I heard a woman said that she does things according to what she thinks her husband would be pleased with. She is complaining that she feels the pressure of doing things her husband expects. She fixes their house to impress the husband and prepare food according to what she thinks her husband would like and so on. She said the woman puts in more effort but in reality men are actually weak.
An American once shared with me that their 10 years of marriage was only “role playing”. They do love each other, but their idea of a marriage lies in the individual roles they have to play. His wife, to make the house clean and presentable, cook the best meals that’s why she relies heavily on cookbooks, etc. And he, he’s expected to come home early, help her cook, do dishes, do laundry, etc. The guy is wealthy and a businessman but remember there are no househelps in America.
Until they got so tired with their role playing. They divorced.
I am not a marriage counsellor nor a life guru. Many times I don’t even know how to handle my own life. But when it comes to what I do inside our house, how I decorate, what meals to serve, etc. I don’t do role-playing. I am a very spontaneous person. I do things around the house with no feeling of guilt or pressure that Edmund would not like the way our house looks like or our food on the table is not his favorite. When we have maids, Edmund is a little bit more demanding, and so am I. Of course.
But when we don’t have a kusinera, Edmund doesn’t expect me to cook. When he sees me cooking or cleaning, he gets worried that I would get tired and have a migraine attack so he would just suggest that we eat out or order pizza.
No pressure at all. If there was any pressure, I never felt it or maybe I was just oblivious to it.
I don’t like to live my life in accordance to a role or roles I have to play. My life is not scripted., although we’ve heard it many times that even before we were born, our life has already been laid-out by the supreme being, but that’s another story and topic.
I do have wants, wishes and dreams and I live them, but not to impress other people, or to impress my husband. Looking back, I don’t remember deliberately doing something around the house with the end thought of earning praises from him.
The houses that we’ve lived before and where we live now were decorated by me. When I throw in a flower here, a cute thingy there, there is absolutely no consciousness that “ah, my husband would like this” or “this is nice, my guests would adore this”. Wala, I just buy, collect, put things here and there. Siguro I am just lucky that my children and my husband don’t mind what I do, how I do things. They also never complain if we don’t have food on the table. They all get excited when I am cooking but never expected or demanded this and that.
My husband never questioned my architectural and decorating style. Except one time when we were building this house and deciding on what kind of balluster to have. I wanted something similar to the ballusters at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan and the French hotel I’ve been to in Paris during the presidency of President Ramos.
Edmund wanted the traditional narra or wooden balluster. Nag-argue pa kami, muntik pang dumanak ng dugo dahil lang sa hawakan ng hagdan. He gave in after I cried.
In a way I am lucky, Edmund is so independent. This morning, he left without eating breakfast kasi we don’t have kusinera nga and we are all trying to cut back on food. I did not make any effort to prepare breakfast. Okay lang daw.
No role playing, just being ourselves, living comfortably with each other. No pressures.
