Re: "DH says I've turned him into a chauvinist."

I'm also almost certainly not representative of wider society, but here's our modelling of an equal relationship... and as someone else said up-thread, I don't think it is really about whether or not we're representative so much as it is about showing that yes, an equal relationship is not a science fictional concept.

DP and I both work full-time currently, though I'll be on mat leave from mid-August and am looking forward to it. We share the housework pretty evenly, though some MN-insipred conversations have highlighted that I probably do a bit more overall. He's spontaneously doing more round the house and I'm doing less as I get more pg, so it's balancing out. Like blackcurrants it's a bit odd feeling "taken care of" because I don't really want to be coddled; but at the same time, realistically I do need some looking after, and hey, this is all a different situation from what it was pre-baby!

As this is our first child we don't yet know how all the childcare stuff will work out - the discussion currently is that we'll try to both work four days a week so that once I go back to work we'll only need a nursery place for three days of the week, but that's still in the future. I earn more than DP so it's not so plausible for me to be a SAHM; if anyone was to stay at home full time it would be more likely to be him, but it probably won't end up working out that way.

As others have said above, I wouldn't have put up with someone abusive or controlling, or at least not as a permanent partner; I did have a relationship for nearly a year with someone who did have some control issues. It took me longer to decide this was not for me precisely because the issues were actually not that bad, and he was a hippy vegan pro-feminist type who was in fact trying quite hard to overcome what had been for him a pretty shitty childhood in many ways.

Context - I'll be 40 in June, have always been a feminist but haven't always known how it might / could work out in personal relationships as well as things like politics and the workplace. I have always known that someone who expected me to do all the cooking and washing up would never be one for me, but then that's just the tip of the iceberg in many ways!

I hope that didn't sound smug, Grace.
I feel that I should point out DH and I can have a right old set-to sometimes, but (oddly) the nice thing about our fights, when we have them, is that they're never premised on "women should/are" or "men should/are" - it's premised on "I'm upset with you for x reason." Which is refreshing.

I've been thinking a lot about this thread - one of the things that being pg has done is shift the balance of our relationship a bit. DH had to do more for me when I was sick and tired in the first trimester, for example, and he's carrying a lot more shopping as I waddle around puffing up the stairs to our flat. Occasionally I do freak out that we're not 'equal' any more because he's having to do more 'taking care of me' and omg omg therefore he will find me 'needy' or 'clingy' and all those other things girls are told NOT to be, and OMG omg omg he'll get fed up.

I had a full-scale freak about this around 26 weeks, I think. Then I remembered, eventually, that (1) these voices inside my head are coming from instilled patirarchal ideas that women exist to serve/help men and are otherwise BAD WOMEN; rather than reflecting the truth of our relationship which is that partners help each other out and (2) I actually quite like being able to take care of HIM when he needs it, it's just a loving, nurturing response, and (3) he's so excited about this baby that he thinks it's awesome I'm willing to go through pregnancy and childbirth so we can have a family, and that's why he doesn't mind if I can't get up off the sofa and just need him to bring me a drink.

I definitely haven't got it All Figured Out, is my point. I struggle with the Patriarchy On My Shoulder, and I know DH does too. When we are short of money (which seems like always) I KNOW he can hear the P.O.M.S. telling him he's a bad husband and will be a bad father because he can't 'provide' for us all on just his income - how unfair a burden is that? And I remind him that I married a partner, not a meal ticket - and we work it out. We talk it out. I've started to get better at recognizing the P.O.M.S. for what it is: an evil voice from a toxic system that doesn't reflect what we want from our relationships or how we want to live.

Sounds like you've got a fantastic future ahead of you bertie

Going to uni is a great thing to be doing - and you will meet loads of new people as the you that you are now IYSWIM. Will be brilliant.

What an interesting Xpost - I wrote that at about midnight, went to bed, and then only clicked "Post" this morning. The point I was trying to say about feminism was the female dominance thing, which I now realise isn't true.

