Our Bodies, Ourselves (29 page)

Victoria:
My partner dropped out of college the year I graduated from college. He moved in with me while I was in grad school and we got married a year later. And while he has always made significantly more money than me, he always assumes that people look down on him and assume I am smarter and more interesting because I have an MA and work as a professor (adjunct, which basically means temporary and underpaid) while he is a retail manager. It's been a huge issue for us: I feel a tremendous amount of guilt for encouraging him to drop out of college but also some resentment that he wasn't more supportive of my grad school career. He refuses to come to university functions or socialize with my colleagues because he feels out of place. And I've absolutely seen colleagues at the university become awkward and hesitant in conversation with him after asking where he works, so I understand his hesitation, even though I also find it frustrating.

And unlike many couples, whose power dynamics turn on really recognizable identities, we often have the smoothest, most comfortable interactions with people who don't know us at all and just see us in our role as parents or see our shared interests. It's once people get to know us well enough to know where we work and what
our backgrounds are that the awkwardness starts to creep in.

Nidea:
My last relationship was an interracial one. He was Irish American. We started dating the summer before college and dated through all four years in college. My aunts and uncles would always praise me for catching a great one (yes, like catching a fish or an animal). My parents on the other hand were not as welcoming, questioning why a boy who is white, who has the world in his hands, would want anything to do with a Dominican girl. My father thought I was a “big ho”—the only way a white man would be interested in a Dominican girl had to be sexual—and yet I was still a virgin and wanted to be a virgin until marriage. It just became a huge mess in my mind. How do you keep up with the stereotypes of a Latin woman as either virginal or a “spicy Latina”? There is no room for the gray area.

Zoe:
He's a Jewish boy from the Midwest and I'm a black girl (with an adoptive Puerto Rican father and black mother). My mother is really into me dating black men, which is shocking because I so rarely do it. It's also shocking because her husband, my father, is Puerto Rican and a light-skinned one at that. So I don't know where that comes from, but when I think about bringing home a nonblack guy, I freak and wonder how she'll deal with it.

© iStockphoto.com/Quavondo

I also hated when I was out with my guy and we'd encounter a group of black men who would give us dirty looks. I always got so scared and superdefensive and tried not to touch him or be affectionate in front of them. I was so afraid that he'd have to “prove his manhood” in front of them and that he would leave me because he'd see how hard it is to love a black girl. It never came to that, ever, but I still fear that when I date white guys. Because I don't think they're used to dealing with things like that.

I will say that I did like that my boy was Jewish, because even though he was white, he still was part of a minority and I felt that connected me to him in a stronger way. Sometimes he'd make little sexual remarks pertaining to me being black—you know, the whole “I like chocolate” type of thing. It's a little bit irritating sometimes, because it's so cheesy, but it never really got on my nerves. Plus, my father will do the same thing on occasion with my mom, so it's not like I never heard that kind of dialogue.

EJM:
Although my parents are considered “progressive” in their community in Korea, they still adhere to many traditions. They want me to date a good Christian Korean man and settle down and marry, with very little expectation for my career (this has changed after years of battling).

Their disapproval of my relationships, mostly due to race, became a wedge that broke up many of my relationships, and it was hard for me to respect my parents' wishes and also make my partner happy. My partners were constantly offended that my parents would so openly express their disappointment that I was not dating a Korean. My partners saw it as, my parents
specifically
do not like you because you are white/black/Indian/etc.

My parents also have difficulty coping with different dating cultures. My parents expect my partners to ask for permission to date me, to have a date only once a week, to only meet my siblings and extended family when we are intending to be married. They were constantly baffled by the invitations of my partners' parents during holidays. They would ask me if I intended to get married to my partners, and if not, why would I have any business going to their house on a holiday?

When you have two cultures that do not understand each other, it is definitely an uphill battle. But I found that over the years, my parents have slowly become more accepting of my choices and they are realizing that I cannot be held to
all
of their cultural standards. Dinner with my partner's parents is just dinner and nothing more.

Ananda:
My primary partner is eleven years older than I am. When we first got together I was thirty-one and he was forty-two, with two sons from a previous marriage who were eighteen and twenty. He was done with having kids and had made a definitive decision by having a vasectomy before we met. I had had a baby over a decade before, did not want to be a single mother, so had surrendered her for adoption thinking that I would have a chance to do it right someday. At several points in my thirties, I went through crises about whether to leave this relationship around the baby issue. In the end I stayed. While I don't regret staying—my life has gone in so many incredible directions with his support and partnership—I do regret not having and raising another child.

