to feel like I know them and
I'm actually just quietly chilling in on their couch. It's
(40:35):
an odd feeling, and I'd like to clarify that while
I think Let's Play have more male than female creators,
it's not completely exclusive to the ladies. Nor do I
speak from direct experience as an actual creator of Let's
play videos, just an occasional viewer. So thank you Amy
for that insight, and I think your comparison is spot on.
And to yags or yogs cast fans, my hypologies and
(40:59):
if you've got letter us to send our way Mom's
seven hell. Stuff works dot com is where you can
do it every links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts
with our sources so you can learn more about what
it means to be a feminist wife, or just you know,
like of a human person. Head on over to stuff
Bob Never Told You dot com for more on this
(41:25):
and thousands of other topics. Does it has stuff works
dot com
Welcome to stuff Mom Never Told You from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline. And on our last episode we
talked about wedding planning and the concept of feminist brides
(00:23):
and weddings and something Caroline, I've thought a lot about
during my engagement is Yes, the big day, the big event,
but also becoming a newlywed. Yeah, and how your life
might change. Oh my god, will it change? How do
you have a marriage that's like equal and egalitarian. There's
(00:47):
so much and you know what, as much of a
pain as wedding planning is and has been, what I
really tried to do with it partially to it's a
glass half full of the whole thing is see how
it has been this exercise of my fiance and I
(01:09):
establishing these skills that we will take into our marriage
in terms of divvying things up, of communicating, of merging
our families and the fun things that go along with that,
and sometimes having to be brutally honest. I mean, Caroline,
I learned one night that he just you know, really
can't stand Garland. And I was briefly offended by that.
(01:33):
Oh no, I know, but I'm serious. It's it's funny
how these small things. I mean, it's it's a nice
dress rehearsal because it's like, oh, we're talking about Garland.
We're not talking about daycare unless you name your child Garland. Yeah,
which we're planning to because we're a big Judy fans.
So in a way, I've been so selfishly excited about
(01:56):
talking to a practical wedding founder, Meg Key, as we
did in our last episode about wedding planning, um, and
talking to you are also about this newly wed phase
and what being a feminist wife looks like and means,
and what a feminist husband means, and the heteronormativity of
it all. Yeah, we did. We did definitely address the
(02:19):
heteronormativity of it all and like what we can stand
to learn from our same sex peers, which Meg's basically
saying everything, we can learn everything from them. Um. But
even I, as someone who is unmarried, I just felt
like I had so much to learn from Meg. She
had some really really great, reassuring, valuable perspective for just
(02:43):
people who are in serious relationships, screw the whole marriage thing, even,
like just valuable advice for people who are in committed,
long term, serious relationships and in case you didn't tune
into our last episode, just to reintroduce who Meg is.
In two thousand eight, she founded a Practical Wedding dot com,
(03:05):
which started off as sort of a casual wedding blog
sharing her wedding planning and d I y um experiences.
That has now become one of the leading wedding resources
on the internet, and she recently published her second book,
A Practical Wedding Planner, a step by step guide to
(03:25):
cutting through the crazy and creating the wedding you want.
And A Practical Wedding is such a fantastic resource because
it not only focuses on, of course, the fundamentals of
planning a wedding, but they also spend a lot of
time on relationship advice. Um there's an entire essays series
on their about reclaiming wife and what that means. So
(03:47):
whether you're engaged or even single, if you go to
a Practical Wedding there are um so many great relationship
advice columns on there. So you wanted to tap into
that expertise that Meg has gleaned, but both in her
work and also in her personal life. So let's continue
our conversation with Meg Kane. Why don't we transition to
(04:12):
newlywed life? Since we've we've planned the wedding, we've gotten
through it, the DJs told us everything that we're doing
as we're doing it. So what can we expect when
we're expecting to be newlyweds Because during engagement we're planning
all this wedding stuff. But what about the marriage, right,
(04:33):
So let's just assume for the sake of argument that
you have slept together and you live together, because I
think if you haven't, that's like a it's a little
bit of a different ball of life. Um. So, I mean,
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is
that it can change things, like it can be different.