Also meant to say that I am glad I have DS not only because he brings me so much joy etc, but also because he forces me to stay grounded and think about how things will affect him. E.g. I would never ever get involved with anyone who was involved in drugs now, whereas I might have (in fact I did) before.

That makes sense, thanks blackcurrants I feel very much like I am poking at the edge with feminism - TBH for ages, I thought feminists were all "man hating lesbian" types - I liked the feminist things I'd read and identified with them, but couldn't relate to the label of "feminist". I remember having a conversation with a male friend in the pub at about the age of 17 when he said something about how he hated all feminists (actually have more recently realised he is quite shockingly sexist but anyway) but he liked me as I called myself a feminist but I was more of an equalist.

What you say about being happy single is so true - and actually I feel quite blessed in a strange way that I was with XP (the controlling one) so young, and got out, because it kind of forced me to be strong and realise I want something better, and through mumsnet, mainly (I know that sounds really sad - but I have learned a hell of a lot from the relationships board on here) I picked up some tips on how not to get so hung up on someone when you first meet them, and so far, it is working very well for me. I am immeasurably happier single than being with XP, I am happy I have DS (I had been broody since I was a teenager, and always knew I wanted children young - I did expect to be married first, but it's taken that pressure off for me to find someone and settle down quickly, like I was unconsciously putting on myself.) But overall, yes - I am happy with my life. I am single and happy about it. I have DS who I adore (obviously!) and who makes me happy, I have started exploring my interests, I am 99% sure I will be going to university part time in October, which I am ridiculously excited about. I just feel I am finding my way now - finding out who I am and I am enjoying it. Also, the relationship with XP moved so fast at the beginning that I feel I really want to experience that "dating" stage, which I've never really done. So I will not be jumping feet first into any new relationship, and when I do get into one, it will take a very very special person for me to want to interrupt DS' home life enough to move them in.

Bertie have had a look at your other thread.

I can only speakf for myself but I was a bit bonkers TBH when I was young - I drank too much and flitted from one bloke to the next, at the same time managing to become emotionally invested in all of them so was permanently in that state of massive high/massive low. I had none of this cool nonchalence thing going on at all and behaved as if I were desperate TBH which of course meant they could treat me badly. Not that any of them were abusive (apart from one, which was a one-off) but they just didn't treat me very well.

Then I met someone who I moved in with (when I was 19) and he was very nice but took too many drugs and didn't pay me much attention so I was off with other people all the time. Which obviously was all a bit rollercoastery and clandestine.

it wasn't til I split with him in my mid-late twenties, and I had a good job and a place to live, that I sort of got mysef together a bit and started to enjoy going out not just for pulling, and to appreciate that actually I was not half bad and blokes should be grateful to be with me, not vice versa (feel embarassed saying that!). I really enjoyed living by myself and being independent and then I met DH and we hit it off and were married a year later. He was a friend of some friends and I had seen him around for years.

I would never have got together with him when he was younger as he didn't have long hair, liked the wrong sort of music - I mean I wouldn't have met him. Also if I'd met him when I was 19 it would have been a bit dodgy as he'd have been 14

For me it has been a long old haul with a happy ending

And of course there are good men out there, you just have to keep your eyes peeled and try not to get carried away with them before you are sure they are OK (that's the bit for me which is much easier said than done).

Thanks for the encouragement! I guess if no women go in to male-dominated industries than they will always be male-dominated, and I've already got a pretty tough hide

I only mentioned the dominance thing because RL models had been mentioned and the women I knew in RL who professed to be feminists (in a fundie xtian community mind you) seemed to be more "anti-man" than "equality for all" - now that I've grown up a bit and read some of the literature and know more about the movement, I obviously know that isn't the case. Back when I was in my early 20's though, there were several (RL) women around me who, when men objected to being treated poorly were very much of the opinion that since women had been subjucated and abused over the years that it was "their turn." Polarized and incorrect maybe, but this was a Mormon community, and they excommunicated women who supported the Equal Rights movement in the 70's. I still know a lot of women from my community who will espouse feminist ideals, but won't call themselves feminists partly because of association, and partly because they fear reprisal from the church/community (if you cross the Church, the community will shun you, even life-long friends and family).