Victoria:
My partner and I always knew we wanted to have children. We both grew up in big families, with birthdays and holidays full of cheerful aunts cooking and uncles talking sports
and grandmas and grandpas rocking crying babies and crabby teenagers pretending they didn't want to be there. We've had to unpack a lot of the gender expectations around family and parenting, and we've worked hard to create new patterns and possibilities for our own new little family, but we knew from the beginning that we wanted to do that work.

That said, I don't think parenthood or motherhood is a must-have experience. I don't think it's a necessary rite of passage or path to fulfillment, and I don't think anybody should be pressured by culture or family to undertake this journey if it's not the one you want.

Leigh:
The first time the topic of children came up in my current relationship was in the middle of sex. He paused for a minute and asked if I wanted to have children. I thought for half a second and said, “Not really. You?” He said, “Nope. I don't think so.” We laughed and continued enjoying ourselves. While that sort of timing could be intense for others, I found it casually thoughtful and spontaneous in the way of just saying whatever thought enters your mind.

We've since had a few conversations about children and if/under what circumstances we might change our minds. Sometimes these arise spontaneously and as a way of talking about the future (something neither of us is generally very inclined toward), and sometimes the conversations arise after a friend or family member expresses excitement at the idea of us making a new person together. I enjoy having the conversations when they arise; they feel very open and lack the pressure that can be present in these conversations as you get older. One of my favorite aspects of our relationship is scheming and dreaming about what we might build together.

Jordan:
I am not interested in having children, at all, which seems to be more of an issue as I grow older, as what people used to put down to youthful rebellion is now viewed as socially suspect. I've only had the conversation about having children once, though, and it was fortunately with someone else who also doesn't want to have children. We talked about the social pressures put upon us and the judgments we encounter, and how relaxing it was to be in a relationship with someone who shared the position of not wanting to have children.

Robin:
Even though I'm superyoung (twenty), the topic of children comes up a lot with my partners, less as a serious consideration for current plans, more as a tool for fantasizing/testing the Future. In my current relationship, my partner is especially militant about being anti–child rearing, so I tend to stay away from the topic if at all possible. This affects the relationship in a strange way: While I don't necessarily see myself with this person at an age that I would hope to be taking care of kids (I hope to be an adoptive parent or provide foster care later in life), we are in a more adult relationship and I want to be open about how I truly see myself as an adult. And I find myself in a weird paradox where I don't want to engage in the strange normative narrative of marriage, children, nuclear happiness, and yet I want to acknowledge the part of myself that loves it and has been raised to love it.

Sloane:
My husband and I batted the idea of children around for a while. There are enough reasons to have them as there are to not have them. Every other milestone in our relationship seemed to take a while, but when we decided to have a child, we just closed our eyes and jumped. If we'd deliberated on children as long as we did our other decisions, we'd never have a kid.

Aside from having some stability in income and living situation, we didn't deliberate much or have some grand scheme for what the “right” time would be. We figured, okay, let's quit birth control and see how it goes. I was pregnant about two months later. I like how it happened. I enjoyed being pregnant and was happy for the experience of it. It was about as “in the now” as I have ever been. Having my son around is similar
to the pregnancy process. I find I'm much more patient than I was before when it comes to how he's developing and moving through stages. We may have another child. That's our leaning, but we'll see how it goes.

Lydia:
My girlfriend and I are both approaching thirty, both in graduate school with student loans, looking ahead to another decade-plus of finding our footing financially and in our chosen professions. Right now, we're holding off adopting
pets
until we're sure we can provide for them; providing for children is out of the question for the immediate future.

Still, it's a question we've danced around. My girlfriend is up front about the fact that she doesn't wish to be pregnant or give birth. Ever. She's also pretty clear on her disinclination to be a parent or otherwise care for young children. She hasn't ever told me point-blank that it's a deal breaker in our relationship but is pretty clear about the fact that she doesn't see herself being a parent.

While I can see myself being content and thriving as one half of a couple without children, I think that in the long term I would start to feel impoverished without deeper ties to a multigenerational community.

Cecilia:
Having children was a question with my second husband. By then my daughter was in college. So was his daughter, and his son was in high school. We were in our fifties and fabulously in love. Love and babies were what we thought went together, so we thought it would be great to have one. We didn't talk about it much, especially the possible challenges to our families, because we were so sure of our happiness that we trusted all to love. We gave up contraception and made love as we felt like it. It took awhile to realize we were too old. It made me sadder than I ever told him, and it probably made him sadder than he ever told me. When I think now that I could have an eight-year-old in bed down the hall, I wonder what I was thinking!