(04:58):
If it doesn't, doesn't mean that there's anything wrong. But
I think in this sort of modern era, we all
assume that nothing's going to change that, um, like we're
just having a party and then we're coming back to
our partent um. And I think that is often I mean,
(05:19):
I don't know if it's the majority or not, but
probably the majority of the time that that is not
the case, Like it does change something, um And so
sort of knowing that that might happen is I think important.
And the other thing to think about is that, um,
(05:40):
while most of us have lived together and slept together, uh,
many of us have not combined our finances um. And
so that's sort of the final frontier I think. Um,
my husband and I didn't combine our finances held the
week before the wedding, which I do not recommend that
(06:01):
that that was. That was when I found out he'd
accidentally spend the money he was the post us for
as his like living money for the last year of
law school. Bless his spendthrift heart and nearly died of
shock because I was the the only breadwinner. UM. So
you know that was a little bit stressful the week
before the wedding. UM. So maybe I had that conversation before. Uh,
(06:24):
But that combining finances UM or fighting about combining finances,
or trying to figure out how and if you're going
to combine finances um is it's big. It's emotional. And
for us, suddenly we were planning for a joint future
and living a joint present in a really real way, um,
(06:49):
in terms of money and checking accounts UM. And that
was a really, really big transition for us and a
good month, but big, well, how what are some good
healthy ways during the engagement? So you're you're you've been
planning for this wedding, you have the wedding, are there
also some good healthy ways during that time that you
can plan a healthy marriage and healthy sort of egalitarian
(07:14):
division of household duties on the last one? Good luck? No,
not good luck. But I think you may be fighting
about that for the end of time and he should be. Um.
But uh, I'm a big fan of premarital counseling. UM.
If you if you have a religious service, you often
(07:35):
get it as sort of part of the deal. UM.
And we did UM and it was really helpful. And UM,
if you have a secular service, you can find therapists
that do it. UM. What I found that was interesting
is it was less like a couple's therapy session, which
we've done and whatever. Those are like driving pencils through
(07:58):
your eyes. But it is more it's usually when done
if you don't have like huge outstanding issues. UM, it's
it's usually more about like asking questions, like we committed
to going to a couples therapy if either of us
even ever asked for it. UM. During pre marital counseling,
(08:19):
which is a really good thing to do. UM. We
talked about like final wishes and death and finances and
what we might do if we found out that, you know,
someone was unfaithful and you know, all those sort of
big questions that you haven't always talked about. UM. And
(08:40):
then this isn't even a shameless plug. This is just
sort of like funny for me. UM. I put together
a couple of pages in my first book for questions
to ask before you get married, UM, and I like
threw it together in an hour. I was like, Okay,
let me just do this, UM. And then every single
friend of mine that has gotten married and use the
(09:00):
book UM has been to come up to me that's
my favorite part of the book. And I was like,
I couldn't done the whole book in an hour, that
that's all anyone wants. UM. And then therapists have come
to me and said, like, people bring it into them
and are like, we need to cover all of these questions,
and they're like, we we cannot cover all of these
questions because it's like every question you could ever ask
(09:20):
in the history of a relationship. But maybe let's pick
a couple, um, but doing something like that, you know,
whether it's from my book or some other book. Um.
I'm actually looking at a book on the shelf of
my office called one thousand and one Questions to Ask
Before You Get Married, which is kind of a lot
of questions. And I haven't read the books, so I
don't know if it's good, But there are you know
(09:41):
a lot of books and resources like that that that
you can, um look at. And I think it's good
to do during planning because it's good to take a
little bit of time out of like planning what is
basically an event, um, to think about why you're doing it.
What are a couple of those questions from your book
(10:02):
that kind of stand out as maybe some of the
tougher ones are more unexpected questions you might not even
think to ask. There's sort of two kinds of questions.
