Sometimes I will be visiting a friend (and it could be any one of many); and we will be as thick as thieves – curled up in couches and laughing, sipping tea and juggling children, when her husband will arrive home. And he, whom I will generally like, will on this day be in a foul mood and will fume at his wife, just a little, not so much as to be a bully but enough to stop our conversation. Did you realise the children have been throwing toys off the veranda, he tripped over them on his way inside? There may be some sideways glance from him across the room, too, lingering for just a moment on the upturned sippy cup on the floor.
She will become suddenly very conciliatory, her brow furrowing, she will jump from the couch and offer to pick the toys up herself from outside. Maybe it is simply the social awkwardness that arises from her husband’s rudeness; maybe if you weren’t in the room she would roll her eyes and say bad day? how about a fucking hello first. Or maybe it is something more and appeasement is actually the way she holds her marriage together. Either way you can’t really draw significant conclusions from this one observation and I could testify to her otherwise feisty feminist credentials. (I mean, maybe that husband is fuming because it is always him who picks up the children’s toys and on top of having to do all the laundry and the grocery shopping for the household he is bloody well sick of it. Maybe).
Now, partners will fume from time to time at their loved ones, I understand that. It is something I have both personally encountered and inflicted; sometimes even in front of others, although I am not aware of having ever personally silenced a room of adults with the sheer force of my temper. And perhaps men can similarly attest to having these experiences with their friends – a chat with their mate is interrupted by the entrance of a fuming female partner (or even a fuming male partner) that ultimately consumes their friend in peace-making urgency. Possibly this is nothing more than routine social dynamics.
But you know what it actually feels like?
It feels like my friend and I are reduced to children with an angry dad in the room. It feels like our interaction doesn’t warrant the respect that his interaction does. It feels like sometimes a woman can’t be both a friend to one person and a wife to someone else simultaneously, that the latter role demands too much of her. It feels like she and I need to apologise for something. It feels like male entitlement.
It sounds a lot like it, too.
Ouch. I’m with Shannon – it definitely sounds like male entitlement. Always appearing just when you think you don’t have to deal with it anymore…
Triple ouch. A scarily familiar scene.
wow you are right and i effing dare my husband to ever do that. thats exactly what it is – angry dad syndrome. shudder.
You bet your butts it’s male entitlement. My mother *never* had friends over because my dad was so incredibly rude to them–and her!–because he “deserved” a roast on the table and a sparkling clean house (with no effort on his part) when he got home.
Eventually my mom just stopped trying to make friends.
Oh I recognise this – ‘you women sitting round chatting on my dollar, the party is over now, I AM HOME’. However, having been in a relationship in the past where I have been working full-time and getting in knackered, and finding him and his mate chatting away and no cup of tea in sight, I do kind of sympathise.
If this becomes a more often than not thing, it is a huge red flag (one of many, but still… ) for emotional abuse and/or personality disorder(s).
I’m sorry if this is derailing – this behavior (every time he came home and she had friends over) was the tip of the iceberg for why he is now my friend’s EX-husband. 😦
I read this and felt very guilty. That’s me. I’m that angry dad. I do it when I’m particularly tired and premenstrual or just have the shits. My partner tends to just raise his eyebrows and leave the room, because he’s not confrontational and is a master of quiet guilt trips. Which is what that behaviour deserves.
I’ve seen plenty of other women pull this angry dad thing too.
Is it perhaps a generational thing? I’m 36, though, so….
I think it might be a male entitlement thing when it’s associated with a bunch of other disturbing, bullying behaviour. Otherwise it’s just plain bad manners and deserves raised eyebrows. It also sounds like cruising for a fight, and an angry retort is just the response it’s looking for.
I think the point in the third last paragraph was the more accurate conclusion.
And dogpossum’s conclusion was the perfect addition. In isolation it’s simply bad manners; if part of a larger pattern of behaviour then it is more worrying.
I think that this sort of behaviour crosses the gender divide. Of course, generally speaking, one tends to have more sympathy for whichever side of that divide they fall on.