I guess it's the "true Scotsman" argument, but they said they were feminists, so I believed them, and didn't want to be like that. Now I know they aren't really reflective of feminism's goals or values and I'm proud to call myself a feminist.

I met my husband when I was 20 and he 23. We moved in together within a few months. When I was 22 and we were engaged, I transferred all of my savings (about 5 thousand pounds from an inheritance) into the mortgage, despite the fact that the mortgage and the house title were in his name. My salary also went into his bank account, to which I held a second card but my name wasn't actually on the account. If he'd been a different sort of guy, I would have had to walk away with literally nothing.

Stupid, wasn't it? I wouldn't do that now, because I'm older. But it was fine, as it turns out, for us.

I do think that getting together so young was alright for us, though. We already had a lot of the same values, and compatible arguing styles, and similar life goals. And we just grew up together, I guess.

Marenmj, I hope you can find a good firm to work in if you do retrain. It is a sexist industry, we are extremely rare, but these things always progress so hopefully the set up will become more common.

(I do have to say that feminists don't want women to become dominant, by the way. That's an anti-feminist myth to put people off using the label).

Bertie I think I just hadn't figured out what I wanted, tbh. I was still working out my own feminism (you're way ahead of where I was!) and working out what an 'equal' and 'no power games, no mind games' relationship looked like. DH was keen to commit before I was, too - I think I just had some growing-up to do before I was ready to be with someone respectful, funny, and loving - but not actually that 'cool', IYSWIM. Now I've unleashed my inner nerd (wasn't ever very hidden!) and it's a lot thanks to him. Frankly, I can be my 'real self' around him, and I think until I was about 25 I hadn't worked out who that was.

Dunno if that answers your question, but I hope so! I sometimes feel like I did a LOT more growing up in my twenties than I did in my teens - and suddenly I turned around and there were some grownup men out there, too, with similar values and priorities to me. Anecdotally I hear it takes them longer or they're rarer, or whatever, but I found one, and so did most of my mates. Like I said earlier, the fact that you're having these conversations and thoughts now puts you way ahead of where I was at your age [old lady emoticon]. I think being happy while single was key, too: I got to a stage where I thought "Alright, I'm picky and that means I'm single a fair bit. That's ok, I have great friends and a busy social life." and I really meant it. That meant I wasn't so very impressed with anyone who fancied me that I felt like I had to go out with them. Took me a few years to get that confident in my own skin, though.

{pokes newly stretchmarked, enormous expanse of skin] - I'm glad I didn't get pg before now, either!

BB feminism is definitely a reaction in my life. I wasn't raised with it. Hell, I went out with a guy who strangled me until I passed out, and that wasn't even the abusive one! There was definitely an element of "I was young and stupid" to my relationships. I consider myself lucky that I got out of my teens/early twenties with nothing more than a few bruises and sex that took place in the realm of questionable consent (I consented, because I didn't think I had a choice )

I was raised to be nice and I ended up so goddamn NICE that I was incapable of standing up for myself...

So hopefully my daughter won't have that problem. Maybe the pendulum will swing the other way and I will overdo it with her, but I have to try.

tortoiseonthehalfshell btw, the description of your firm gives me hope. Part of the deal I have w/DH is that I will retrain as a solicitor (while SAHM). I work in IT. I am very good at it. But I hate it. My reservations about a legal career is that I will be jumping from one semi-sexist field to another very-sexist field. So I am VERY glad to hear that there are firms out there that succeed without sacrificing their employees families.