I think, Um, we're sort of consistently shocked as a staff,
right because we both get a lot of questions written
in and we're able to observe a whole lot of comments, um,
(10:27):
and people discussing marriage. And you know, in my case,
I've been doing it for almost a decade, so I've
sort of had a bird's eye view on what people
are thinking about and talking about UM for a long time. UM,
and I'm consistently surprised how often people are ignoring really
big issues, really big questions, UM that like you can't
(10:51):
sort anything out for forever, but like you probably need
to have a grip on like I don't know what
do you want kids? Do not want kids? Where do
you see on that? UM? What religion do you you
know want in your family if you're not the same religion? UM?
Is one if this is something I've seen come up
more and more actually is like is one of you
(11:12):
essentially monogamous? And it is one of you maybe not
essentially monogamous. We've we've had commentars, you know, talking about
like how do I go to my husband and talk
about opening my marriage? Um? And you know that's tough.
Uh if if you've never floated it before, UM, your
husband might be like, oh my god, what are you
(11:33):
talking about? UM. So there are those really sort of
fundamental questions that I think people often, especially if you
have not been together for forever and ever and ever
before you get married, I think people sort of want
to say we love each other so it'll be okay. Um,
But in my experience now having been coupled for more
(11:55):
than a decade and married for half of that, Um,
there's sort of two parts of marriage, and one is
a relationship part, and one is also this sort of
like life management part, like your co workers and household
management and life management. And if you really are far
apart on some issue around life management, it's gonna come up.
(12:16):
It's going to be a problem. Um. And then the
most sort of not unexpected but the question people don't
think to ask, which I think is important, is about
your views on aging parents and on family um. Because
that comes up, right, parents get sick and die, parents
get sick and don't die. Um, parents need to go
(12:37):
into retirement homes. Parents might want to move into your home. Um.
So it really starts coming up for people, and it
can be really shocking to discover that. Like, Oh, my
partner's assumption was that his mom would just move into
our house, right, And he just assumed that was fine,
And that is not fine at all. UM. So I
think that's an important thing to discuss, along with sort
(13:00):
of financial ramifications around that, like if your parents or
family needed money, would you expect you and your partner
to anti up or now now you mentioned, um, just
a minute ago, the issue of one partner being monogamous
and maybe the other not so much. And I was
curious whether you hear very much from a practical wedding
(13:24):
UM visitors about that transition, the newlywed sex life transition,
and whether that's the thing, because I mean, it's kind
of funny. We're like, as brides were often gifted all
of this lingerie, and there's all the expectations about the
first night together, which is funny because of course it's
probably not the first night. And so I was wondering
(13:47):
if that is another unexpected thing. I don't know if
it is. I mean whatever, I think married sex is hot.
I do though, like that was surprising for me. I
was like, oh, it's sexy, um, but like something about
the concept of it. Uh, But yeah, I don't know.
(14:08):
I don't hear a lot. I don't think it's a
big transition point for for most people, UM, the way
I think you do sometimes come across that like, oh,
We've been together for X amount of time and suddenly
I'm realizing I want this different thing, um, And and
that could be legitimately quite stressful. I think, well, that's
good to know that's kind of comforting that it's not.
(14:30):
But it's not. It's just it's sexy. It's fine, Caroline.
I have a personal website and I gotta admit it
doesn't look all that great because I haven't redesigned it
using square Space. And get on that. Well, I will
(14:50):
because Caroline sites that you square Space look professionally designed,
regardless of your Christen Conger skill level, and no coding
is required. On top of that, they give you intuitive
and easy to use tools, and you get a free
domain if you sign up for a year, So Caroline
sandwiches could be yours. Finally, and when you decide to
(15:15):
sign up for square space, make sure to use the
offera code mom stuff to get ten percent off your
first purchase square Space. Build it beautiful. And now back
to the show. Well, a couple of years now ago,
(15:35):
Kristen and I didn't episode on the division of household labor,
and we were mainly focusing on the fact that according
to Academia, uh, it looked like same sex couples were
away on the ball. Men living with men and women
living with women pretty much had it down in terms
of splitting things up equally. It wasn't a huge fight
(15:57):
as to who's gonna mow the lawn versus who's going
to do the dishes. It was more like, let's do
things fairly simply because there aren't traditional gender roles to
fall into. If you both are the social planner and
no one's mowing the lawn, nothing will get done. Well. Actually,
you might have a lot of parties. You just will
have an overgrown law. So you have to like weed
whack to get through the door. Yeah, jeez, yeah, every
(16:19):
every person to bring your own beer and you're own
weed whacker. Um. So A, I want to ask you
what can opposite sex couples stand to learn from same
sex couples once they're in the marriage, But also like
how can people in general learn to strike that balance
in their marriage? I think we can learn everything from Um.
