The following story is an oral history of a marriage, based on two separate interviews with the husband and wife. Neither has seen the other’s interview prior to publication.
Sarah: I came from a family that was very, very traditional. My mom designated her entire life to being a mother and a wife. RJ was one of five kids and had the same type of upbringing.
RJ: I went on a Mormon mission for two years, and afterwards, they tell you, “Now your mission is to go home and find a wife.” I was celibate, too, and sorry to be crass, but I was 21 and horny and the only way to get some action was to get married.
Sarah: RJ and I met at church. I had already graduated college and was the leader of the women’s organization. We both wanted to build something similar to what our parents had built.
RJ: She was so well-spoken and ticked a lot of boxes—the definition of a good Mormon wife. One time she invited me to dinner with her family. Her mom cooked and her dad showed up just in time for the evening prayer, and it was all really pleasant. After dinner, everyone hopped up and started doing the dishes together and within minutes, leftovers were put away and the kitchen was sparkly clean and the dishwasher was running. I was enamored with that whole experience. We met in October, we were married in March, and we were pregnant in December. Sarah quit her job to take care of the baby and was home fulltime.
Sarah: When I had my first baby, my full-time job at an industrial filtration company turned into a more flexible part-time role. Then we moved up north so my husband could continue his education. I got another job managing an apartment complex, so we were able to live there. We had a second baby 16 months after the first one. RJ was in school full-time, working in a lab on campus, and studying at the library at night. I had my third baby right around the time he graduated, and that’s when I quit my jobs and was fully stay-at-home.
Throughout all this, I did not have any help. My family was a few hours away, and I didn’t even have babysitters. I was bred to believe that I was going to be a supermom. I had to juggle a lot. When I was still working part-time, I would sit at my computer, with my kids right by me playing. When they were small babies I would carry them on my body, or I’d have a baby in a Bumbo seat next to me. I would hide marshmallows behind my back while I was nursing to try to get another kid to come to me. I would ask my three-year-old to hand me the baby. They were almost raised as triplets.
I spent a lot of time feeling like I was failing at the most important role in the world.
Sarah
RJ: I didn’t do much parenting during that time, although we did spend time as a family when we could. Sarah would sometimes come up on campus with a triple stroller to bring me a sandwich. On Sundays after church, we would go down to the marina and watch the sunset. And whenever I was around, I would help keep the conveyer belt moving. But there was never any expectation that I would have particular duties at home.
That felt fine. It felt like this is exactly how it was supposed to be: My kids are cute, they’re well taken care of, and my wife knows what she’s doing. I can focus on manly things like building my career and serving in the church. I thought we were right on track.
Sarah: I remember saying to myself, “This is not fine.” But I just internalized it as something wrong with me. I look back now and see that I had very serious postpartum depression. I was mad at RJ a lot. I would tell my mother-in-law, “This feels so hard, and he’s not aware, and he doesn’t understand it.” I was really overwhelmed and spent quite a lot of time feeling like I was failing at the most important role in the world. But I felt like it was my duty to keep having babies. I was like a soldier. I just got up in the morning and went to battle every day, all day. It was a dark time, honestly.
RJ’s first job after college was the craziest job. It was an oilfield job, so he was out in the field leaving at 4am every day, six days a week, and then back super-late. I didn’t really feel like it was appropriate to talk to RJ about my anger, because he was trying as hard as he could, too. But the fact is he was gone a lot, and he had this opportunity to leave and come back and be fresh. There was the idea that what we did was equally hard, and it just wasn’t.
He did make a lot of money at this job and that was what I wanted. Providing money isn’t nothing for a struggling young mom. I was glad that I could have a house with a yard and go to Target and buy whatever I needed.
RJ: Eventually my career got to a stable point and I was a senior level engineer, working more like 40 hours a week. By that time I was in my early thirties, and I just felt like something was off. I was reading a lot of behavioral economics and listening to podcasts and broadening my thinking. The whole church thing started to not sit right with me. It became obvious that I had been brainwashed since the day I was born.
