Deciding for Other People
| December 27, 2010 | Posted by Issa under Simple-Eco-Happy |
On a parenting site I follow on Facebook, someone posed this question:
“On the subject of goals, when you want to try a new idea for the family (grain-free, family cloth), is it a 50/50% decision with your partner or mostly one person’s idea?”
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| Photo by edkohler |
Once you’ve got kids with another person, I understand that some things related to the kids are going to be a group decision. However, from the two examples given – grain-free and family cloth (which I call bathroom cloth, instead of centering “the family”) – it seems that the asker is talking about family-wide or “household” decisions. And to me, that seems awfully presumptuous! Both examples really ought to be individual decisions!
The commenters on the thread sounded like they agreed with the presumption of a “household” decision. For example, one commenter replied to the question this way:
“One of us comes up with the idea and mentions it to the other and then we either do it or don’t do it or we do it later after one of us comes around.”
And I’ve got to tell you, this really confuses me. If she wants to try, say, “grain-free”, why does she need her partner’s approval or agreement? I don’t understand why she can’t just go grain-free herself and leave her partner’s dietary habits alone.
Another commenter says:
“Usually it is my idea, but before we go forth with it I bring all info to my husband. Let him know the pros and cons and show him research or my ideas. I always get his input if he isn’t on board with me then it’s a no.”
This commenter has come up with something she wants to try, such as eating a different way, using bathroom cloth, or something else, yet if her husband doesn’t get on board, then she doesn’t do it. This seems really sad to me, because it turns the relationship into a limiting factor. I really bristle at the idea of getting someone else’s approval for things I’d like to try. It sounds tiring and oppressive.
Another commenter says:
“The ideas are usually mine, but I’ve learned that my husband has to be on-board 100%, or else he’s going to resent me for being pushy, and I’m going to resent him for refusing to be pushed along.”
Wow. Why are you being “pushy” with another person? If you’re trying to be bossy about what another person eats or wipes ou’s ass with, it shoudn’t be any shocker when there’s some resentment!
I finally commented in the thread with this:
“I try not to make decisions for other people. If I want to do something, I do it. If my partner wants to do something, he does it. Bathroom cloth is a good example – I use it but my partner doesn’t. Another example in our family is whole wheat bread – my partner makes his own whole wheat bread, but I buy white bread for myself.”
No one replied. Since that day, though, I’ve been noticing other examples of this around The Wallow, like Joshua hang-drying his clothes, which I don’t usually do.
There are a lot of these kinds of eco-decisions that we have made together, like the 100% decision to use cloth grocery bags or the decision to hand wash our dishes. But it’s not a requirement.
Because we’re both adults.
And we’re different people.
Which is a good thing!
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| Photo by Dottie Mae |
I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last couple of weeks, because I’ve become very conscious of lights left on in rooms that no one’s in. I’ve been making a very concerted effort to turn off the lights when I leave the room and to turn off extraneous lights when I come across them. At The Wallow, the living room, kitchen, and dining room make up the whole first floor in a circle arrangement. These are the rooms that Joshua and I are in and out of most often, and it wouldn’t be uncommon for all the lights on the first floor to be on (4 light switches and a lamp).
With my new attention paid to the lights, something kind of comical sometimes happens: I’ll go to the living room, turning off the lights in the kitchen/dining room as I go. Joshua will go the kitchen to get something and turn the lights back on, then leave them on when he comes back to the living room. I’ll get up and go turn the lights off behind him.
In another family, maybe I would talk to Joshua about my goal of turning the lights off more. But, “if he isn’t on board with me then it’s a no.” Or maybe I could be pushy, and he could “resent me for being pushy” and I could “resent him for refusing to be pushed along.” Because that sounds like fun.
Instead, I keep in mind that if I want to do something in particular with the light switches, that’s my business, and it isn’t Joshua’s responsibility to change anything about himself or his actions in relation to my new actions.
All the bathroom cloth and eating choices and what to do with the lights aside, it’s important to me to do the things I want to do, without waiting for approval or agreement from others. It’s important to me that Joshua does the things he wants to do. It’s important to me to not try to push my will onto other people or make decisions for them.
And finally, it’s just plain important to remember that we’re two separate people.
Because we are.
And that is way more important than the position of the light switch.
I’ve always been disgusted with the idea that long-term partners should act as a unit. One of the earliest attractions to polyamory for me was, at least from my own observations and readings, that these relationships not only fostered the idea of individuality between partners, but that they depended on it. This, of course, is not exclusive to polyamorous relationships, but in my own personal experiences poly people tend to be much better about individuality in relationships than monogamous ones.
@Trevor Yes, exactly. Individuality and polyamory are intrinsically tied up for me.