(16:44):
We we live in Oakland, and Oakland is like the
lesbian capital of the universe now or something. I think
I think we have a special crown. Um. You know,
the per capita lesbian population is really high, um, which
is great because it means that now that we have kids,
were raising our kids around a lot of um same
(17:06):
sex Uh. Parents. UM. So I just feel like there's
all this stuff that we're not going to have to
undo with our kids because they're going to see that
from the beginning. But it does mean that we get
to watch, you know, how other couples are doing things,
and how same sex couples are doing things. UM. And
I tend to think that we're reasonably good. Um, but
(17:28):
we're not that good ever, because we do still we
are still fighting the good fight, as opposed to as
being like, well, how are we going to divide this up? Um?
I think that I mean other than the more. If
you have same sex couples in your life, ask them
how they do it? Seriously, like, get all the advice
(17:50):
you can get. But um, I think as a woman,
it's really about fighting for what matters and fighting for
what matters over and over and over again. UM. I
have a stafford who says, um, if it's worth yelling about,
it's worth yelling about every time. It's not. It's not easy.
(18:12):
It doesn't become easy. Um. In my experience, if you
have kids, it becomes way harder, real fast, especially if
you have biological kids. Right, because guess what, I had
to be pregnant twice. UM. And we have uh lesbian
couple at UM school at our school, our kids school,
(18:36):
and so envious they their pregnancies were like at the
same time, right and um they switched off and I
was like, oh, oh, I hate that so much that
I have to do it twice. UM. But then I
was nursing. Um, I'm nursing UM, so that there was
like an even division of labor that can can't be
(18:56):
undone UM. So there was a lot of conflict around that,
and a lot of conflict around also like societal roles.
Once you're both really entrenched in your careers and then
possibly have kids, UM, that's when it stops being about
like what you theoretically thought you were going to do,
and about you know, I have to nurse and you
(19:18):
feel like your career will be impacted if you tell
your male boss that you are going to part time
because of kids, right, Like just all this stuff that
gets layered on UM. But I just think you have
to fight about it over and over and over and
over and over again because it's important. UM. So you know,
my husband and I just had another big blowout about
(19:41):
daycare pickup and our oldest is three, and I would
say within the last He's three and he's been going
to Dake care since eight weeks, and I would say
within the last month, we have finally started to work
at out daycare pickups. So that's a lot of like
hitting it over the head over and over and over again. UM.
So yeah, you just gotta like work at it for
(20:03):
forever well, taking it a couple of steps back from motherhood. UM.
One thing that you've written about a lot, and is
also um a hallmark of practical wedding is the concept
of reclaiming wife and the whole wife identity. So I
was wondering if you could speak to that because wife
is such a loaded term. God, it's so loaded. Yeah.
(20:25):
I realized the day after we got married, like I
vividly remember where, like crossing the Bay Bridge, like I
remember where we were. Um, Dave used the word wife
for the first time, which is like intense when it happens, right,
because I felt like he was. I think that everyone
does this, like you feel like they're lying and then
you're like, oh my god, it's really true. Um. And
like remember looking at his wedding ring and looking at
(20:47):
my wedding ring, UM, and just realizing that like him
having a wedding ring on meant that he now had
like more job security, like more respects, was going to
get promotions easier. Um. And the inverse was true for me.
