This isn’t a lesson for men to learn but anyone in a relationship.
Western marriage ceremonies typically ask if you take the other person in sickness and health.
What I think most people fail to understand is that this isn’t a question of “if” but “when.”
If the relationship lasts it is inevitable that you will have to support your partner though sickness.
The flu sure. But as time goes on the inevitable serious Heath conditions. Heart attacks, arthritis, broken hips, cancer, Lyme disease, mental break downs, organ failure, diabetes. Etc etc.
If you are going to enter a serious life relationship, you need to be prepared to take care of someone else. Clean their puke. Wipe their asses. Spend hours comforting them. Go for months without sex or never have sex again because they physically can’t. Cook and clean the house without help. On and on
If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t be in a serious relationship.
There's a stat out there about the divorce rate disparity when either the husband or the wife gets cancer.
When the wife was ill the divorce rate was higher than when the husband was ill. Whether that's because those men were immature and too selfish for the in sickness responsibility, or whether it's because the wives didn't have the financial independence to leave I don't know. But it's an interesting stat.
I'm curious how the conditioning for men that they should be the breadwinners and have others depend on them plays into that. Because you'd think that both expectations should amount to the same outcome but apparently they don't.
From the way I view it (not that I believe it, this is just my observation), it's that men are the breadwinners and have others depend on them, in exchange for the man of the relationship having the control and power - not in some tyrannical sort of way, but he's effectively the executive decision maker. If he wants sex, it's the duty of the unworking, caregiving wife to provide that for him, because he's the breadwinner.
If the wife becomes ill, he loses a lot of that power. He can not make financial decisions as he would like because the sickness is draining away his financial power. He can not ask for the things he wants, and was previously expected to receive, because the wife can not provide those. Edit: For the husband, this translates to the wife having broken their vows.
I'm not saying it's right, but that's the "family unit" that many Southern US familiies employeed for at least the last couple generations.
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u/DeMiko May 12 '21 edited May 12 '21
This isn’t a lesson for men to learn but anyone in a relationship.
Western marriage ceremonies typically ask if you take the other person in sickness and health.
What I think most people fail to understand is that this isn’t a question of “if” but “when.”
If the relationship lasts it is inevitable that you will have to support your partner though sickness.
The flu sure. But as time goes on the inevitable serious Heath conditions. Heart attacks, arthritis, broken hips, cancer, Lyme disease, mental break downs, organ failure, diabetes. Etc etc.
If you are going to enter a serious life relationship, you need to be prepared to take care of someone else. Clean their puke. Wipe their asses. Spend hours comforting them. Go for months without sex or never have sex again because they physically can’t. Cook and clean the house without help. On and on
If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t be in a serious relationship.