Defemification

So I was mulling over with my therapist the failed marriage -- always a fun topic. I believe that a person can marry pretty much anybody (look at the success rate of arranged marriages) and make it work if she has to. When left to our own choices, it's interesting to examine our reasons, both conscious and not, for choosing a particular mate. Of course there's the physical attraction, can't downplay that one 'cause it's huge. (Although it played a small part in my marriage because we met via snail mail and wrote each other for months before we met and by that time I already loved him. Imagine my surprise and dismay when he turned out to be the opposite type of what I'd been attracted to up to that point.) We carry around a personal history of experiences and traumas and joys like our own personal elevator music and look for someone who'll mesh with our ambient sounds.

A brief history of the formulation of my gender identity: I grew up in a male-dominated household (former Olympic athlete/surgeon father, brawny, football-playing brother) where the men were men and the women were not. (I learned how to make a white sauce when I was ten because if "you can make a good white sauce, you can do anything.") I played with dolls, studied ballet, and flirted with anorexia. I was small and I felt scared. I was uber female. Then I met the ex who was the most nonthreatening male I'd ever come across and the tables got turned. The roles got reversed. I didn't have to be the weak one anymore. There is no word in the English language to describe what happened to me in my marriage. When a woman dominates her husband we call it emasculation. But when a man strips a woman of her femininity? I think I've made up the word, maybe not: defemification. I was defemified in my marriage. The ex was skinnier than me. I could bench press more than him. I knew my way around a tool box. I had a job and a car and he was in graduate school and rode a bike. He accused me of not being able to be intimate which hurt me to my pink core. The defemification process grew from there.

Very early in our dating, Big Guns said to me that it felt like I'd worn the pants for too long in my relationship. I was used to being in control. I didn't understand what he meant; I let him drive, after all. (And I didn't give him directions even when I knew he was going the wrong way.) But now I'm starting to see it. I feel like a girl again -- the bearer of intimacy, the expressed of emotions, the keeper of the kitchen tools. Unless steroids enter my system, I'll never be able to bench press more than Big Guns. It's more than putting on panties, sisters. It's a way of being and I like it. Here's to femininity.