It would be harder for me to get jobs, It
would be harder for me to move up in the ranks. Um,
(21:11):
I wouldn't have in many ways last respect. Um, certain
things would be expected of me, like giving up my
career or for kids, right. Um. And so it was
just like heavy and tough. And I took off my
engagement ring at that point. Um. It's since been stolen
(21:31):
and replaced. So now I wear my engagement ring everywhere,
but it's a new ring. Um. And just wore a
band because the band was like it didn't visibly look like, oh,
that's a wedding band. Um, because I just sort of
had this feeling that like it wasn't the public's business
that I was married. Um. So, God, it's just a
(21:51):
lot of time pack. I wish I had some easy
answer like let's just reclaim wife and it's awesome and done.
But oh oh, and so when you first get married,
I think it's just like heavy and a lot and
trying to figure out what it means to you and um,
doesn't mean you have to do all these things? That
do you want to do these things? And and then
(22:11):
everyone's asking you about kids, and um, it's tough, man.
I mean, even the answer, well, even though it's not
an easy answer, it's comforting to know that those kinds
of emotions can happen because similar to motherhood, I think,
you know, we expect women to be overjoyed at becoming
(22:36):
wives and becoming mothers, and our complexity of our emotions
and identity are often marginalized. Yeah. And I also just
want to take an intersectional feminist time out, um to
say that I was saying all of that as a
white feminist, and um, it is not always the same
for black feminists certainly, who have you know, there's a
(23:00):
whole history there of stripping family rights away from black
people in this country. UM. So I'm not the sort
of anything like an authority on that, um and shouldn't
be the one to speak to it. But I do
want to like take a time out to say, like, hey,
this is I can only speak for I can only
(23:21):
speak for white ladies. Well, I have a friend who
got married a couple of years ago and even I
mean up to the wedding, and I think even after
they got married, her mother in law was still sort
of ignoring the fact that her brand new daughter in
law wanted to keep her maiden name, did not want
(23:42):
to change her name and take her husband's last name.
And so her mother in law kept making all these comments.
And even I think had a tote bag monogramed, and
that's fun. So if not that uncommon, like it happens,
you know what I mean, Like I didn't have a toebag,
but I have a lot of mail. Yeah, well, yeah,
what's the big deal. What's what's going on with the
(24:03):
name changing? And have you dealt with any of that?
And and what do people tell you? Um? I mean
like at first I should be blunt. I have, again
as a white feminist, need to be really clear about that.
But like I have a pretty unapologetic point of view
where I'm like, ladies, don't change your names, um, and
give your kids your name, which I did. Um. And
(24:26):
I feel really strongly about I'm like it, right, we're
wiping off match, We're literally wiping matrilineal lines off the
face of the world. Um. So I feel strongly about it,
and that really is sort of one of my big, big,
big feminist fights. Um and uh, it's not easy. And
(24:47):
I don't know what goes on with the older generation.
I think they're sort of it's the whole women policing
women thing, right. I think there's psychological theory up once
I and then the other about this, but that you know,
marginalized groups end up enforcing the norms, like self enforcing norms. Um.
(25:08):
So I think it's you know, if you change your name,
then you like sort of have a dog in that
fight and want to enforce that code. Um. But and
then there's this other idea that if you um don't
have one name of your Plat family, which I find
to be like just profoundly ridiculous and um, apologies if
(25:32):
you think that, but I find to be sort of
profoundly ridiculous and really entrenched. Um. And we don't, right,
My husband has the names worn with, I have the
name I was born with. Our kids have hyphenated names
with my math um, so we don't have a family
name at all, and we don't use the hyperennated name
(25:52):
as a family name because neither of us use it
at all, even socially. Um, like it's just not even
a thing. Like it's just not even a thing. Um.
So yeah, the world really pushes back. And I think
that if you have made the stand of taking your
name or of keeping your name, um, it's you kind
(26:14):
of write like best that you picked the fight, um,
which is great, but that means to kind of push
that right because otherwise you didn't pick the bite. So yeah,
there's a lot of correct thing that goes on. For me,
it went on for like five years. It keep didn't
die easily. Wow, like five years post wedding. Oh yeah,
oh yeah. And then also then we had the kid thing, right,
(26:38):
where then people really want to enforce the kid having
me the dad's last name only. So like I've already
taught my kid who speaks to um correct people, uh
and tell them what his name is it really is. Um.
