14 Jul Conventional Expectations
When Greg and I decided to get married, we chose a cute little chapel downtown. We were planning a party later in the year for family and friends, but for now we didn’t want to wait. We got dressed up, arrived at the appointed time, and found that the first order of business was to fill out paperwork. The woman in charge, who also turned out to be the person who married us, within a few minutes asked Greg a question to which he answered, “Yes.” Much to our surprise, she responded, “Since you’re getting married, that’s how it’s going to be from now on: ‘Yes, ma’am. no, ma’am.’” We thought maybe she was trying to be funny, but from the look on her face, it didn’t appear so.
More was to follow. At one point, she warned Greg that once we were married, “She’s [Catherine’s] the boss.” During our ceremony she noticed I wasn’t carrying any flowers, and she chided Greg for not getting me any, delivering a mini-lecture on, “You have to get her roses, and not just on Valentine’s Day.”
None of these conventional ideas apply to us whatsoever. Greg knows that if I want flowers, I’ll buy them. He expresses his romantic feelings frequently in a style that fits for him and for me, and neither of us is “the boss.” It was really weird to have these conventional expectations about love and marriage show up in so tender a moment that was supposed to be about us and our love for each other. Thankfully, we were able to find it amusing.
Around the same time, we had a guy remodeling our home whom Greg was supervising. Greg pointed out to him a tile that had been fitted wrong, and the guy responded, “Oh she’s not going like that.” Greg explained to him that I really don’t care about those kinds of things. The next day when the handyman showed up for work the first thing he said to Greg was, “Did you get in trouble? Was she mad about the tile? You know how women are.”
Where is this all coming from? Conventional expectations. For many people, these are the stories they have in their heads about committed relationships when they interact.
If you turn on the television for a few hours or go on social media for even a minute there are constant messages and images brainwashing us with conventional expectations. There are jokes and storylines about the supposed “war between the sexes.” We are constantly told that men are inconsiderate slobs who only want sex, not intimacy or affection. Women, on the other hand, rarely want sex, just leave them alone. Your life is basically over once you’re in a committed relationship, and especially if you get married, you’ll never have sex again. Once together you have to be on constant alert that your partner is going to cheat on you, and all you’re going to do is fight.
All these conventional messages create a mindset and behavior that have been normalized by mainstream culture to such a degree that we often think they’re true without even questioning them. One of the first things we must do if we want to create a relationship full of sex, love and romance is to identify which conventional expectations we have adopted and challenge them.
© 2022 Catherine Auman
This is an excerpt from Catherine Auman’s book, Tantric Mating: Using Tantric Secrets to Create a Relationship Full of Sex, Love and Romance. Tantric Mating is a companion to her previous book Tantric Dating: Bringing Love and Awareness to the Dating Process named by BookAuthority as one of the Best Dating Books of All Time.
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