After a
“spendy” May this year, Peter and I made a decision in June to tighten our
belts financially. Reviewing our bank
statements and recollections/waistlines, we determined that regular eating out
(for us, that means eating out on a weekly, sometimes two to three times a
week, basis) was an area on which we focused too much of our income. It made us heavier, we didn’t have as much
money, and we missed the bonding and together time that cooking on a daily
basis brought us. Since we’re both,
frankly, pretty good cooks who know each other’s tastes, we approach it from a
team effort a lot of times. Eating out,
often with our friends, was taking away from the time we just wanted for just
the two of us. Hence, we endeavored to
be better to ourselves physically, financially, and relationally. We told our friends and family that we
weren’t eating out for the month of June, and would be cooking all our meals
(with the exception of Peter eating at the cafeteria in his workplace).
I’m not
going to lie, this decision made June a hard month for us in a number of
ways. Due to the nature of Peter’s
schedule and my inability to wait until 8pm most nights to eat dinner, a lot of
the responsibility for cooking fell to me during the weekdays. Since I’m a stay-at-home partner at this
point, I feel a certain obligation to cook more and contribute more to
the maintenance of our household since I don’t have means to give financially
to our partnership at this point. Don’t
worry, this isn’t a “I’m a woman and hence ONLY I CAN COOK AND CLEAN”
statement, and Peter has assured me that if he ever finds himself a
stay-at-home partner, he’ll do the same (edit: he actually has done this, for the two months that we lived together when I was working a shift job at a grocery store and he was a graduate student).
It’s just a matter of logistics and wanting to feel productive in some
fashion.
So, in some ways, this made me feel
more like I was a domestic partner, which helped me feel productive, but it
also is hard to turn off the monologue in your head that you don’t WANT to be
cooking supper five days a week; you have a master’s degree and should be raising
money for non-profits! It’s interesting
how second-wave feminism has encouraged us to do it ALL: work, take care of a
household and be a good partner. But
when one of those pieces is missing, there’s this sense of guilt that I, and a
lot of stay-at-home partners I’ve read, feel.
We were told that we’re professionally competent and can contribute to
the workforce and “ought to” do just that, but when the economy tanks and we
find ourselves not able to fulfill that “ought to” voice in our heads, we struggle
to find balance. To find meaning without
the three “pieces:” professional, homemaker, partner (and, down the line, I’m
sure “mother” will enter the picture as well).
I know this isn’t a new point or even that unique of a story, it’s just
something that I never expected to happen to me. I thought I’d be an “armchair feminist,” if
you will, defending women’s rights to do whatever the hell the wanted, whether
that was being a cutthroat executive, stay-at-home mom, part-time professional,
etc. I expected to have to only really
deal with the logistical challenges of finding a work-life balance when I added
kids to the equation down the line. I
didn’t plan, in my years of higher education and initial career, to be tackling
these issues as an unmarried twentysomething who moved to a brand-new city
during one of the worst economic episodes in history.
Clearly, my tangent above is not
something that I only realized when we stopped eating out and I started cooking on an even more regular basis than before. But it served
as a catalyst for me to really sort out what I was thinking about all this,
instead of feeling emotions and assigning some simplified reason for them, then
telling Peter, “I need a pick-me-up, so let’s get some burgers and beer.” It’s funny, actually, how we can fall into
these patterns of not dealing with troubling patterns of thought and behavior
by distracting ourselves with shopping, eating out, etc. We escape home to break out of what we do in
it. Staying home for that month made me
really face these contradictions in my own head, and sort out what I really
think about myself and the situation in which Peter and I find ourselves. Thankfully, at the end of the month, I found
my head in a good place, and with some exciting professional developments to
boot. Therefore, we broke our ban on
eating out at the very end of June, when I found out I had gotten a special
events internship with a major agency in Chicago: Metropolitan Family Services. Granted, it’s still unpaid, but I get my own
space, professional dignity, and tasks that actually challenge me in ways that
I can use down the road. That meal,
after a month of sacrifice and blogging and creativity, tasted and felt better
than all the meals in May put together.
Peter and I have now started eating
out again, but not nearly as frequently.
We’re willing to take into consideration logistics and context for
staying home versus just grabbing something if we’re at an airport or getting
into town after a week traveling. But
we’ve resolved that instead of eating out 5+ times a month at pubs, bars and
basic restaurants, we’d rather have one or two meals that are prepared by
formidably talented people in an awesome atmosphere. In other words, we’d rather spend $100 at one
meal for two on a night that we’ve planned for than spend $200 on burgers and
beer once or twice a week with whoever wants to meet up with us. It’s working so far, and the freedom to stay
in our own house with no shame about what I’m doing or not doing is the best
part.
So what do you all think? Is this struggle to find balance in your work and the rest of your roles in life made easier or harder by having a paying job? Why?