So yeah, God, it's intense. It's intense. The patriarchy does
(27:00):
not die quietly, ladies. So in terms of what a
feminist marriage looks like, it sounds like it looks like
a continual work in progress and a constant negotiation in
a way. Yeah. I mean, I think it's one of
those things where it's like a continual struggle, but in
(27:21):
my opinion, better than the alternative. Right, Like, I'd rather
have a blow up with my husband about gender rules
once a month. Then I have to do everything. So
maybe it's just laziness, but um, I don't want to
do everything. Um, I don't want to have to go
to work and then come home and do all of
(27:42):
the cleaning and all of the cooking and you know,
like I don't want to have to do everything that
I stayed at home you know wife did once upon
a time, A work full time. Um, I don't want
to be both, So it's worth fighting for me. Yeah,
my boy, and and I just made I'm not kidding
(28:02):
a short chart for the house because well because we
found it. Because he cooks a lot, which is great
because I am nowhere near a great cook. But I
can do some laundry and too. Yeah right, So like
I love laundry. It's so satisfying. There's a pile and
there's not a pile, and then it smells good and
(28:22):
so like that's so satisfying. Um, And so that's fine. Great,
you cook, I'll clean up after you cook, and I'll
do laundry and then fold it. And it's it's everything's great, um,
but there were just the outlying stuff. Basically, anything that
wasn't cooking or laundry could potentially turn into a fight.
Oh there's two things I think studies have actually shown
maybe or maybe making that up. And it's a made
(28:44):
up city in my head, um, But according to the
made up city in my head, um, I think that
you have less fights and less stress if you have
defined roles, right, and then it's like, my job is
to do the laundry, and if you do the laundry
for some reason, you're that's great and you're doing me
a favor, but we both know that you're doing me
(29:04):
a favor kind of thing, um than like the undefined
gray area. And then I also will say that if
you get to a point where you can and like
feel like you can do it ethically, etcetera, hiring helps.
We've only done that really recently, but um, having someone
come in and clean the house once a month and
(29:25):
do like the deep clean has removed a lot of
fights and a lot of filth from our our lives. Yeah,
we that's something that's on the table. We haven't made
a decision about that, um, but that's definitely something that
we've talked about too, just because then I mean, that's
one less thing to fight over, honestly, and like the
(29:48):
deep cleaning than it really is, like the laundry, there's
like these discrete tasks. And also I should say that
having been in this for a while, I had kids
and had my marriage changed with that and stuff. Um,
things change, and I think things change more than we
expected them to um, And I think it can be
(30:08):
hard to be like, but no, you said you'd do
the dishes always and forever. We signed that contract, um,
and you know, stuff changes and there's like different needs
at different times, and when I was heavily pregnant there
was stuff I just couldn't do and um. Yeah, so
it's just like you're just always like negotiating and renegotiating
for forever. But that's why you should marry someone you
(30:30):
can talk to communicate with. And yeah, I mean that's
what I'm hearing between the lines of everything you've said. Honestly,
when it comes to engagement, wedding planning, having the wedding,
and then going home the day after. You know, everything
that I'm hearing is how important communication is and just
picking a partner or looking out with your partner that
(30:53):
you really can communicate with each other. Yeah, and picking
someone that can be a partner and not just a
boyfriend or a girlfriend. Do you know what I mean?
Because like I really have thought a lot in the
past few months since having a second kid, So like
there's all that extra layers of stuff going on, and
we've had just a really hard few months with deaths
(31:14):
and the works. Um, but so life's getting really complicated
and just realizing like how much of our lives together
are like who's doing what? And is this getting done?
And also managing investments and do you know what anything?
But like the stuff that you do together ranges from
like sex to financial maintenement helps keeping um, and like
(31:39):
the sex heart falls well in the realm of relationships.