I thought Sarah and I might get divorced over it because the whole premise of our marriage was in context of the church. I kept it to myself for probably a year, but at some point I finally said, “Sarah, there’s a lot of things about religion that just don’t make sense to me anymore.” She took it really well. I gave her a stack of things to read. When she was done, she said, “You’re totally right. Let’s quit Mormonism together.”
Sarah: My family didn’t handle my faith change well, which also cast doubt about the way they raised us and set up their lives. RJ kept his relationship with his family, but I know that both of us were really disenchanted with the way women had been treated in the church. Leaving the faith led us to take stock of what had been handed to us, what we wanted to keep, and what we wanted to leave. We had already broken down so many walls that had previously seemed so solid—what was one more thing?
I focused on my career and she picked up the slack, and I wasn’t ready to give that up.
RJ
RJ: We started to examine the roles within our family. I said to Sarah, “Well, now there’s no God, and we got a bunch of free time back, and our kids are getting older and we want more money, and you don’t have this divine responsibility to be a homemaker. So why don’t you go get a job?”
Sarah: I remember feeling like I wouldn’t even know where to begin getting a job. Like, I gave it all up and I’ve been in the trenches for all these years! But RJ’s sort of flippant question also got my wheels spinning, like, Okay, if I did get a job, what would I do? It wouldn’t be until my fourth baby was in kindergarten that I finally applied for a marketing job and got hired for 20 hours a week.
RJ: The idea of splitting up the household duties didn’t come up right then. Since the day we’ve known each other, Sarah and I have been working our asses off. I never took one day of paternity leave through all four kids. Any time I wasn’t working, there was something else that needed to be done. I knew she kinda thought, “He should be doing more.” But I don’t think either of us knew exactly how. I had a good gig going where I focused on my career and she picked up the slack, and I wasn’t ready to give that up.
Sarah: At some point I got a new job, which RJ actually helped me get, so he did support me. It started at 10 hours a week and ramped up until I was working 40 hours a week. Once I really felt like I had confidence in my value at work, I started noticing and putting to words what was bothering me. I started researching about women and patriarchy: What is fair? How do we start doing this? How can we balance this?
RJ: I do remember that when I was in my mid-thirties, I wanted a hobby. I bought a mountain bike and took it out once or twice a week for an hour. It was amazing to get outdoors and have some time to myself and exercise. I needed that or else life didn’t feel worth living. I remember her looking sideways at that, like “Okay, I guess I’ll just stay here with the kids.” I would have loved it if she also had a hobby, like, “You support me in this way, I’ll support you in that way.” But I didn’t say that, because it’s harder for moms—at least for Sarah—to leave all her perceived motherly responsibilities, even for an hour on a Saturday.
Sarah: I started reading feminist blogger Zawn Villines, and I remember her making the point that men buy leisure time with women’s unpaid work. Once I saw that, I was furious. I was sad for myself. I was recalling how, even when we were working hard alongside each other in the early days, he was always reading books, getting exercise, going on vacations with his family. When we all would go away together, he’d be sleeping at 8 p.m. the night before, and I’d be up until 2 a.m. packing everybody’s bags, folding laundry.
RJ: Sarah started mentioning feminism a lot, so I went to the library and I got some books about feminism and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them. It didn’t seem like any of it was very actionable, and some of it seemed completely wrong, like the male-bashing. Some of it was inspiring, but also a little bit pie-in-the-sky.
Sarah gave me a stack of printouts from the internet, and it was a feminist-oriented blog that was so mean about men. And I just couldn’t understand why she wanted me to read it, because it didn’t apply to me. I’ve never sat and watched a football game while my wife cooked.
“Men buy leisure time with women’s unpaid work.” Once I saw that, I was furious.
SARAH
Sarah: I was just enraged. And once I was enraged, that’s when the needle started moving. I stopped taking accountability for everything. At first he took over the dentist appointments. I would say to him and the kids, “You guys need to fold the laundry.” He got himself a “man vacuum”—the kind you wear on your back. But there was still the emotional labor of everything, and I was still drowning.
