About two years ago, Kevin asked me to quit one of my jobs, waiting tables, so that I could partner with him on Rooted Landscaping. We've been together well over 10 years and have joint bank accounts. Until we got Rooted more organized (part of the impetus for me to come on board) I wouldn't have a salary per se. On paper at least, I wouldn't earn much of anything.
Even though I was working for Rooted, because our income wasn't separated, I felt like a kept woman. If Kevin and I weren't a couple, I wouldn't be able to support myself.
I was freaking out.
Around the same time, a friend of mine moved into the area. Given the economy and the fact that she was a fresh transplant, it took her months to find work. Thankfully, she was also in a relationship where her partner could support the two of them. She didn't lay around and eat bon bons. She finished a book she'd been working on for years, volunteered in a field where she'd created international non-profits, and kept their house spotlessly clean.
She was freaking out.
Recently, another friend described her transition from a good job, but not the right one for her, into a graduate program that would allow her to work in a new field. Her job is driving her nuts, which means she's driving her husband nuts. He's urging her to quit and take a break before beginning grad school. Leaving her job is inevitable, the question is when. She's waiting to leave a job that she's not fond of because if she went now, she'd be completely reliant on her husband's income (for only a few months!). Which they could handle.
But the thought is freaking her out.
In each conversation with these women, our eyebrows raised, our hands gesticulating wildly, we exclaimed, "He'll resent me! I can't take care of myself! I'm a bad feminist!"
So weird.
I'm sure all of our individual politics and beliefs vary, but none of us are too keen in total capitalism and we're not racing to be rich. For me, personally, I believe whole-heartedly in interdependence and less reliance on money. I'm not impressed by wealth accumulation nor fancy careers. I believe we should all focus on health for ourselves, our communities, and our environment.
Yet, in a total about face, I feel like I have to have enough income at any given moment to support myself in the lifestyle to which I've become accustomed. Which is (by global standards) extravagant and unnecessary.
I absolutely believe that communities should support one another. Children and elders should be supported by those who can generate resources. Their value is outside of economic scale. Similarly, when people are ill or parents are on maternity or paternity leave, they shouldn't worry about income. There are reasonable times when any of our work will not be remunerated.
In the layers below my intellect, there's something residual, a lingering belief that causes my emotional strings to spasm when triggered-- I still equate independence and responsibility with money.
Why?
In each of the instances outlined in the introduction, the partners in the equation were TOTALLY OK with providing for their partner. In each instance, both parties were contributing to the welfare of the whole, but not all work was financially compensated. Thankfully, these were situations where at least one party had sufficient gainful employment to support their beloved.
That spasm-y emote-string reverberates with, "I'll be a mooch. He'll resent me." All the nonsense rhetoric unfairly applied to those who receive welfare (and not justly applied to the corporations truly bleeding the public coffers). These aren't even my politics?! Why are they in my head?!
I PURPOSEFULLY built a life that is based on stability but not accumulation. I intentionally have invested in community and purposeful work at the expense of excess things/stuff/money. I committed to someone with shared goals and beliefs. And yet. Lurking. Just below.
This thing.
So what's up with this? I can speculate a bit. I'm 33. The friends I profiled range from 30-45. We were all pretty conscious in the 80s and 90s when a lot of lip service was given to women having careers outside the home, "having it all," being independent. My older sister was always my hero. I always knew she was and would be self-sufficient. I knew that I would be too.
I didn't anticipate the varied compromises and unexpected scenarios of adult life, specifically in partnership. I didn't realize the array of decisions on any given day. I didn't realize that all my unexamined beliefs would surface so that I could blessedly know myself, even when the process feels freaky and foreign.
It took me a solid year of freaking out before I acknowledged that I work, I contribute, my worth is not a paycheck. I still think about this stuff. Rooted is also getting to the point where I could track my own salary, though I haven't yet.
We're the generation born to feminists, me thinks. I'm grateful for the women who preceed and mentor me. I wonder what I have to pass down to the next? That the models of independence we're erecting can be nuanced? That we can disentangle independence and respect from earnings? That we can create our own economies of barter and trade, and offer energy?
Early in our relationship, Kevin said something really insightful to me. "Politically, you believe in interdependence, but emotionally, you're on board with Ayn Rand. What's up with that?"
Truly.
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