At least some of those examples seem like situations where one person (frequently Mom) does all the work so there’s value in just doing things one way rather than twice. I have a coworker who is eating gluten free, and she cooks her gluten free pasta and then pasta with gluten for the rest of the family. Cheaper, yes. On the other hand, almost twice the effort. I’m too efficient/lazy and would rather make everything gluten free.
Then again, I find sorting laundry to be way too finicky and wish everything was just “Machine wash cold, tumble dry on high” -I don’t like separating my whites, darks, and delicates. Having separate ways of doing the exact same thing again seems inefficient/labor intensive.
@Amy I don’t really understand households where one adult is doing all the household work for another adult, either. I do my own laundry. Joshua does his own laundry. Both of us cook, sometimes for just ourselves, sometimes for both of us. We both do dishes. Whoever gets annoyed at the dirty carpet first does the vacuuming. Etc. If I needed/wanted to eat gluten-free, I could either make enough for the both of us, or Joshua could make his own. I can’t see me cooking two meals every time. That just sounds really weird to me. But Joshua wouldn’t have to “be on board”. It’s entirely his responsibility what kind of pasta he gets. If he didn’t want gluten-free, he would just make something else.
I’m with you about laundry. I only buy clothes that can be washed on cold, dried on high. I sometimes separate out whites, just so I can bleach the shit out of them. But, for the most part, I only want laundry that can pretty much take care of itself! :-)
@Amy: Yeah… for us, cooking is usually a matter of saying, “I’m making such-and-such. Do you want me to make some for you?” What we like to eat overlaps enough that the answer is usually yes.
You are two pretty independent people. Not everybody is like that. Lots of people – of either gender – like doing all the laundry. Or cooking. As far as
“I don’t understand why she can’t just go grain-free herself and leave her partner’s dietary habits alone.”
It’s simply not that easy – especially not for us couples that aren’t as autonomous as you two. Or for a couple where one GF partner was extremely sensitive, and cross-contamination was an issue (ie, A couldn’t cut slice a piece of bread for B, and then use the same knife to slice some GF bread for themselves. Same applies to a crumb dropped in a salad, dishes and cookware, etcetcetc.).
Or one partner wasn’t as open to working together to make changes work.
As someone who’s tried to make it work, whether with gluten-free, vegetarian, no junk food/crap…it’s not as easy as you think.
Oh, and light switches. I am a habitual turner-offer. People who leave lights on = pet peeve. So I just learned to not get huffy and try to retrain somebody, I just get up and turn it off. No big deal (anymore, once I realized that grown-up, long-term relationships need a lot more give than I thought they would).
@Michele I think the situation where one person has an extreme sensitivity is an entirely different issue. If it was serious enough that it would harm Joshua if I dropped crumbs somewhere, then I’d just be an asshole to not “get on board”. That really seems like something completely different.
For vegetarian, no junk food, other less *dire* dietary choices, it might not be *easy*, but I still don’t agree that the other person has to alter *their* behavior. For example, right now, I can’t eat hardly any carbs and definitely nothing sugary. This means no pasta, no bread, no rice, no chips, etc. and I can’t even LOOK at a cookie! But that doesn’t mean Joshua has to go without cookies! I have also lived with vegetarian people. I was careful about which pans, knives, and cutting boards were used for meat, but sometimes the house was full of the smell of cooking meat, and while that’s not pleasant for a vegetarian person, it’s more pleasant than trying to control the actions of other adults.
About a person who *likes* to do all the laundry or cooking, I have no problem with that at all. It just seems like if one person likes to do all the laundry and the other person *doesn’t* like to do laundry, then what is there to talk about? The person who likes to do laundry uses whatever eco-method they like and that’s the end of it. Or if I like to do all the cooking, AND I’m a vegetarian, then I’m going to be making vegetarian meals, and it’s my partner’s choice to eat it or not. OR, maybe I don’t mind cooking with meat and so I do. Like the gluten-free example that Amy gave in a comment above: maybe that woman loves to cook and doesn’t mind making the two kinds of things. I don’t have any issue with that at all.
Eh. I’m just kind of rambling now. I know that people are different (that’s part of the point of this post!) but I’ll probably never be convinced that it isn’t sad when the choices for people in a relationship are to either hold off on their desires until the other person agrees OR be “pushy” and “resentful”.
“It’s simply not that easy – especially not for us couples that aren’t as autonomous as you two.”
We’re pretty autonomous, and that works for us. If dependence works for other people, more power to them. But there are a lot of people out there for whom dependence is not working, and I think it’s to them that the original post was written. Dependence is the default mode of relationships in our culture, and I think there are a lot of people out there who have simply never considered autonomy as an option, because they considered to be antithetical to what a relationship “should be.”
