I spent 2 weeks with one which eventuated in my being confined to the apartment once the sun set, no transport and no food.

The physical restrictions are nothing compared to the mental ones. I felt 100 times more trapped than I actually was and ended up suffering psychosis.
In 2 weeks.
And the man never knew this, never to this day thought anything was wrong in those 2 weeks.

So today, as India Arie says, “I’m alone but never lonely”.

And hey Gumleaf, I never would have guessed a Sydneysider was here! I’m from Melbourne.

Meh. I don’t care about peoples sexuality one way or the other; if mine isn’t an issue, I have no issues with theirs. I belong to the school of thought that says people have about as much control over who they’re attracted to as I have over my eye colour. I don’t care what shape or form these like-minded souls to discuss feminism and patriarchy come in…

Most of the rest of my friends pay lipservice to feminism but don’t really like to talk about it, and then there are the friends I lost to marriage and the patriarchy ages ago, after I had to watch them rationalise the inequality in their relationships and eventual marriages.

It’s depressing that there are not more like minded girls around who I can blame the patriarchy with over some mojitos - the most committed feminist I know is a guy I’m having a email conversation with - I have to fight to stop myself from imagining a future non-married life with him.

But at last, I found you all!

Fantastic site Twisty, and so good to hear echoes of thoughts I thought I was clever enough to have developed on my own (all through ‘wifework’ I was mentally exclaiming ‘but this is what I’ve been saying for years!!!’.

I’ve been involved monogamously with the love of my life for 14 years. We’re not married (although he has asked), in large part because I am afraid of falling into the exact social traps you mentioned. I don’t want to become domestic or motherly or even wifely. I don’t want “wife” as part of my identity.

But at the same time, those tax breaks sure would be nice.

In theory, I don’t mind the idea of legally recognized partnerships, it’s just “marriage” that I don’t particularly like.

As for possessiveness of children, that at least partly stems from parental instinct. I don’t believe people are automatically hardwired with parental instinct, by the way. We are a social species, so how well our various social instincts develop depends on a lot of factors which may or may not be present or adequately developed in individual situations. For example, if a woman has a baby but the baby is immediately taken away and kept from her, her mothering instincts will be severely truncated or never develop at all because they depend on certain hormonal surges brought on by interaction with her baby. Where raising children is concerned, it benefits the children if the parents feel attached to them because that decreases their chances of abandonment. So a certain amount of possessiveness is desirable.

But the cool part is, a scenario like you envision with many adults raising one child can still potentially happen. Even if they did not give birth to the child, adults can still become emotionally attached to that child and want to raise her, socialize her properly and further her survival. This is how dads become attached to their infants if they aren’t fucking wankers who drop a load and then ignore the kid until she’s old enough to talk football scores, since fathers don’t have the mothering hormones. It is also how moms themselves attach to their children if they and their babies got off to a bad start. So, definitely doable. In fact, honestly, children do better in a tribal environment than they do in the present social setup. They need to be around people of all ages, and they need to see adults doing the work of the adult culture. What they currently have stunts their maturation process and leaves them dependent on a fucked-up social system, and it isn’t just moms being at-home wives and mothers, or dads being patriarchal bullies, it’s other things like schooling, families being isolated from one another, and people being segregated by age. IBTP.

Just because some people can’t see that doesn’t mean marriage (committing to one person hopefully for the rest of your life) is a bad thing, or a sexist thing.

If your husband doesn’t do his fair share, DON’T FUCKING DO HIS SHARE. Let it sit there until he does it. Just THINK about what you’re doing, for gods sakes.

Also, I’m slightly bothered by the heterosexual women wishing they were lesbians so that they don’t feel so lonely without a man or so they can enjoy egalitarian partnerships. Since when were all homosexual relationships equal? Lesbians and gay men can be just as partiarchal, lazy, sexist, racist, abusive, etc. in relationships as heterosexual, white men so please do not tell me that you’d rather date women so you can get a break from men.