I can’t remember doing this, but I can remember numerous instances of having it done to me. And I’m sure my partner would say the same thing. 😛
i remember this dynamic from when i was a kid, didn’t matter where we were, there was always a set of friends that had dad’s eta tattooed to the inside of their eyelids, woe betide us all if the toy soldiers were still trying to take Couch Mt or cricket pitch was still in the driveway. it was one of the things that really drove home the things my mum was trying to teach my sis and me about the way the world worked. Judy Small has a good song that touches on this, but i forget its name.
nowadays i see it as entitlement behaviour or the expression of a bad temper. i got similar behaviour from Dr H in the first months after she went back to work the first time. mostly, it seemed to be a response to the pressure that she was under, readjusting to work after seven months at home as well as dealing with all the crap slung your way when you leave your child to return to work. one of the things that bothered me was the way i accommodated it, and started to doubt all my decisions, started to act like i had read The Rules and believed them. people is funny. we sorted it out.
So basically i think that it is a human behaviour but its expression is as usual gendered, and if it gets entrenched in an unequal relationship here comes trouble.
I agree that it is behaviour that belittles the power and promise and outcomes of friendship. Yes, I totally get that going out and earning the dollar is sometimes fricking tedious (having been a sole breadwinner and most time parent I can say that combination sucks worse though), and it’s so easy to look at two women in that moment actually enjoying their home time and conclude that their lives are less tedious (and perhaps less productive). Which of course doesn’t in any way account for all those hours upon days upon weeks when it is awful and thankless and lonely and a psychological headfuck. I have to say, to me it does smack a little of entitlement.
Not sure its generational. I’m 35. But I am sure I have been guilty in the past of cold shouldering my partner when he’s off playing the latest computer games and drinking beers with his mate and I’m left with his mate’s partner pulling apart the kids and trying to feed them and troubleshoot all their issues.
Guilty of being the asshole, here. Rather than gendering it, I think of it as “breadwinners’ entitlement.” That money work is always worth more than the home work, dontcha know, and therefore tiredness from money work is always heavier and more authentic than tiredness from home work.
This experience is not entirely about the breadwinning husband versus the mother’s invisible home labour – I have seen the encounter in homes where both parents work.. but it is about the way some of my friends’ male partners get shitty with them in front of me, without acknowledging our existing conversation, and how those friends of mine respond and what that is about and how ugly it all feels.
Thank you everyone for the comments. There is almost a deafening silence on this post over at HAT and it led me to kinda worry that I was the only one experiencing this situation, or the only one to find it thought-provoking and disturbing. So thank you, muchly for your comments here.
Thank you for this post!
Unfortunately, I too have been guilty of such rude, assholish behavior. Usually not in front of other people, but still.
Now I’ll go sit in my corner and resolve to never ever do this again!
p.s. I think it’s power play and rudeness, not only male entitlement.
blue milk: I think the deafening silence at HAT must just be one of those things. Everyone who had something to say was at the beach, or something. I’m glad to find more comments here. (As for myself, one of the things about being a ‘young’ mother, here defined as one of the first mothers in my circle, is not having anything to say about mother-to-mother dynamics.)
Perhaps the bit that we’re missing here is that it’s just a symptom of entitlement.
So when a man does it, of course the first thing I’d think is that it’s male entitlement, but perhaps thats because I’m just more used to dealing with entitled men than entitled women.
And maybe more men than women do it, because they’re more used to being entitled.
the artical was really thought provoking. Even more exciting the amount of interesting debate it has raised.
Im lucky; my partner and I both realise the importance of a first impression EVERY day. So no matter what is going on I try to greet him with a kiss and a hello, and vice versa.
It makes a HUGE difference, compared with launching in with “can you please…” “why havent you…” is the ** ready?”.
Before I sound too smug, this wasnt always the case and we made a joint decision that we would try this new way and see if it helped.
Taking out frustrations on a partner is not an entirely male trait, but we need to take care that taking responsibility on ourselves for someone elses frustration doesnt become a female one.