But I think we're conditioned to think about like relationships
is like are you in love? Love? And that they
make you feel angly and like that stuff comes and
goes right and sometimes you feel like that and sometimes
you feel like I would like to murder you, um,
but I will carry on because we're living a life together,
(32:00):
and um, then you and you come back around. Um.
But yeah, you've got to be able to manage. It's
like it's like managing a company, which I also do right. Like,
there's two companies, my company and my household, um, and
they both have remarkably similar tasks. I will say, So, Meg,
(32:20):
I feel like you're in the like planning stages of
your next website, A Practical Marriage, which I totally visit
all the time. I think it's gonna be like a
lifestyle site. So, Meg, where can people go to learn
more about you? And A practical wedding? And the book? Uh,
the book is a practical wedding planner and you can
(32:42):
find it on Amazon or the side part of my
site A Practical Wedding. You will notice that it is
uniform and consistent and easy to find me. You can
find us on Instagram and a Practical Wedding. Um. And
if you want to find out more about me for
some reason, um, I m at mag Keen dot com.
But I'd really live in a practical wedding That's probably
(33:03):
the best place to find me. Well, Meg, thank you
so much for spending so much time with us and
giving us so much insight, and also thank you for
making a practical wedding, which I'm not exaggerating when I
stay has helped keep me saying for the past year.
Thanks ladies, it was really fun. Yeah, thank you so much.
(33:24):
You are a joy. It was so it was so
good to talk to you. Well. Thank you again so
much to Meg for spending so much fabulous time talking
to us. We had so much fun. Honestly, again, it's
worth saying. I just want to talk to her all
(33:47):
the time and would love to just have her be
the third person on the podcast. She doesn't even have
to talk if she didn't want to. She's just so funny.
I just love her. I agree. I mean, you and
I uh talked about that interview outside the ste video
for like thirty minutes after she just to like digest
all of the great stuff and insight that Meg shared
with us, um and so honestly and openly, which we
(34:10):
really appreciated. Well. I think she's a very valuable voice,
whether it's in terms of your engagement planning, a wedding planning,
a marriage planning, a life with your partner. Um, because
she's there's no fruit for to her, There's there's nothing
that she's trying to like sugarcoat anything about relationships or
marriage or weddings or parenting. It's just nice to talk
(34:31):
to a fellow lady about these things honestly and openly.
She's just one of those great people who helps you,
or I hope helped you realize like you're not alone
and these things making you feel like you're crazy. Yeah,
and that some of this relationship stuff is really hard,
you know. I mean, there's a reason why not to
be dismal. But a third of marriages dissolved within the
(34:54):
first five years, and I think it's because we don't
walk into these relationships with full tool sets, because it
can be really easy to get distracted by the wedding
or just by problems are negativity in general, if you
get too swept up in any of that instead of
working through it. Yea. So definitely head over to A
(35:17):
Practical Wedding and check out everything that Meg's about, and
we also highly recommend if you are engaged like I am,
definitely check out their two books, which are fantastic resources.
A Practical Wedding, Creative Solutions for Planning a Beautiful, affordable
and meaningful Celebration, and most recently A Practical Wedding Planner,
(35:39):
A step by step guy to cutting through the crazy
and creating the wedding you want, and we'll have links
to those over at our website Stuff I've Never told
you dot Com. And now, of course, listeners, we want
to hear from you because a lot of you are
in relationships or have been in them. Some of you
might be wives, husbands. We want to know what your
insight and ad ices as well for having a long
(36:03):
term feminist relationship and the work that that takes mom.
Stuff at how stuff works dot Com is our email address,
and we've got a couple of messages to share with
you right now. I have a letter here from a
listener who said that she wanted to share a personal
story as a military member serving in Europe during the nineties.
(36:26):
She says a junior enlisted friend of mine found herself pregnant.