RJ: Sarah started to travel more for her job, and during those times, I got to run the household the way I wanted. It wasn’t the same way she would do things, but it worked. I would get up early, eat breakfast, bring my laptop to the table and answer messages while I watched the kids get ready and sort of directed them. If I had to go to a school play or something at 4 p.m., I blocked it off on my work calendar. We did a lot of chicken nuggets and spaghetti. It was peaceful.
Sarah: This past summer was the breaking point. I had been buried in work, and I missed the whole last week of the kids’ school for a work event. Before I left, RJ and I had a fight. I was like, “You seem to manage all these obligations at your job, but not in our house. You’re doing this on purpose. You’re taking advantage of me and my free work.” I was really mad and I was just done. I didn’t leave any lists. I didn’t leave any food. I didn’t do anything.
On the plane, I sat next to a lady who started talking about her life after her divorce, and I just wept. She hugged me and said, “You’re going to be fine, whatever it is you’re dealing with.” I was thinking, “Dang, I might have to go back and do what this lady did.” But then I came home and I hugged him. Because I did miss him, and I love him. While I was gone, he reported that it all went great. A couple of days later, I said, “I don’t think I’m going to cook anymore.” And he was like, “Good. I’m glad.”
RJ: It dawned on me that fully taking over a whole task was key to solving the implicit friction in the household. When she got back from that trip, I finally said, “I’m taking over all the food.” That meant the grocery shopping and meal planning and lunch making. It was just time. Pretty much all the food our family has eaten since then has been purchased and planned by me. Last night we had meatball subs with wedge salads. I put a lasagna in the freezer yesterday so I can cook it on Tuesday.
Cooking is really rewarding, and it’s made me a little more vulnerable to the family dynamic.
RJ
Sarah: We had bumps in the road; the kids were mad. They’d say, “He didn’t buy this or he doesn’t do this right.” My oldest daughter would say, “You chose your work over your family and you don’t even care that we are hungry.” I tried so hard to just stay out of it, but I couldn’t help it sometimes. I would go to the grocery store with him, and if I tried to put anything in the cart, he would say “no” to me. I even secretly bought groceries at first.
RJ: There have been some disappointments, like when I plan and cook a meal and my kid drinks a giant Slurpee before dinner and they’re not hungry—that’s heartbreaking. Or when I made a big Thanksgiving dinner and some of the kids skipped it to be with their friends. In some ways it’s really rewarding and in other ways it’s made me a little more vulnerable to the family dynamic. But I like that, and I think Sarah likes it, too.
Sarah: My anger towards him has dissipated. He still enjoys the privileges of what he earned when I took all those years off to raise our family, and he gets the benefit and notoriety that comes with being a father of four. Sometimes, I still feel angry about that. But I don’t have to think about groceries anymore. I don’t have to stop my day right at 4:30 p.m. to figure out what we’re going to have for dinner. It’s a relief to me. I have finally started to feel peace in my marriage.
I’m not sure if it felt the same for him. He had some really crazy outbursts afterwards, and I believe that they were related to the added load he’s taken on. It was a step back for him in terms of time. He was taking on a task that many in his level of career have fully outsourced at this point. I don’t think he was aware of all it entailed. And since I was hiding it from him for all those years, how would he have known?
RJ: Now, when I see Sarah doing a huge pile of laundry, I have no sense of guilt. There’s a little more ease between us and fewer sideways glances. But there’s so many male expectations that I still feel. There’s never any thought about who’s going to build a fence or fix the garbage disposal—it’s obviously going to be me. Sometimes it feels unfair that the conversation centers around the women’s implicit burdens, and not so much men’s.
Sarah: It’s the first time, out of all the years I’d taught my kids about empowerment and feminism, that they’ve actually lived it and seen a man do something a woman usually does. I think we’ve all learned a lot from this process, and I’m proud as a woman that we’ve shown them for real what it’s like for a man to be involved in the household.
RJ: Back when I read those feminist printouts from Sarah, I remember thinking that it was so extreme. It was about absentee fathers who weren’t helping with parenting or the kids. But looking back, I think she was just trying to signal to me with that packet that she needed a little more help, and I think I got the message.