DH thinks that's an excellent idea and is quite happy with it. I think he is typical of our group in that they (the men) want a partner who is skilled and capable of supporting the family, or at least contributing. The pressure to provide EVERYTHING in terms of financial support is huge for men. So I can see why many men would not only want, but actively seek out a partner who is capable and willing to chip in their share - so to speak.

So if the old psychological barriers of what is womens' work and what is mens' work is removed (and I think for younger people they are getting there), it makes a whole helluva lot of sense to have two, edcuated, skilled partners who split the out-of-the-home work relatively equally as well as the in-the-home work.

Not to mention, I consider placing all the expectation of financially supporting a family on the man a bit risky. I mean, what happens if the man is the "breadwinner" and then dies or is disabled and can't work? Being able to support my family no matter what happens just makes sense to me. YMMV

oh, and i should add, my parents swapped roles throughout my childhood.

my mum had a career, then was a SAHM with me and subsequently my DB until i was 11ish.

Then she retrained and went out to work and worked long hours while my dad worked from home part-time so he was the one who was in for us after school etc.

my DP (getting married in october) and i have an equal relationship and i refuse to mother him and have never ever had the urge to do so. he lived alone for years before i met him so i wasn't going to come along and start doing stuff for him.

we met when i was 28 and he was 33 and we had both been living independently since university and i think that really really helped. he no more expected me to 'look after' him than i expected to do so.

we haven't had our first child yet, but i imagine that he will be very involved in care-giving (he is better with neices and nephews and friends babies than i am!)

the only thing 'traditional' about our relationship is that he earns quite a bit more than me. i am more highly qualified but i work in a sector that is low paid for the love of the job, he was encouraged into a high paying profession by his father right from school-age. i don't think he'd like it if i earned more than him as well as being more highly qualified.

Oh and I forgot to ask - blackcurrants, why do you think you wouldn't have stayed with your DH if you'd have met him when you were younger?

That is good to hear, ISNT It's kind of what I was asking on the thread I started a few weeks ago here, but it didn't really get started. (Though I've seen it has a few more replies now so will go off and have a read!) Just wondering is it me being crap and having crap relationships, or am I just young, and does everyone go through this?

I think it's a bit of that, ISNT. The freedom to cohabit and sleep around/date a lot before picking a partner has certainly helped me out - I met DH when I was 25, we got engaged when I was 28 and if I'd met him at 18/21/24 even, he wouldn't have been my boyfriend for long - certainly wouldn't have made it up to 'long-term' status! I did have a strong "this is a good one" sense about him pretty early on, but only really because of the previous boyfriend, who was invested in some extremely toxic (to him, not me) ideas about masculinity.

But yes, we probably are rare as a group, we're certainly self-selecting, and - yeah... socially I'm very privileged (white, middle class, university education, most of my friends are the same) and I think those aspects have made it easier for me to speak up/out about what I want. Sort of like the reactions are: "Argh, a ranting feminist! but she's so nicely spoken!" etc
Or maybe it's just that having those privileges gives you a kind of confidence that you can channel into starting to make unpopular thoughts, feminist thoughts, more verbal.

just a couple of extra thoughts, sort of prompted by bertie's posts

my relationships throughout my teenage years and most of my 20s were total disasters. I only met my DH when I was 31 and had a lot of experience under my belt.

I wonder if women are expecting and getting more from relationships as the age of "settling down" gets older? That if women have been working and independent for years, and learning from their mistakes, that eventually they learn how to recognise a good one when they see one?

is it that women who are educated and independent and financially secure don;t have to take any shit any more?

Also I want to just say - maybe the relationships described on this thread (by others, not me!) are not always typical of all or most relationships between these generations in Britain today, but I do think that what they describe is a kind of ideal or baseline/expectation which ought to be easily achievable, by anybody who is able to be loving and respectful themselves.