“Or for a couple where one GF partner was extremely sensitive, and cross-contamination was an issue”
Okay, sure, but this is really not what we’re talking about here, at least not primarily. We’re not talking about people who have severe allergies or dietary restrictions. Mostly, we’re talking about day-to-day things like (looking back at the post) hand-washing dishes, using cloth grocery bags, and so forth.
“Or one partner wasn’t as open to working together to make changes work.”
I think the point is that when you do it like Issa and I do, the partners aren’t required to work together to make the changes work. Issa and I agree on a lot of things, so usually we’re both on board with whatever wacky thing each other decides to do. I also have a lot of love and respect for her, so if she decides to do something, I’m inclined to go along even if I wouldn’t normally have done so. That being said, sometimes I just draw the line. Like bathroom cloth. I just want to keep using toilet paper, thanks. So I do.
“As someone who’s tried to make it work, whether with gluten-free, vegetarian, no junk food/crap…it’s not as easy as you think.”
It may not be as easy for you as it seems to be for me, and that’s to be expected, since we’re different people and all. But it’s exactly as easy as I think… for me.
@Michele This comment: “So I just learned to not get huffy and try to retrain somebody, I just get up and turn it off. No big deal (anymore, once I realized that grown-up, long-term relationships need a lot more give than I thought they would).” is exactly on the point I was trying to make! Very well stated, and I think it applies to a lot of things.
Concerning specialty diets, like gluten-free, dairy-free, meat-free, etc: A lot of allergen-free foods are notably more expensive, so a household in which all members share monetary income should be in agreement with what types of food to buy, at least somewhat. I suppose to “be on board” means different things to different people.
I always say lights shouldnt be left on when no one is in the room. I don’t continue to hound folks about it, but i mention it a few times. If the folks don’t follow suit, I just end up turning the lights off myself.
@apatheticmediocrity Financial concerns did cross my mind, and I wondered if anyone else would bring it up. I was thinking of it in relation to turning off lights, but realistically, turning off the lights makes SO little difference in an electric bill that I decided not to mention it. It’s more relevant to food questions, though, as relatively small changes in grocery habits can make a significant financial impact. I agree that if people are sharing finances there’s more incentive to reach agreements on purchases, although plenty of room for different priorities should still be factored in.
Really, though, I read the type of conversation thread I mention in this post on lots of parenting boards, and I don’t recall anyone ever bringing up money. No one says, “I wanted to try this thing, but my husband said it didn’t fit into the budget,” or “I’m pestering my husband about this thing because we have to do it to save money.” Money doesn’t seem to be a big factor in why people seek approval for the decision, badger their unwilling spouses, or go along with pushed agendas they don’t agree with.
I’ve noticed, too, the lack of discussion about finances on message boards concerning “things we want to buy.” I used to ride a scooter to work, getting ~90mpg vs ~14mpg in my all-wheel drive (AWD) truck. I bought the AWD as a 2nd vehicle specifically because we live in Chicago and getting to work during winter can be a big hassle. Of course, road conditions for which AWD is useful don’t happen very often, so the scooter was my main means of transportation to work. Regardless of temperatue, I rode the scooter to work as long as no precipitation was on the road or in the air. This saved $30-40/week in fuel costs, but that scooter died (it was 23 yrs old). Although getting a replacement scooter would bring back the fuel savings, the up-front costs are quite high and hard to justify for a family of 4 living on a pretty tight budget. Therefore, the scooter will have to wait even though I REEEALLY would rather ride one than drive the truck.
You are quite right about turning lights off making very little financial difference. The bigger reasons for me are to use fewer resources and create less pollution, even though one household turning lights off makes very little difference for that, too. If my switching off lights makes a difference of only $2/month, I would rather throw $2 into a ditch or feed two of my one-dollar bills to hamsters than give an extra $2 to our electricity provider, so that’s my argument there. :)
If my switching off lights makes a difference of only $2/month, I would rather throw $2 into a ditch or feed two of my one-dollar bills to hamsters than give an extra $2 to our electricity provider, so that’s my argument there. :)
We are in COMPLETE agreement about that! :-)
I’m probably cheap, but I have mentioned things like lights when our power bill was an issue. I still won’t *fight* about it or try to make anyone do it, but I do say things like, “Hey, our power bill was CRAZY last month. Can we agree to keep the temp at 78 degrees? Can we turn off the lights when we leave.” That feels okay to me. I essentially do accept that while I can mention it and ask for help with my goals, it might just end up with me scampering about setting the temp and turning off lights. I’m okay with that. Any help I get, even once or twice, is help I wasn’t getting before and I find they’re more willing to do it if they know why.
Generally, I agree with everything you’ve written and LOVE it! It just might motivate me to do bathroom cloth in my bathroom, at least. I keep wanting to.