After consulting with her boyfriend, another junior enlisted service member,
the decision was made to terminate the pregnancy. After consulting
with a male military doctor, it was explained that the
procedure could not take place on base. She would need
to have the male hospital commander and her male squadron
commander signed off on her to receive care at a
local civilian facility. Take leave time and pay for out
(36:50):
of her own pocket. For the record, abortion was legal
in the country where we were stationed. The doctor assured
her the paperworkers a formality and to come back in
a week to go over the process. Two days later,
the service member was summoned to her male squadron commander's
office and interrogated at length as to her decision. Her
boyfriend escaped any such interrogation. This went on daily for
a week. The base male chaplain, who was not of
(37:13):
her faith, was brought in to persuade her to change
her mind. Mostly the sessions were about guilting, shaming, and
bribing her with better assignments. When the first two tactics failed, finally,
the commander said he refused to sign the paperwork allowing
her to seek medical treatment off base because he was
a family man and against abortion. After a week of
these interrogations, she returned to the military hospital to meet
(37:36):
with her mail doctor, who was shocked and horrified at
her treatment. The hospital commander had signed his part of
the paperwork, but the squadrons commander still refused. Talk about
men controlling women's bodies, my friend chose to defy her
squadron commander. She joked leave, drove herself to a civilian facility,
had the procedure, stayed two days in the hospital, which
was a hospital requirement, and then drove herself home. She
(37:58):
spent the next several months in fear, year of retaliation
and the possibility of punishment up to a court martial
for essentially disobeying her squadron commander. I now live in Texas,
where it seems not a day goes by that the
state legislature is not chipping away at the women's access
to legal abortion. This is all under the guise of
keeping women safe. So today when someone asks me how
(38:20):
I can be pro choice, I just tell them I
have my reasons. As for my fellow service member, she
left the service at the end of her enlistment. Today
she's a happily married mother with three college degrees. So
thank you for writing in Well, I gotta let her
hear from Amy about our recent beauty and fashion episodes
from the end of she writes, in your episodes on
(38:44):
beauty and fashion blogging or vlogging, as the case may be,
you commented about the lack of mail equivalence to this
kind of emotional work. Briefly, mentioning sports shows, I think
there's a better comparison to be made to video game
reviewers and let's play commentaries. Like ashen bloggers, let's play
videos portray a desirable lifestyle to their audience, earning money
(39:05):
playing video games. What could be more fun? However, there's
a lot of unseen work setting up cameras and audio,
playing and replaying through levels, cutting and editing videos, creating
title cards, et cetera. Let's play videos must simultaneously provide
interesting live commentary while playing the game. Their personality sells
the video even more than actual skills. This is intensive
(39:26):
behind the scenes as well as performative work, combining improv comedy,
expert commentary, and likable personality. Furthermore, the market is similar
to fashion blogging in that there are a few elite
let's play groups that make the real cash money by
charging subscription fees to join their live chat, YouTube ads, merchandise,
and donations. Examples include, but aren't limited to, yoggs cast
(39:50):
that might be yos cast, y'all don't know what how
it is actually pronounced video game awesome, and the omnipresent
beauty Pie. However, were making a living wage is difficult
in the market is staturated by amateurs doing their best
to break in. It's difficult to know how much or
how little some of the pros and quotes make. Some
make a point of buying their own games. Others get
(40:12):
copies sent to them as well as gadgets to try.
I think that let's play sector differs from fashion blogging
and that the players maintain a level of personal privacy. However,
there's a certain false intimacy that develops on the viewer's side.
I've spent hours listening to a couple of strangers play
a video game on the other side of the world,
and it starts to feel like I know them and
I'm actually just quietly chilling in on their couch. It's
(40:35):
an odd feeling, and I'd like to clarify that while
I think Let's Play have more male than female creators,
it's not completely exclusive to the ladies. Nor do I
speak from direct experience as an actual creator of Let's
play videos, just an occasional viewer. So thank you Amy
for that insight, and I think your comparison is spot on.
And to yags or yogs cast fans, my hypologies and
(40:59):
if you've got letter us to send our way Mom's
seven hell. Stuff works dot com is where you can
do it every links to all of our social media
as well as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts
with our sources so you can learn more about what
it means to be a feminist wife, or just you know,
like of a human person. Head on over to stuff
Bob Never Told You dot com for more on this
(41:25):
and thousands of other topics. Does it has stuff works
dot com
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