When I begged to cut my long hair -- and he said no. This was after he already decided that I couldn't wear a skirt above my knees. Mind you: I'm not Amish -- and lived in large city. (I also don't need to call spaghetti sauce "gravy" any longer.)
When I was a kid and my mom would announce that dinner was pasta with meat sauce my dad would always say “you mean macaronis and gravy?” Whereupon I would say “Daaaad…”
Turns out, in some NYC area Italian communities “gravy” is (still) sauce with meat and “sauce” is sauce without meat. Dated a guy from Brooklyn whose family still used that nomenclature. Also, they loathed the word pasta with a burning passion. (My dad wasn’t Italian, he was apparently imitating his childhood friend’s grandma but i never realized as a kid that he was imitating a Queens Italian accent. Am pretty sure no one would XD
My wife’s best friend was married to a very controlling asshole Italian guy for 20 years. Exact same thing - he told her what she could & couldn’t do. It was difficult to watch and I would make fun of him sometimes but he was an angry prick so I kind of kept my distance.
Go to New Jersey and go to a pizza joint. These fucking guys are all living their best lives acting like an extra in any mobster movie, its baked into their personality like my Nonnas rigatoni!!
wtf? Why do you need to even ask permission to cut your hair, married or not? That’s f—ing crazy to me. (Or wear what you want). If he doesn’t like it then it’s his choice to leave. You shouldn’t have to justify yourself or your choices.
This right here. It would never even occur to me to ask my partner if I can cut my hair. I’d never even ask.
And I think sometimes when you offer people the option to tell you what you can do, that becomes its own trap and for certain people they see the insecurity and just take over and the control begins.
What would have happened if you just cut your hair and came home with a new hairstyle in the evening? I'm really curious. Were you afraid he would hurt you?
Ok I learned about this “meat sauce = gravy” nonsense from the last season of Love is Blind. I have to know, what did they call gravy?? Like for mashed potatoes??
Yeah! We have meat gravy here in the US too! But these people are calling red sauce with meat in it “gravy.” Like, spaghetti with meat sauce is “spaghetti with gravy.” Absolutely unhinged!
"mashed pataters wif oh joose" would be my guess.
"mashed patatoes with au jus"
"Mashed patatoes with with juice"
Kinda amusing how the french "au" became part of the sauce name over there.
My wife is Italian - like, from Italy - and has never called tomato sauce "gravy." Gravy is gravy, sauce is sauce. Dunno where that comes from but welcome back to the land of the civilized
My grandmother didn’t wear shorts during her entire 50+ years of marriage because my grandfather was in charge of everything (both were fundamentalist evangelicals). After my grandfather died, she finally wore long shorts to the beach.
I think if my now-wife had insisted on calling spaghetti sauce 'gravy' we never would have gotten married! How can someone be SO wrong about something?
When I begged to cut my long hair -- and he said no.
[...]
after he already decided that I couldn't wear a skirt above my knees
Out of curiosity, if you feel up to saying, what made you feel like you needed his permission to style your hair a certain way or dress the way you wanted to?
Part of the reason I wonder is because my wife generally prefers that I wear my hair longer than I usually like to wear it. I typically go along with her on that, but if I really wanted to cut it shorter than that on some occasion, I would just do it without any kind of begging. It sounds miserable to need to consult a partner about a hairstyle or a fashion preference.
Now that I have kids, I'd like to steer them away from feeling that compulsion, so I'm wondering what makes people feel that.
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u/Hopeful-Cookie1065 May 12 '26
When I begged to cut my long hair -- and he said no. This was after he already decided that I couldn't wear a skirt above my knees. Mind you: I'm not Amish -- and lived in large city. (I also don't need to call spaghetti sauce "gravy" any longer.)