I have a lot of friends/know a lot of people in my peer group (ie early 20s, quite a lot of young mums, probably more working class bias) who have horribly disfunctional/power imbalanced relationships and it makes me feel quite sad e.g. was standing at a bus stop a few weeks ago with some girls I know from surestart, and a woman walked past trailing about 6 children behind her. "Oh that's so-and-so" said one of the girls. "She's got a black eye, look, probably from him. And she's pregnant again." Without a blink or a shocked look or any sign that this was unusual A bit later when we were walking somewhere the same girl was telling me about her ex who had her up against the wall by her throat, and then casually mentioning in the next sentence that he was coming round later.

To be fair though, I had really low expectations from a relationship, when I first started dating (and TBH for my first few relationships). I look back and there is some completely ridiculous crap in a lot of my relationships that I look back and think "What the fuck was I thinking??"

E.g. (Short versions, with no really gory details!)

My first boyfriend, I met him while off my face at a party playing strip something or other, he kissed me, I was like "Wow someone finds me attractive!" (Well duh, if you get your boobs out in front of a slightly hopeless teenage boy, what do you expect?? And yet at the time I didn't see this at all!) and we went out for about 6 months before it went a bit wrong, stuck at it another 3 months because I didn't think I'd meet anyone else. I split up with him in the end but he got upset so I changed my mind and said "OK, but you call me and arrange to do something" He hadn't called for two weeks so I ended up getting off with my friend's brother at a party, again just because I was flattered that he'd shown me attention. I felt guilty about this and phoned up my (sort of) boyfriend to say "Actually I changed my mind, it really is over." He found out that I'd kissed someone else and went a bit mad and phoned our house phone every hour until about 3am then wrote me a really long letter calling me a "hippocrit" [sic] and then went off to Oxford uni. Bless him.

Second boyfriend (not the friend's brother, not a lot else happened with him) was a complete car-crash, I found him utterly addictive, to the point that when I left him I had to go cold turkey and not see him at all and it physically made me ill when I did it. He was an alcoholic who slept on a filthy mattress on the floor in the middle of his bedroom at his mum's house, because he had so much crap around his room and on the bed that you couldn't get to anything. He insisted on having an open relationship, and I agreed to this because I thought I'd rather have him than not, even if I was sharing him with god knows how many other people . The main reason I left in the end was because I suspected he still had an emotional attachment to his ex. WTF? There were so many things he did wrong - seriously wrong - in that relationship (some you probably wouldn't even believe) and it was that that ended it. (And what is sad is while I would never go back there - EVER, there is a tiny part of me who remembers him and smiles and thinks "We had a good time")

Then there was XP (DS's Dad) who I met when I was only a couple of months out of the relationship with the addictive ex and he was completely controlling, insecure, paranoid, emotionally abusive - fits the definition of NPD. I have posted loads about him so I won't repeat myself.

Why did I put up with all this? I suppose I never really thought there was anything better. Either that nobody else would fancy me, or just that nearly all men were like this. I don't know if it's the lack of a male role model that did it, because my parents divorced when I was 6 and my mum never got another boyfriend. When I was a teenager she started talking to me about her exes etc and TBH they are all pretty similar to mine - her first husband was a "recovered" heroin addict (he relapsed and that was why she divorced him) and my Dad was similar to DS' dad.

Also I always used to think "Nobody else would put up with this, they would just leave. Aren't I a good girlfriend, I understand the deeper reasons behind why he is doing this and that makes it OK."

BUT, having found MN, and seen the light hearing all these positive stories of healthy relationships, it's helped me think "No, I won't put up with that!" and I am, truly, happier on my own than with someone who makes me miserable, so I hope that I will recognise that if anything happens in my next relationship. But I have this habit of giving people the benefit of the doubt and maybe, sometimes, I do that for too long and then it's too late and I am too far in. I always seem to think people have good intentions, so I need to remind myself that not everybody does.

Yes, I think we may be typical for MN, but not the population at large. I've always said I am the wrong person to be giving relationship advice because I always want to ask "why are you putting up with this??" in RL (from women whose P's are dinosaurs AND men whose women are the kind who are always right, even when they are wrong).

