Marriage Isn't Fair

On magic boxes, mankeeping, and expecting more

One by one, the guests walked up to the newlyweds and presented their gifts. A blanket woven of the warmth of old memories, jeweled earrings that glow when complimented, a 660W 10-speed tilt-head electric kitchen stand mixer. At last, the bride’s great-aunt approached holding a carved box of dark wood, worn as if brushed by countless restless fingers.

“Oh, Auntie Mimi, what a wonderful surprise!” exclaimed the bride, “I couldn’t remember if you RSVP’d or not, how strange. But tell us, what is this box?” The old woman put the box down and smiled. “This box came from my late husband’s mother, and she got it from someone else in turn. She said that if we kept it above the mantle, our marriage would be blessed with gratitude and fulfillment. Our quarrels would be short, our daily tasks joyful. But — there’s a catch. If either of us opened the box, they would get only what is in it, and nothing else.”

“But what’s in the box, auntie?” the groom leaned forward in eager bewilderment. “Did she tell you?”

“Inside the box, my dear, is fairness.”

Womankeeping

Hanlon’s razor says never to attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. The straight read is that this is a factual claim: malice is salient but stupidity is common, so a bias towards the latter leads to a more accurate worldview. But it can be also read as a matter of taste, of spiritual stance. Wouldn’t you rather live in a world of misguided fools who merely need correction, as opposed to a world of irreconcilable conflict?

As for me, I would rather live in a world of meaning and humor. I abide by Strauss’ razor: never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by esoteric trolling. The latest New York Times mancoinage is a masterpiece of the genre:

His straight male clients tell him that they rarely open up to anyone but their girlfriends or wives. Their partners have become their unofficial therapists, he said, “doing all the emotional labor.”

Ms. Tilley-Colson has hung out with her boyfriend’s close friends a handful of times; he hangs out with hers several times a week. […] “Mankeeping” put a word to her feelings of imbalance. “I feel responsible for bringing the light to the relationship,” she said.

Rather than viewing “mankeeping” as an internet-approved bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men, experts said…

In my Straussian reading of Barbie, I pointed out several techniques the author can use to hide the true meaning in plain sight. The Straussian writer will draw surprising connections, leave glaring contradictions deliberately unresolved, and put the expression of their true feelings in someone else’s mouth. Did you notice how the last quote implies that it takes expert education to disagree with the view that “mankeeping” is a “bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men”? The latter is the natural view of non-experts, a category that includes both the essay’s author and its readers.

Now note the term emotional labor, prominent in the title. It’s a term of art with a precise definition, emphasis mine:

the act of managing one's own emotions and the emotions of others to meet job or relationship expectations

In the essay, this emotional labor is performed by men. They’re the ones who keep their emotions managed and contained at work and at home. Which leads us to the most glaring omission in the essay: there is no mention of men dealing with their girlfriends’ emotions. Is the author trying to convince us that this doesn’t exist?

Of course not. Men having to deal with women’s emotions is so prevalent it doesn’t need to be mentioned.

The spelled-out message of the essay is that men need to make more friends to ease the burden on their long-suffering girlfriends. The exemplar of this suffering is “Ms. Tilley-Colson”, who is both a “TikTok content creator” and rich (lest a single reader feel sympathy for her), who hangs out with her friends “several times a week” and drags poor Glenn along.

The esoteric message of this essay is that in any relationship one of you will inevitably do more emotional therapy for the other, and that if you complain about this you’re an ungrateful twat.

Give and You Shall Give

Most modern complaints about marriage use the language of fairness. Female TikTokers complain about “mankeeping”, male Redditors complain about divorce and custody laws, married people complain about the dishes and the trash. It’s a rhetorical convenience — no one’s going to argue that marriage should be unfair. But this discourse carries a hidden assumption: that fairness is an important goal of marriage and indicator its quality.

It isn’t.

Everyone knows that when a couple argues over the dishes and the trash, they’re really fighting about something else. Attention, trust, respect, care, gratitude. The important things can’t be measured in fairness, and what’s measured in fairness isn’t important.

Is it fair if only the husband works? Is it fair if the wife spends more hours with the baby than he does at the office? Is it fair if she gets a hormonal high from being with the baby, while he feels burned out? Is it fair if she expresses more gratitude for his contribution than he does for hers? Is it fair if they agreed several years ago to share all burdens equally and now they’re here?

My marriage is unfair. Only one of us can lift and carry the other, and only one of us can breastfeed. One of us worked during COVID while the other was on sabbatical, the other spends more hours parenting while the first is on sabbatical. One of us will stay hotter into middle age. One of us believes in the other more when the other has self-doubts. One of us had more dating options when we got together. One of us is liked by our kids more, one is more respected. One of us feels more jealousy. One of us will die first. This is all very unfair. But it’s impossible even to say who it’s more unfair to.

Focusing on fairness is a symptom of a bad marriage, but not because only bad marriages are unfair. It’s an appeal to some objective observer to judge you. You can’t take “I don’t feel loved” to court or to r/AmITheAsshole, but you can bring up the dishes. If you can’t be happy, at least you could feel righteous.

A good marriage is a two-person firm in which each of you does for the couple what the other person couldn’t. That means that often, what you contribute the most is what you receive the least of. How do you compare friend-making with emotional support? Breadwinning with baking bread? Ideally, you would be too impressed by your partner’s skills (including the all-important skill of seducing you) to worry about tallying up fairness points.

There’s a simple antidote to getting sucked into the fairness frame: figure out what you need and ask for it. Don’t trade for it. Don’t offer to do an equal amount of it for your partner — they probably don’t want it, and you’re probably not good at it. Just ask for it, unconditionally. Ask for it so that your partner knows they can ask and receive what they themselves can’t give.

This is the great benefit of the “couple as firm” over a relationship based on quality time and mutual entertainment. A cofounder who fills the roles their partner can’t is irreplaceable. They learn to expect more of themselves and of their partner. They give more, and they receive more, and no one could ever tell if this is fair or not.