Mom Rage | Marriage Rage | The Confusion Of Roles

The complexities of modern long-term relationships.

I’ve spent a lot of time on various marriage and relationship topics over the years of writing, which I guess makes sense because I’ve been married twice and now have been trying to have kids in some form for 13 years and that hasn’t happened yet, so I guess all this is stuff I think about and observe. Nice. I just did a little psychoanalysis work on me. Can I now pay myself $250 for that hour? Shit, no? OK.

I want to just walk through some topics here quickly. I’ll do it with the help of headers.

“Mom Rage” As “Marriage Rage”

My own mom definitely yelled at me, and sometimes still does, but I think the modern meme and concept around “mom rage” is supposed to be some cutesy thing we discuss on The Today Show that ignores the fact that a lot of women feel trapped and depressed in their existence. It's like, we nod to the problem, smile at it, meme it a little, and then say, “OK, back to picking up after your husband and your son!” It’s basically like a joke wrapped in a prison.

Some of the “feminist” authors of the moment are more waking up to this reality of late, especially as they themselves get divorced. Look at this, from

Burnt Toast by Virginia Sole-Smith

on Substack:

Is "Mom Rage" Actually "Marriage Rage?"

Within there:

Because you can be two very fair, egalitarian, loving people going into a union. You get married and five years down the road, you have two little kids and you’re wondering where all that equality went. And it didn’t leave for lack of trying, it left for lack of societal support. It left because you were not getting paid as much as your husband. That’s a huge problem. America was closing that wage gap and we petered out around 2008. We haven’t made any gains on that. And child care is unaffordable, so you then take on that burden.

And then, it’s really hard to rethink who does the grocery shop. Who washes the floors? Who does the laundry? And these are just the tiny little things where you compromise, and you compromise, you compromise. Then all of a sudden, you’re at a place where you’re waking up one morning and you’re like, “I thought I married a feminist.” You’re like, we thought we were going to be so equal and we couldn’t. And that’s the way that we’ve constructed marriage as a society.

I think it’s important to reframe our idea of what does “success” look like? We should be asking ourselves, what does a successful life looks like for me? What is my happiness? Center your happiness, because we have no guarantees in this life. Like, you can be in love with somebody and they can leave. You can’t control that, right? So you have to say, “What does a good, happy, successful life look like to me, knowing that there are variables in this world that I cannot control?”

Indeed. All of that is true. We can go a little bit deeper, quickly.

Briefly, On Childcare

Very expensive, getting more expensive, and that has a lot of downstream implications for broader society.

Briefly, On Men/Husbands

Some good ones exist, no doubt, but a lot of men are useless in relationships and do very little except provide the sperm and some of the money needed for the household to function at a certain quality of life. Everything else is on the woman. When men bemoan their sex life, which is a very common happy hour topic (I’ve been to happy hours with men I both do and don’t know for 20 years at this point), usually the easiest retort is: “You make your wife basically work at an office for 10 hours, then work as a mom for another five, and after those 15, you want her to climb up on you and do that work?” I’ve said that to a few dudes over time. They are usually pretty taken aback.

The Decline Of “Sex For Stability”

One big elephant in the marriage room is that the model changed over time, and you can argue when it changed. Conventionally most people associate women’s lib/freedom with The Pill, although there are other points you can pick, and “life getting more expensive” is a big one too. That drove more two-income families, which honestly does drive more bad parenting and burnout and malaise. But, the old marriage model was conventionally “Woman does domestic stuff and gives sex” and “Man provides stability.” Am I painting with no nuance? You betcha. But that was the model many men, who ruled society for generations, loved. I get consistently laid and a clean house, and maybe I mostly love this person, and I get to flex my tiny wee-wee at a corporate hellhole too. Win-win-win, baby. That model has shifted 25 times over. A lot of men aren’t ready for the shift (as you see in “decline of men” and “decline of relationships” stats) and a lot of women were more ready for the shift, but are just now writing and podcasting about how ludicrous men are.

The Quiet Quitting Of Marriages

Many people “quiet quit” their marriages, with the most notable example being “We stayed together for the kids.” Some couples make that decision when the youngest kid is six, and stay together another 12-13 years “for the kids.” You think that’s not quiet quitting? Indeed.

Alright, So The Roles Have Shifted And Men Haven’t Kept Up?

That is kinda the through-line on modern relationships, yes. Men will bitch about various things, usually including “frequency of sex” and “the court system” — which tends to value women more in a divorce — but the big theme of the last, say, 25 years is we introduced more women to offices and hybrid work, and we kinda sorta did that OK (although women are still stressed and burnt out and hit on), but when we introduced men to more domestic/child work, uh, we didn’t do that as well. Women to offices is fraught, but men to home roles is more fraught, and that’s the chasm we’re seeing and responding to a lot these days.

The Justin Problem

On the “male complaints about relationships” side, we have what I personally call “The Justin Problem.” Most wives/partners have one guy that a friend of theirs is married to/seeing who is their ideal guy from afar. They have no idea what he does day-to-day or how he acts day-to-day, but from what they see on a few social outings, one or two long weekends, and Instagram … this guy seems perfect, and in comparison, their husband (you) is a dud. My particular version of this guy is named Justin, although there have been other versions in the past. Even if Justin is the coolest f’n guy in the world, and can talk about anything (and deeply!), you end up being pissed at your wife, and Justin, and Justin’s partner, all because the whole thing sets you up as a derp. And while you know you’re a derp and fail at things, you don’t want to be reminded of that in subtle and overt ways — and one of the greatest gifts women have as relationship fighters is reminding you of your inadequacy. This is double-hard when you’re not producing babies, as male virility does protect men from some issues. A lot of women will put up with a derpy loser if he knocked her up three times.

Therein Lies The Landscape

It is indeed a complicated picture in modern relationships, and most of it can be traced to:

• Immediate economic pressures

• Women essentially having three jobs when we think they have one

• Men not carrying the domestic side

• Various aspects of resentment floating around for each gender

As they will tell you, marriage is hard and no one gets out alive. Hell, now Boomers are divorcing like crazy, so oftentimes, people don’t even get out married.

Best you can do is go to the mat for the other person daily and ask them, “Hey, how can I help and make your life easier today?” It’s not perfect and it won’t always work, but it’s something in the sea of above chaos.