I think we are definitely atypical, in that we are a self-selected group.

We:

• can afford internet access

• choose to spend that internet-time on MN

• we choose our friends and will probably not form relationships or close friendships with people whose values do not align with our own, so not only to we believe as we do, but so do all our friends.

The people I know who find themselves in widely disparate relationships would not end up in the Feminism section of MN.

So it's sort of like going to the Old Boy's Club and asking if they think women should have equal rights, and if their views are typical.

Still, I am a feminist/humanist (ie, I don't think women should be dominant either), and so is DH. With any luck we will bring however many children into the world who have eglitarian values embedded from an early age, and really, at the end of the day, that's the best we can do. We can fight the good fight and all, but I think the values we instill in our children will have the longest reach, iyswim.

novicemama - too right. I have to stop myself from typing "why are you putting up with this?" quite often!

btw Grace, I am white, middle class, Guardian reading, London-dwelling etc etc (you fill in the gaps) and my friends are too so I guess we are not representative. But it does give me some hope to see some good equal relationships being touted on here as well!

In rl, I have 2 friends with kids whose DHs earn much less than they do and so the traditional childcaring role has been reversed. In everything else they are still equal though and the DHs in question would never for a moment feel they were not a 'real man' for not being the main breadwinner. It makes me so happy to see this happening - this set up was like the promised land when I was an angry teenage feminist and to think I can see it all around me, and achieved with the minimum of fuss makes me very [smug emoticon]

Reading the mn relationships topic always makes me so for some of the women who put up with so much from their DPs. I do think that they only behave that way as long as we let them get away with it. If women en masse said 'actually I'd rather be single than shack up with a mysoginist dinosaur' then men would change their attitudes PDQ. The guy on the original thread you mention is beyond dreadful and his DW keeps taking it!

I am 33 and DH and I have an equal relationship. We have a DD (aged 2) and another one due in Dec.

I had 11mo mat leave and then went back to work - parttime at first but then was promoted and am currently fulltime. DH is also fulltime and DD is in fulltime nursery.

DH is also 33 and FWIW has an amazing feminist mother who is highly politically active and has had the most incredibly successful career. She has always been the ambitious one and the breadwinner in his family and he grew up thinking that this is not only normal but in some ways very desirable. DH would self-identify as a feminist himself.

DH earns more than me but most of our money is jointly shared to cover mortgage, bills, holidays, big purchases, groceries. We have about equal amounts left over each at the end of the month which we spend as we like - I'd never consult him on a purchase, nor vice versa. We're lucky though that neither of us are profligate with money or have expensive tastes - neither of us are in debt apart from the mortgage.

We split the nursery drop-offs and pick-ups absolutely 50/50 between us so DD sometimes has me and sometimes him. At the weekends we all do stuff together, sometimes I get an afternoon or day or evening to do stuff on my own and sometimes he does. We're quite rigorously fair about this and we both go out without each other at least once a week to see friends etc.

In terms of jobs round the house, we have just about finished renovating a place we bought last year. There has been a LOT to do and the majority of the DIY type stuff has fallen to DH as he's better at it and actually enjoys it (I don't). The deal has been that if he deals with that side of it, I ensure that we have food in the fridge, laundry gets done, house admin is taken care of etc. I know this is a pretty traditional role split but the DIY stuff is nearly over and then we'll revert to the cooking, cleaning etc being shared between us.

I would say that we are lucky in that a) we can afford a cleaner and b) my mum lives nearby and is happy to babysit so we can go out maybe twice a month for dinner together.

But basically I would say the reasons it's successful are: we respect each other, we respect each other's jobs, we try very hard to be fair and not take advantage of the other one. And we enjoy being a team - we really are a team

Oh dear, writing all this down has made me feel like have a little grateful cry for how wonderful my DH is!! I know he's one in a million.